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What is PTO and or Payroll Integration?
Calabrio Shorts is a fun-sized podcast that covers all sorts of topics around the contact center industry. No topic is off-limits as we cover frequently asked questions, industry trends and definitions, and yes, we will have fun doing it.
PTO and Payroll Integration
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[00:00:00] Dave Hoekstra: Hey everybody. It's Dave Hoekstra product evangelist here at Calabrio and welcome to collaborative shorts. Another episode today is we're. We got it all lined up here and I've got my good friend and colleague Robert Nyberg. He is the director of global director of application consulting here at Calabrio.
Thanks for joining us today, Robert.
[00:00:19] Robert Nyberg: Quite welcome. I'm happy to be here. So look forward to having our discussion today.
[00:00:23] Dave Hoekstra: Fantastic. So we are here to talk about. The payroll integrations. And it's really a an interesting subject that you and I have probably dealt with more times than we care to admit in our careers.
Both in the, in, in the actual practice and in the, on the vendor side of things. And what I really want to cover today is. What does payroll integration really mean? What are some different flavors and how does Calabrio approach though? So let's kind of start with the very basic question in your mind.
When someone says, Robert, tell me about the payroll integration capabilities of Calabrio, what, what do
[00:00:57] Robert Nyberg: they. Oh, [00:01:00] that's a great question. That, that brings up. It's got a, it's a can of worms actually, when they say, what do you do for payroll? I'm actually going to ask them a question back going, well, what would you like for it to me?
Are you looking to do time off synchronization? Are you looking to do time collection? Are you looking to send information about the schedule into a scheduler? So this is actually an interesting question that it does deserve additional questions back to those customers. So it is one that I make sure that our team asks a lot more deeper
[00:01:31] Dave Hoekstra: into this whole question.
Let's kind of start there. So you mentioned a couple of different flavors, right? You mentioned let's for example, PTO synchronization. What does that mean?
[00:01:41] Robert Nyberg: So from a contact center perspective most times they have a payroll system, like an HRMS system and they have a workforce system, and generally there are they're siloed, meaning that they, they do their time off in a.
HRM system. Then they come over into the workforce and they put the same thing into the workforce [00:02:00] system, or if they don't have one, they're doing XL. So they're doing a manual process where they're using email, they're doing two to three steps manually each time. And what we're doing and what we say PTO synchronization is to automate that sharing of information from both systems and then allowing the employee to go to one location to do their time off.
[00:02:20] Dave Hoekstra: Okay. So really it's not necessarily saving a lot of a process, but it is saving a lot of time. And it helps the two systems communicate with one another and pass along information back
and
[00:02:33] Robert Nyberg: forth. Absolutely. I think that is the, the it's more time on man. But also ease of use of the employee. So it's two components there it's yeah.
Saving time, but also making it easier for the employee to interact. And that's one of the major complaints about employees is that their time offs are not necessarily responded to quick enough. Now,
[00:02:52] Dave Hoekstra: does Calabrio do a one way sync only, or is it possible to sync back and forth between the two systems?
[00:02:58] Robert Nyberg: It is possible to do two way [00:03:00] synchronization. It depends on what the company would like generally from a best practices approach. It is a BI directional synchronization because we'll send information about the activities that are time off. And then we bring back the balance of bucket information from the HR system.
So we can start the process all over again on the next day.
[00:03:17] Dave Hoekstra: So it's actually interesting looking at what you just answered. Is it a bit of a misnomer to call it a payroll integration?
[00:03:25] Robert Nyberg: Absolutely because if you were to say the payroll word to anyone in finance or the payroll team, they immediately think rules, Sarbanes, Oxley governance audit process, and invest is not, we are not the payroll system.
We are simply automating a single process in a time offer approval realm as nothing to do with true payroll. We do not.
[00:03:48] Dave Hoekstra: Right furthering on that question. What about time clock capabilities?
[00:03:52] Robert Nyberg: Again, we are not a time clock provider. We simply, our integration is simply to listen to an ACD. So it's not meant for a [00:04:00] start stop of an employee's day.
It's meant to understand their production against the schedule. It's not meant for that a punch clock, if you would. Now, granted, we could bring in punch clock information if we really wanted to, but that's not, that's not what our job is and that's not what our software does. Keep that within your, your time clock systems,
[00:04:19] Dave Hoekstra: right.
We want to leave that to the experts and the people who do deal with governance and Sarbanes-Oxley and those types of things, because we're absolutely. So the other thing, the other phrase, I hear a lot that comes up when we talk about payroll integration is a cruel balance transfer. What is, what does that mean?
And how does collaborative approach.
[00:04:41] Robert Nyberg: So many payroll systems, they have two flavors. They have one you give to your, you give a bucket of time to employees once a year. So that's their annual allocation of time off the other is where they accrue hours on a monthly basis based on hours worked. And that bucket is synchronized as, as you work hours that they just [00:05:00] increments those hours.
So what we do is simply bring over what that current balance is. On a nightly basis. We're not the accrual platform. We let the payroll system do that accrual. And we simply synchronize to the latest information based on the hours that had been put in place. So it's, again, we don't do that and we're not the system of record.
