Payroll and Timekeeping Clerks

Job purpose

To compile and verify employee time and payroll data, compute wages and deductions, issue pay and statements of earnings and maintain payroll records, so that employees are paid correctly and on time and the payroll accounts and returns of the organisation are accurate.

Skills

• Command of payroll and timekeeping practice — wage and deduction computation, pay adjustments, leave recording, period-end balancing, payroll tax returns and the documentation of pension and insurance benefits — resting on applied arithmetic, accounting principles, personnel administration and payroll system operation, with current knowledge of the tax and deduction law governing the calculation. A bachelor's degree is the most common qualification, with an almost equal share holding some college courses, plus one to two years of on-the-job training.
• Provides information to employees and managers on payroll matters, tax questions, benefit plans and collective agreement provisions, answering queries on pay that are personally important to the individual concerned. Distributes and collects timecards, completes verifications of employment for outside parties and trains employees in the timekeeping systems. No one is supervised.
• Reviews time sheets, work charts and wage computations to detect and reconcile payroll discrepancies, traces differences between issued payrolls and bank statements, and issues corrective adjustments where a previous error or retroactive award applies. Problems are procedural, with rules and precedents available.
• Works to a fixed pay cycle in which each stage — timecard collection, verification, computation, payment, period-end reporting — must be complete before the pay date, with real time pressure at each close. Some freedom over the order of work, but the calendar and statutory deadlines are set elsewhere.
• Desk-based keyboard work, with repetitive data entry and handling of timecards, forms and payroll documents. No manual handling beyond this.

Responsibilities

• No line management. Acts as the point of contact on pay and time for employees across the organisation and for managers submitting returns, and instructs employees in the timekeeping systems.
• Calculates and processes the pay bill: computes wages and deductions, verifies attendance, hours worked and pay adjustments, issues pay and statements of earnings, balances cash and payroll accounts and period-end reports, and prepares and files payroll tax returns. The amounts are set by contracts, collective agreements, benefit rules and tax law, and no budget is held and no expenditure committed; the computation itself and the corrective adjustments are the postholder's own work.
• Ordinary care of a workstation, the payroll and timekeeping systems and the record files. No responsibility for stock or plant.
• Maintains the payroll record of every employee — personal pay data, exemptions, transfers, resignations and leave accrual — and compiles the time and payroll data behind it. Prepares statistical reports and summaries on pay and benefits accounts for other departments, and processes benefit forms. Mistakes reach individual pay and the accounts alike, though the structure of the records is set by others.

Effort required

• Prolonged exacting attention to figures, dates and entitlement rules, where a rounding or coding mistake carries into someone's pay. Judgement is applied within rules — how a deduction, exemption or retroactive award falls to be treated — and decisions recur against the pay-run clock.
• A steady volume of contact with employees about their own pay, including queries on shortfalls and corrections, calling for patience and a measured manner; accuracy of the figures rests with the postholder. No exposure to conflict situations or aggression is recorded.
• Seated for most of the working day at a workstation, with repetitive keyboard and data-entry movements. No lifting or exertion.

Working conditions

• An indoor, environmentally controlled office with no physical hazards or exposures. Face-to-face, telephone and e-mail contact is frequent and the work is done within a team; psychosocial demand comes from accountability for accurate pay, no difficult behaviour being recorded.
• The whole occupation works a regular established schedule, a standard week for most with a minority working longer. Work is repetitive and closely governed by payroll rules and the pay calendar, with some latitude over how the day is arranged; decisions are frequent and their effects reach co-workers and company results.