Common Payroll Challenges Faced by Australian Businesses

• Reading Time: 3 Minutes
• Published: June 25, 2020
• Last Updated: February 6, 2025

One of the most integral functions of any organization is an accurate and on-time payroll process. But is it so easy to achieve? An on-time and error-proof payroll is not an easy task for any Australian Business. There are a lot of payroll challenges that the business front has to face every now and then and businesses have also been too slow to address these. The extent of this laze is that some of the top business firms in Australia make errors that reach in millions.

Let us address some of the very common payroll challenges that the businesses have faced and are still facing in the present scenario:

The Advent of Digital Age

The advancements in technology have given people the ability to access their data from anywhere and at any time. With the help of cloud computing, people expect to get a detailed information on their data and ability to access it freely without any barrier. Even though this advancement has given us a lot of benefits, there are always people who believe otherwise. Cloud computing has made work easier for businesses and every payroll outsourcing firm offers cloud payroll services but there are still a large number of businesses who have not transitioned to cloud-based payroll systems. A lot of companies who still function and process their payrolls via traditional methods of payroll management may not be able to run shoulder to shoulder with those businesses who are heavily relied upon technology for business procedures.

Difficulties with Varying Enterprise Agreements

Enterprise Agreements, also known as EAs, are the legal agreements that are negotiated between the employer, labour union that acts on behalf of the employees of the company and the employees. These agreements include terms for minimum wage, attendance, working condition, penalty, overtime, and multiple other factors associated to particular roles. Within the diverse workforce, a business has to stick by varying EAs. Due to this, it becomes even more significant for the businesses to utilize those payroll solutions that have flexibility to accommodate these EAs and are agile to incorporate them in the given time frame. Payroll outsourcing is a wise decision in such cases.

Payroll Challenges w.r.t. International Standards

More than 80% of the large business owners either have international presence or expect to have/increase international presence. This will be easier when the businesses are able to manage an increase in the variety of the payroll obligations as per the various locations.

Flexible working arrangement and varying workforce demographics mean that the businesses already manage a wide range of employee types. With the increase in international mobility, the need for accommodating local labour laws for multiple locations will add additional complexities to the payroll procedure. It has been observed often that businesses function at around 80% compliance, across the world, and due to this, they expose themselves to the potential risk of government penalties.

Know how Payroll Management works in Australia

These are some of the common payroll challenges that the companies face presently. While companies can lag in their payroll management due to these challenges, Payroll outsourcing can turn out to be a great deal for Australian businesses. Right from following compliances to introducing the latest software solution and cloud-payroll solutions, payroll outsourcing offers a vast variety of benefits and makes payroll management easier for the businesses.

Some companies, managing their payroll procedures on their own, can get left behind fiddling with number of complexities in their way. Payroll outsourcing can be their way out from the swarm of complexities. Not only is it going to save the total time consumed in payroll management but it also makes sure that the result delivered are excellent.

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