Greetings from San Antonio, Texas!

We’re at the Texas Payroll Conference 2009 in San Antonio, having a great time at Booth #28.

One of the best things about the Texas Payroll Conference is that we’re Texans, too. iEmployee is based in Austin, so we’re just a short drive up the road. We’re proud to have so many of our clients in Texas, and it’s fun to meet you all in person, shake hands, and talk payroll.

Lots of you have stopped by the booth already to say hi and learn a little about our time and attendance solution, which is fantastic because we know you’re busy in between sessions. If you only have a minute, here are the top three things you should know about iEmployee:

1. It’s Web based. That means no software to install, no IT department needed, no upgrades to worry about. Plus employees, managers and payroll administrators can access it from any computer at any time. Simple.

2. We customize it for you. Whether you have one office or several offices, whether each employee works for one client or several, whether you pay weekly, monthly… you get it. We learn about your business and how you do payroll, and we create iEmployee for you.

3. It’s the fastest way to eliminate the headache that can be payroll. Imagine … no more paper , no more entering data in Excel, no more wondering if an employee is coming into overtime. With iEmployee, all this information is automated and self-service. Entering time sheets, approving them, making payroll off of them is all done with a click.

We hope you’ll stop by the booth and ask us some questions. Or you can contact us at anytime here.

It’s National Payroll Week 2009! Not sure what it is?

Here’s what it’s not: A week during which anyone who processes payroll can take a vacation. Too bad.

Here’s what it is: The American Payroll Association’s campaign to educate 156 million wager earners about their paychecks and celebrate the payroll professionals who pay them.

The website is a great resource for learning about how to get the most of their paycheck with savings, retirement planning, managing child support payments, and other deductions. There are also (ahem!) a number of ideas for celebrating that special payroll professional in your life.

If you’re doing something to celebrate National Payroll Week, please share.We especially want to hear from our iEmployee customers. How has automated time and attendance made payroll easier for you? That’s worth celebrating!

PS: Don’t forget to join us on our new Facebook page! We want to build a community of payroll pros – and the people who love them – so we can share/commiserate about the highs and lows of processing payroll.

We’ve been following lots of you out there on Twitter – you’re hilarious! I hope we can get together online and learn a little more about each other. (http://twitter.com/iemployee

The news today that Walmart would issue payroll cards for employees not on direct deposit – as opposed to checks and stubs – struck us as innovative… at first. Then a million questions came into our heads.

I spoke to Jeff Vogt, FPC, iEmployee Product Specialist about the postives and negatives of this move.

“Obviously this is going to save them a lot of money,” said Vogt. ”From an employer perspective,  you setup direct deposit to payroll cards the same way you handle traditional direct deposit to a checking account.” 

According to the American Payroll Association, about 30 percent of the U.S. population in unbanked. That means they’re more likely to cash their paychecks, pay a fee, then carry around a dangerous amount of cash.

Payroll cards eliminate many of these problems, says Vogt. So there are definitely upsides for employees, too.

But what would be a downside to using payroll cards? “Change,” says Vogt.

“I remember when people were nervous about direct deposit. Employees just really want to see that check. So I imagine it would be difficult to break employees of the habit of expecting a paper check or stub.”

Here’s more data from the American Payroll Association:

• As much as 30% of the U.S. population does not have a bank account
• More than four million paychecks are lost or stolen each year
• Lost paycheck replacement costs are estimated to be $48 million annually
• Companies can save up to $1.25 per payment using electronic disbursement instead of checks
• The chance of having a problem with a check is 20 times greater than with direct deposit
• Studies show that employees may spend the equivalent of three work days each year going to the bank

If you’re considering using a payroll card system, here is an overview of guidelines for choosing a vendor. (For the complete list, go to ConsumersUnion.org.)

1. Don’t use a payroll card vendor unless you know it is financially sound.
2. Use your contract with the issuer to require consumer protection equal to bank debit cards.
3. Pay the monthly fee or negotiate a contract with the issuer that there will be no monthly fee.
4. Identify and restrict the fees to employees in your contract with the issuer.
5. Check whether the card gives your employees money management choices, such as a direct debit to pay regular bills, or a direct transfer every month into a savings account.
6. Can the account be overdrawn, and if so, what happens?
7. Give employees a choice.
8. Require protections for your employees’ financial information in the payroll card contract.
9. Make the payroll card a first step toward improved financial stability for your employees.
10. Choose a payroll card that does not encourage your employees to borrow from future paychecks.
11. Will your employees be able to receive all card information, and telephone customer service, in a primary language other than English?

One of the best services the American Payroll Association offers its members is its annual buyer’s guides. These aren’t rankings or reviews, rather they’re charts denoting the platforms, features and other elements of dozens of products side-by-side so you can compare and contrast. It’s a great place to start if you’re shopping for payroll solutions.

In case you missed it, the 2009 Time & Attendance Buyer’s Guide is available. You can download it here: http://www.americanpayroll.org/pdfs/pto/bg_0901.pdf

If you take a look at the iEmployee entry, you’ll see we offer one of the most comprehensive solutions for time and attendance. But what this chart doesn’t show are things like ease of implementation or excellent customer service. We know those are important considerations, too, and we’d love to tell you more about it.

We just got off the phone with a new customer from Texas who raved about the implementation experience with iEmployee’s time and attendance product.

She puts together a very complicated payroll with multiple divisions and multiple clients, and as a result, multiple types of timesheets. When she signed up for iEmployee she was sure she would overwhelm our implementation team.

And yet, she said, our team was “totally professional, totally attentive,” taking in the entire history of her company and setting up iEmployee to perfectly accommodate their needs.

