Anyone who works in the construction industry will be all too familiar with the concept of an Enterprise Bargaining Agreement. For employees, an EBA is one of the most important documents they’ll come across in their working lives. It ensures the best hourly pay rates as well as allowances, entitlements, and better working conditions. And, since it’s well-known that employees who are satisfied with their overall working conditions are more productive on the job, EBAs benefit employers too. However, whether it’s a union EBA or an internal Enterprise Bargaining Agreement, EBAs are notoriously complex which means if you’re doing it manually, processing payroll is a lot harder and a lot more time-consuming.
How EBAs and internal awards make payroll so difficult
An enterprise bargaining agreement comes with a lot of different rule sets that need to be taken into account to ensure every employee is being paid what they’re entitled to. We’re talking about different rules based on various circumstances and scenarios such as full time versus Casual employment, days of the week worked, and set weekly hours with RDO accrual. Then you’ve got different allowances to add to the mix – hourly site allowances, hourly height allowances, daily travel allowances. And if that’s not enough to make your payroll processing life miserable, then you’ve got other rules that kick in at certain times of the day, like additional meal allowances for anyone working over a certain number of hours. Oh, and did we mention these rules vary for each employee? So, if it’s a manual process, you’ll be spending a lot of head-hurting time collecting, collating and interpreting all this data to extrapolate all the allowances each staff member is entitled to and make sure they’re being paid correctly.
Does payroll processing take up way too much of your time and resources?
Manually entering timesheets into your payroll system and taking into account EBA rules and allowances is a huge undertaking. Depending on the size of your company, you’re probably spending a huge amount of time and resources getting it done every single week. One customer of ours, for example, had two people spending two days a week processing payroll. Their company has no more than eighty employees.
Are you spending hours correcting payroll processing errors?
The other issue with entering all this data manually is the risk of human error. It is humanly impossible not to make mistakes when you’re spending that much time collating, entering and interpreting huge amounts of data. If you’ve ever sat in front of a computer and tried to enter data for eight hours straight, you’ll know exactly how easy it is to make mistakes along the way. This is a problem with manual payroll processing in any circumstances, let alone when dealing with EBAs. We don’t need to tell you how frustrating it is to have to spend time correcting these issues or dealing with disgruntled employees who have been underpaid.
Are you stressed about meeting your EBA legal obligations?
The other problem with entering data incorrectly is the fact that you may not be meeting your legal obligations. EBAs are legally enforceable which means you’ll face severe penalties if you’re not following them. You might have every intention of following EBAs to the letter, but, thanks to good old human error, the cost of your mistakes could be astronomical.
What if we told you there was an easier way to make payroll processing with EBAs?
Welcome to EBA and Award Interpretation by Neo Intelligence.
Streamline your business and save time with Automated EBA and Award Payroll Processing. A premium extra for our NEO Intelligence construction software platform, the EBA integration feature streamlines and automates the process and interprets all this data for you, saving you so much time and making your life so much easier. If you think this sounds like a way to save an incredible amount of time – and money – you’d be right. That customer we mentioned who were spending two days a week with two resources processing payroll? After implementing our system, they’re now spending two hours with one resource. Their margin for error has also diminished considerably.
Here’s what one of our clients has to say:
Another key feature of Neo’s construction software program for QRC has been the integration of enterprise agreements and award interpretation into the program to assist with their payroll, which in turn integrates directly into Xero for payment.
Never underpay or overpay an employee again.
How does the NEO Intelligence EBA and award integration feature work?
Instead of having to manually enter and calculate EBA entitlements for every employee each week, the NEO Intelligence EBA add-on automates the whole process. It can be integrated into all standard payroll systems, such as MYOB, Xero & Quickbooks, and, once it’s all entered into the system, will streamline the recording and collation of timesheets as well as the interpretation of data.
If you’re thinking it sounds complicated to get it going, fear not. This is exactly what we specialise in, and we’re here to make the process quick and easy. We’ll go through each rule and employment type, covering all potential rule sets and the different combinations of scenarios, including EBA and non-EBA employees, employment types, lunch breaks, overtime, allowances, days of the week, RDO accrual entitlements and more. Once we’ve got all this in the NEO Intelligence construction software system, it will automatically pick up on all qualifying criteria and determine exactly what an employee needs to be paid. We do all this setup for you, as well as ongoing maintenance, so that processing payroll for EBA employees never has to give you a headache again. We are all about helping our clients save costs and streamline the day-to-day so you can focus on the bigger picture.
Ultimately, our NEO Intelligence EBA add-on offers benefits across the board for both your company and its employees. Anyone processing payroll will be saving a lot of time, and from an HR perspective, you’ll be ensuring that employees are getting paid what they’re entitled to.
