Get the reporting right, and the insights from your international payroll could do far more than ensure you pay your people on time…
Why international payroll reporting matters
A global payroll is how organisations with workers in more than one country ensure everyone gets paid. Yet beyond the basic purpose of paying everyone the right salary at the right time, an international payroll will contain rich insights for any business willing to look for them (we explore some international payroll insights here).
The better the data, the better the insights, and that means optimising your payroll reporting so it delivers the information you need in the right way.
In this post, we’ll explore how to turn raw data into valuable insights by getting smarter with your payroll reporting.
Key elements of international payroll reporting
It’s worth noting that not all the insights you gain from optimising your global payroll reporting are designed to be applied internally. Depending on the territories in which you operate, there will be external reporting requirements too. These will include reports to meet your local tax obligations but may also include reporting on things such as gender pay, diversity and inclusion, pensions, social security and more.
To meet your legal obligations and gain actionable insights, therefore, your payroll reporting should be:
- Accurate: Perhaps the most important element (for your people as well as your reporting). If you want a report worth the effort it took to generate it, the entry level requirement is that the information your system contains should be correct.
- Consistent and standardised: Important so that you are able to compare elements across your operations.
- In real time (or at the same time): Your reporting needs to use data from the same period to create accurate comparisons. The more recent the data, the more valuable the report.
- Rich: Your global payroll will inevitably contain salary, pay date, and overtime details. But the wider the data pool, the richer the insights will be. When the data includes information such as age, gender, ethnicity, role, seniority, hours, part time/full time and more, you can interrogate the data to find so many more insights.
- Searchable and customisable: Linked to the last point, a big pool of data needs to give you the tools that enable you to look at it from multiple angles. The more ways you can customise how you interrogate your data, the richer the insights.
- Easy to access: Because the easier it is to find insights from your payroll reporting, the more you’ll uncover.
The best way to optimise your international payroll reporting
The right global payroll system – one that automates data flows and centralises multi-country payroll data in a single solution – will make reporting easier and more insightful. The more countries you operate in, the more a centralised international payroll proves its worth.
That doesn’t necessarily mean the payroll is operated entirely from one source. Just Payroll’s international payroll uses lots of in-country partners to deliver locally compliant payroll services, but the reporting is centralised to enable you to interrogate it in the ways explored above.
What’s clear, however, is that many organisations aren’t yet centralising their international payroll. According to a 2021 Global Payroll Week survey1, 43% of respondents used between two and five providers. Almost 20% used six providers or more. That means just over a third are using a single payroll provider, and that means almost two thirds will be finding it considerably harder to rationalise their data and drive improvements.
It’s also important to note that optimising international payroll isn’t just about the tech. When you’re implementing a new solution for the first time – or when you want to use the data it contains in new ways – one of the most important elements in optimising your global payroll reporting is ensuring you have right payroll partner on board to support you.
To explore how we can help you, talk to us now.