So,
[00:05:22] Dave Hoekstra: so the system of record is still the payroll HRMS systems. And we are simply just doing a read from that from that system,
[00:05:30] Robert Nyberg: we were a user of that information. Absolutely.
[00:05:33] Dave Hoekstra: And how often does that happen? How often does those, those synchronizations often take place?
[00:05:37] Robert Nyberg: The best practice is once a night, you do it at, you know, after the activities are synchronized and the balances are updated from the worked hours.
Then that's sent back over to us. So it's not not something terribly troublesome for a system if you will. Okay.
[00:05:50] Dave Hoekstra: Okay. And how does the system handle things like conflicts or a resolution between maybe information that gets a little. [00:06:00]
[00:06:00] Robert Nyberg: Well, the goal is we're going to be having the same information that the payroll system has at the start of the day.
So when our, when the employees are actually making the request, they're looking at live information from the previous night, it's, there's not going to be any change in it at that regard. So once they make the request to decreases the bucket inside our collaborative platform, and then we have that that's scheduled in there.
And then at the end of the day, we'll send the scheduled event and the actual event. For those particular days to keep buckets inside. So it's not something that we have to worry about.
[00:06:32] Dave Hoekstra: Fantastic. And that's, that's simply becomes, and we, we, we will reiterate, we are not the system of record. Here we are.
The source of truth will always be the HRMS system or the payroll system, not collaborative WFM. So that's an important key thing to make sure that we're very clear on. I suppose, so this, this has all been great and I think kind of the final question, or maybe the final discussion point. Would be [00:07:00] what advice in your experience for our company that might be looking for, you know, the traditional payroll integration method, connecting their WFM to their payroll, that HRMS system, what are some things to maybe consider doing previously or things to make sure that they ask themselves before approaching Calabrio to kind of solve this particular.
[00:07:20] Robert Nyberg: Great question. I think one of the issues that we continually run into is internal buy-in. If, if a company wants to automate their time-off practice, if you would. And generally it's the time OD practice gathering, worked information or schedule information, need the buy-in of HRMS. So you need the buy-in of it and the owner of the payroll system.
Do that first to make sure that they're not going to be any red flags. I actually spent time with a, a consulting firm and a clan their client. Talking about Sarbanes-Oxley because they misunderstood what the process was doing. So I think it's just, it's very important for them to get the internal buy-in first.
[00:07:58] Dave Hoekstra: Okay. And then [00:08:00] maybe as a next step truly understanding what information they do or do not want to synchronize and pass along probably helps as well. Wouldn't you say?
[00:08:09] Robert Nyberg: Oh, absolutely. I mean, you, you started this by asking what kind of flavors, right? The 60 to 70% of all payroll integration questions, our time off synchronism.
The next level was just show me the schedule. What did they work that day? What was their work time? When did they start? When did they end and send that to me, we have three flavors of reports for that from a payroll information to be shared, but we are not again a payroll system, but I would say maybe 20 to 30% of that is now just give us a report of what they did and what activities they were scheduled.
[00:08:43] Dave Hoekstra: One of the things that I've heard before is people asking about, can they use WFM as the time clock? And I know we've, we said we're not a timeline, but they want to pull this schedule information over and then pay their associates on that good idea [00:09:00] or bad idea.
[00:09:01] Robert Nyberg: Actually not a very good idea. Again, our, our position is information user.
We are not a system of record. We are meant to leverage a variety of pieces of information from a root system, whether it be the HR system from an agent details or an HR from a payroll system for buckets of information. But no, we are not the system of record. We are not meant for that kind of structure, if you will.
And we also don't fall. We're not, we're not reading regulated for Sarbanes-Oxley and financial controls.
[00:09:33] Dave Hoekstra: Right. And I think the, the, the overlying theme is that our system is kind of designed to say what's supposed to happen. Not necessarily what actually happened in a lot of cases when it comes to logging in and logging out, clocking in and clocking out those types of things.
So, you know, just because somebody was scheduled to work at eight o'clock doesn't necessarily mean we should start paying them at eight o'clock.
[00:09:54] Robert Nyberg: And then I think it's a good point is we can provide a summary of all the time they did work, but we're not going to tell you [00:10:00] that they started with a really particular punch in and they were at their computer at 8 0 5.
So it's very important to note that the time clock is the only way whether the employee types in, or they walk through a door with an ID badge, you know, RFID on it, it still goes to that seat system.
[00:10:18] Dave Hoekstra: Absolutely. All right. Well, this has been enlightening, a lot of great information. I would like to reiterate to our listeners that if you are considering looking at your payroll integration or PTO integration journey with Calabrio or you have questions.
Please do not hesitate to reach out to us info@collaborative.com. You can go to www.calabrio.com. Get in touch with one of our amazing application consultants, which Robert is in charge of. And there'll be happy to spend some time with you to talk about what we want to accomplish here. But having said that, Robert, thank you for spending some time with me today.
Really appreciate
[00:10:53] Robert Nyberg: it. Quite welcome. Glad to be.
[00:10:56] Dave Hoekstra: All right. And thanks everybody. And stay tuned for the next episode of [00:11:00] Calabrio shorts. Thanks and have a great rest of your day.