Kiwi payroll company’s compliance bet pays off as others announce errors

Wellington-based online payroll company FlexiTime has had a huge risk pay off, with their innovative, recently-developed payroll system, PayHero, proving compliant with tricky Holidays Act legislation, amid recent announcements of errors in other larger providers’ systems.

Australian-owned MYOB has admitted holiday calculation issues in a range of its products, creating headaches and potentially large bills for many small and medium businesses across New Zealand. Announcements of errors in other payroll providers are expected to emerge due to the fact that accruing leave as a method of calculation is still being used as the industry standard.

FlexiTime developed their system PayHero, following guidance from MBIE in 2017 on how the Holidays Act should be handled by payroll providers. A lone voice at the time in changing things from the way they had always been done, FlexiTime now has a system that works for Kiwi businesses who want to make sure they are accurate and compliant.

FlexiTime CEO Robert Owen said the updated MBIE guidance provided clarification on a lot of grey areas in the Act and it was clear to FlexiTime then that the accrual method was problematic.

“While it was a big and risky decision, in many ways it was actually quite easy as the single most important thing to us is helping companies pay employees right. We spent 18 months building a new payroll system, PayHero, from the ground up,” he said.

“We invested a huge amount of money and went against the grain. It’s been quite tough going with many thinking we must be wrong because other payroll systems calculate leave in a different way.”

Now though, FlexiTime’s approach has paid off, with PayHero offering peace of mind to any New Zealand business that is concerned their current system may not be handling leave correctly, Owen said. 

“While other providers are scrambling to patch fixes into their products, we have a product available right now that handles leave correctly in line with the Holidays Act 2003 and the latest guidance from MBIE”.

FlexiTime can also help businesses reassess any historical issues with their employee leave entitlements from other systems so they can move forward confident that they will be paying employees right, Owen said. 

PayHero, which is an intuitive cloud-based system, has the capacity to be scaled according to demand, and can handle any number of Kiwi businesses who want to use it. Currently FlexiTime has more than 4,000 customers, who have been onboarded through a simple process, with setup often able to be completed in a single day.  ENDS 

For more information visit: www.payhero.co.nz.