3 Top Advantages to a True Global Payroll Report

International companies naturally come with challenges, such as structure, political barriers, global pricing strategies and international accounting, among many more. As companies expand into other countries, these challenges continue to grow. However, with a genuine global payroll solution, global payroll reporting doesn’t have to contribute to the obstacles.

While there are many advantages of global payroll reporting, three principal plusses are the most beneficial. As an example, one global travel provider operated 34 different payrolls in 26 countries, which made consistent reporting impossible. Through a global payroll solution with iiPay, we rationalized onto one system, which helped with compliance, access to historical data, customization requirements, analytics previously all manual, access at their fingertips and easier audits.

Similar to this example, the three top advantages that we see that are truly transformational in global payroll reporting include:

According to the survey results from EY’s “How Are Companies Preparing for the Payroll of the Future,” it cites that the payroll landscape continues to focus on consolidated provider capability and global reporting, with 78 percent of organizations stating that global delivery through a single provider is important to them. We tend to agree.

Global-Friendly Solution

With a true global payroll reporting function, companies enjoy benefits of being able to support any language and any currency with common pay codes. Payroll, Finance and HR have global insight to payroll data through multiple payroll/period reporting in a common format for all countries, which allows for critical decision making.

From a legislative compliance perspective, this consolidated view offers audit protection and penalty/fine avoidance. Complying with labor laws and data protection becomes easier with an automated, customizable solution. This includes constant legislative changes such as paternity leave, tax withholding and sick leave changes as a few examples.

Finance benefits from a global solution so it can analyze data in a consolidated view to analyze gross pay, deductions, social security where it applies, taxes and pension. This also enables Finance to allow for critical cost analysis.

Automation through Technology

With a cloud-based, centralized platform, the opportunities for the global payroll reporting function are significant, often resulting in producing global reports from a full day (or more) to minutes. Reports are both built-in and custom-configured with iiPay’s single platform. This translates into common processes, standards, policies, input, format and workflow. No more allowing each country to operate in siloes, creating headaches for leadership when they need information quickly.

Other advantages to automation include reduced errors due to eliminating manual activities and centralizing data. For an energy drink client, they suffered from tedious processes, error-laden manual input, high risk, disparate technology, time-intensive actions and unavoidable workarounds. After consolidating to a single, centralized payroll system with iiPay, this client experienced a smooth workflow with flexible and customizable reporting. They particularly like the user-friendly and prescriptive way the technology works in their environment.

iiPay clients often mention their appreciation of how the reports are in one format without the need for editing, then tying them back together by country to be standardized. This supports a higher level of data integrity. They also appreciate how ad-hoc reporting is available in real time, so they aren’t reliant on a partner to request the information, adding to the length of time to satisfy the request.

Analytics through Advanced Data Slicing

A centralized approach to truly global payroll reporting offers more strategic advantages, including the ability to make predictions, shape the direction of business decisions and workforce planning.

We hear a lot of clients discuss how the analytics capabilities tie to talent management. With this data, companies can manage skill gaps, study retention and develop strategies where attrition is high, realize the affordability of talent by geography and identify employees near retirement to determine the difficulty of replacing those skills.

Global reporting prevents fragmented data while also being to analyze the data in so many ways, including by department, country, title, absences or contractor vs. employee. With this competency, companies are empowered to identify redundancies, establish salary bands for titles and explore where high contractor usage may make more sense to convert to employees (or the other way around).

Moving Ahead

While we consider these the most strategic advantages to a true global payroll reporting capability, there are so many more benefits of using a single system using the same processes, regardless of complexity or size. With iiPay’s solution, companies come to rely on securely stored payroll data viewable in different formats that are unique to your local or corporate needs. Learn more about how iiPay can support your global payroll objectives and initiatives.