Of course, this story makes us proud. We realize there are many time and attendance solutions out there, so we try to differentiate ourselves through service. It’s good to hear directly from our customers that this strategy is working.

There are some exciting changes coming to the iEmployee Time & Attendance tool, so please stay tuned to the blog for more information.

In the meantime, if you’re attending the 2009 IPPA Annual Conference in Cambridge, Mass., please come by and say hello. The conference, which will take place August 12 – 14 at the Hyatt Regency in Cambridge and hosted by the Independent Payroll Providers Association, is a two-day event is designed to educate attendees on news in the payroll industry and provides a networking and ideas exchange forum for the independently owned payroll bureau owners. 

Payroll conferences continue to bring value to attendees and exhibitors, I think, even in a time of social networking, online learning, user forums, etc. Why? Because nothing beats that face-to-face contact.

As an exhibiting vendor, we’re not there just to sell our product, we’re there to get to know our customers. Feedback is great, but we also want to know more about the challenges you face every day as a payroll professional.

My point is, if you want to stop by to learn more about iEmployee’s time and attendance solution, great. But we hope you’ll stop by just to chat, too. In fact, you can chat with us right now!

Join us online!

iEmployee invites you to participate in an interactive webcast to learn how iEmployee can help you reclaim valuable time by eliminating routine tasks and manual processes – empowering you to easily manage employee data online.

Participating a webcast is easy! Just click on one of the dates below to register for that time. All we ask is for your name and email address. Make sure to click on the link in the registration window to test your system.

We’ll discuss familiar professional challenges, moving into paperless payroll, and using employee self-service technology to increase productivity and reduce costs.

Click here to register for a session now. 

Time and Attendance webcasts are held every Thursday at 4 p.m. ET/1 p.m. PT.  See you online!

Yesterday we announced a new partnership between iEmployee and PayrollNW, a payroll and tax preparation service out of the Northwest. The partnership integrates iEmployee’s time and attendance software with PayrollNW’s professional services and options.  

What this means is that the two companies can now provide customers with an end-to-end solution for automating the manual tasks associated with time and attendance data collection, calculation, and payroll and tax processing. From the press release:

“We are excited to be partnering with an industry leader such as iEmployee,” said Christy Bayly, Manager, PayrollNW. “By partnering with iEmployee, we can maintain our focus but also offer customers a broader solution to address their entire time collection and payroll processing needs.”

Partnerships make for win-win situations. Customers benefit from a more complete suite of payroll solutions and vendors reach new customers and expand their business. In this economy, we’re all trying to make the most of what resources we have.

If you’re considering a payroll vendor or if you have an established relationship with one, it makes sense for your organization to save money and take advantage of their research in vetting quality partners who can bring more value to their product offering.

To find

The person at this desk was dispensible, for example

So the number of new payroll jobs is down, salaries are below average, and the economy has just about everyone reaching into the sofa cushions for spare change.

Hmmm. An extra $2.13 is helpful, but there are ways to secure your job – and even advance your career – despite the depressing economy. Here we offer three ways to make yourself indispensible.

1. Be the Guru
Try rebranding yourself as the “innovator” or “payroll guru” in your department. Companies are much more likely to promote you if you appear to be knowledgeable and always presenting them with new ideas and while your ultimate goal may not be to have scores of loyal followers hovering around your desk, what you do want is to appear knowledgeable at staff meetings.

To elevate yourself to “guru” status, begin by researching your industry’s best practices and reading about current trends. Then, create a list of top performing organizations to study and tackle them one by one. Payroll is not generally seen as a competitive task, so you may find that people at these other companies are more than happy to share their expertise with you. Take advantage of this opportunity. Invite them out to lunch and pick their brains!

To keep yourself focused on this new challenge, set specific daily goals that are in line with your hopes for the future. This will not only make you look good and impress your colleagues, it will give you genuine insight into ways to help your company.

2. Identify Barriers and Instigate Change
Once you have identified best practices and procedures for your organization, work within your department’s guidelines to eliminate obstacles that could impede your progress. It is not uncommon for projects to remain on the “backburner.”

For example, you may find that bi-weekly payroll has not been initiated because there was strong opposition to the idea amongst non- payroll staff. In order to address the payment schedule, you would first have to address the other staff member’s concerns.

According to a survey conducted by the American Payroll Association, 82% of companies plan to purchase new or upgraded payroll software within the next two years.

So, if your department is still manually entering data to your payroll system, they will soon be way behind the competition. If you would like to explore this and other topics in further detail, iEmployee has a complete resource library available to keep you fully updated on issues to do with timekeeping and HR services. When your company does decide to implement new systems, you will be able to spearhead the decision, if necessary.

3. Become Part of the Solution
Most companies are going to suffer to some degree in this economic climate; there is no way around it. As Bob Willis of Bloomberg reports, “the deepening credit crisis and economic slump are forcing companies to trim payrolls, investment, and production.”

The key to making it through the recession on top is to become part of the solution.Since most employers will be looking for ways to cut costs and optimize resources, the best thing to do is to help them by coming up with solutions for affecting change. Remember that keeping the company’s profit and loss sheet healthy will benefit the employees in the long run.

Be flexible when suggesting improvements, however – it will increase the odds that your peers will accept your ideas. The important thing is to be seen actively seeking solutions to the department’s problems and showing management that you are a team

According to the White House blog, every administration has been required to present a salary report to Congress since 1995. This may be the first year, however that the same report is made available to the public on a blog.

Salaries range from $36,000 for an administrative assistant to $192,000 for director of public health policy.

You can search the payroll for job titles and salaries on this page, from which you can also download a PDF of the list. Or scroll through the list below to browse salaries. You’ll have to go to another page, though, to apply for a job.