The Utility Source February 2019 | Page 8

Avoid Non Compliant Payroll Errors - Avoid Stiff Fines - Jail Time By John Trybulec Change is consistent in the construction industry. Payroll changes happen almost hourly on many construction sites because working conditions change. An employee may be asked to work in his secondary classification because the site is short of a key employee due to weather, family emergency, sudden illness, or a key piece of equipment breaks down. The payroll system must be malleable to cope with a wide variety of reporting differences. Daily payroll changes for 10’s or hun- dreds of workers is a daunting task. A payroll change concerns the worker, their supervisor, an admin and a payroll administrator. Ultimately... the con- struction company ownership can feel the painful result of a payroll error. That “innocent” payroll error is usually an illegal compliance issue. The Davis - Bacon Act of 1931 has 30+ compliance issues that must be adhered to for every check of every employee. Non-compliance can lead to a hefty fine or jail time. What can the payroll administrator of a construction company do to easily handle daily changes in payroll? 6 The Compliant Client system by eMars interface captures the “dailies” from a construction site, then submits those changes directly into our certified payrolls. Compliant Client then matches the hours, electronically, submitted on the certified payroll to the actual hours on the construction site. This process replaces the manual task of making TUS Magazine • February ‘19 sure the certified payroll hours equal the manually collected hours recorded by the foreman. Human error is eliminated. The foreman can concentrate efforts on the primary tasks, not payroll issues. This process is referred to as: On Site Employee Verification. “Time is money” is the old adage that you’ve probably said or heard hundreds of times in your life. It’s true. Spending time in non-income areas of your business is like throwing money in the trash. But, if you’re the CFO or the payroll accountant, you have to pay strict attention to your payroll, every week of the year. Using time to make sure every employee gets the correct pay is critically important. Time well spent, right? Is your organization spending three to 10 hours or more every week making sure that the payroll is correct and compliant? Could that time and energy be better spent in other areas of your business? Davis-Bacon and Related Acts and many state variations. The Davis-Bacon Act, passed by congress in 1931, requires private contractors to pay “prevailing wages” to employees on all federally funded construction projects valued more than $2,000. Stiff fines, debarment and jail time can result if payroll checks are not in compliance with this act. There are 30 compliance regulations that must be adhered to for every check. Thirty issues for each check. So, if you have 100 employees, that’s 3,000 possible errors every week. If you have 500 employees, that’s 15,000 pos- sible errors that must not happen. The time involved to keep watch over 30 compliance issues for 100 employees is staggering. Does your organization have time to personally watch over every check and every compliance issue? The downsides to not investing the time on this issue are: • Angry employees • Large fines • Jail time • Going out of business But, you have to focus your time on the weekly payroll. Right? Out-of-compliance payroll difficulties don’t go away by saying, “I’m sorry, I didn’t know and we’ll fix this problem real soon.” Compliant Client by eMars makes running your payroll an eight-minute, worry-free task. eMars and Compliant Client take care of all the compliance issues, guidelines and mandates of the Many of these financial executives do not protect their company and its top executives from submitting erroneous non-compliant, illegal payrolls. Based on a study of 100,000 payrolls, at least Is there a possible alternative to spending hour upon hour making all of your checks compliant and entering “correct” numbers and information into your payroll database? Yes. How many checks does your organiza- tion handle every week? Can you catch every error, every week? Doing payroll by hand every week is time consuming, costly and risky.