When a worker is underpaid, or paid for days nobody can verify, the error is usually blamed on payroll. In practice, most of these mistakes are already in the timesheet. Here are five problems we see often on factories, farms and warehouses, and the checks that catch them.
1. Timesheets that don't match attendance
A supervisor fills in a timesheet at the end of the week from memory. The gate register says something different.
The check: reconcile every timesheet against the attendance record before payroll is calculated. Any day on the timesheet without a matching attendance entry gets queried, not paid.
2. Overtime nobody approved
Overtime is recorded, but there is no record of who authorised it, or it was worked on a line that wasn't scheduled to run.
The check: overtime goes to a named supervisor for approval within the pay period. Unapproved overtime is held until someone signs it off.
3. Casuals counted twice or not at all
On busy days, casual workers move between sections. They appear on two supervisors' sheets, or on none.
The check: use one register per day for casual workers, keyed to an ID or staff number, so each person can only be counted once.
4. Leave and off-days recorded as absence
A worker on approved leave is marked absent, and pay is deducted. It's a small error that quickly becomes a grievance.
The check: keep leave approvals in the same system as attendance, and reconcile them before the timesheet is locked.
5. Late submissions that skip review
Timesheets arrive the day before payroll closes. There's no time to check them, so they go straight through.
The check: set a fixed submission deadline that leaves time to review, and agree in advance what happens to late sheets.
The pattern behind all five
Each of these problems comes down to the same thing: payroll is the first point where anyone checks the numbers. Move the checks earlier, to the daily register and the weekly timesheet, and payroll becomes a calculation instead of an investigation.
This is the work we take on for our clients. If your payroll keeps needing corrections, talk to us.