Output Management To Centrally Manage Electronic Distribution Of Paychecks To Different Location

By: Klaus Bollmann
Submitted: 2007-01-17 15:35:56
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Are you running your payroll in-house to save the cost of an outside provider? If you are a supermarket or retail chain or a smaller enterprise with a few outlets then you will be familiar with the challenges of safe and timely distribution of payroll checks. If you distribute them physically it is a costly and sometimes unreliable exercise resulting in employee disappointment or increased cost for the company to prevent potential mishaps.

Payroll in the US is significantly different to payroll in Europe, where all employees have bank accounts and over 90% of the payroll is transferred directly from the employer’s to the employee’s bank account. A large percentage of US factory and supermarket workers do not have a bank account and require cash or a check, which they will cash with a check cashing place for a fee of 1% to 2%. This is why employers are often forced to pay by check on payday.

Making things more complicated for US employers is that mostly employees get paid every two weeks, to assist them in their cash management. In Europe more than 98% are paid once a month. In Europe only day laborers and building workers are paid daily but usually once a week.

Once an organization is using a particular payroll software it is often difficult to change to another system or simply impossible without a large cost factor.

These days, it is almost the standard that remote locations of almost any size organization will have a permanent Internet connection, allowing fast data transfer between headquarters and the remote location, a cost efficient electronic solution to the problem should be possible.

The common denominator for all payroll systems, running on Windows, Apple or Unix type workstations is that the checks will ultimately be printed to a Network Printer. This is where state-of-the-art printer output management software can be employed to deliver the check to the remote site and print it on demand, or better on identification of the person allowed to print the checks at the remote site.

Another more sophisticated and more automated way is to have the printer and the check stock in a lockbox and the actual employees identify themselves, at the check printer, to receive their check. Here corporate ID cards and biometric information can be combined to ensure the right person collects the check. Also as the check gets delivered directly to the employee there is no cost for envelopes or logistics to have envelopes available for the check run.

This is one way to solve this issue and requires printer output management software that allows the print job to be put into a print queue where it remains until the person with the correct authority identifies on the printer, which may be at a remote site.

As it is a form of money that is being electronically transferred, it becomes of paramount importance for the output management software to encrypt the print stream and decrypt it on or in the printer.

Risk factors that have to be considered are the failure of the check printer or the check printer being out of paper. For backup reasons, if the check printer fails, you may still have to send a courier with the checks or a trustworthy employee to give it to another trustworthy employee at the remote location for distribution. However, electronic delivery sounds the way to go, with less handling and less management at about the same or lower risk.

Article source: Expert Articles