5 Week months

Seanachai

Hey , I get paid on the last Friday of every month and the staff where I work have asked management if this can be changed to every four weeks. The feedback we've got so far is that it's being 'looked into' and that the payroll company told them it's a huge task. Does anybody here that works in payroll or similar know if this is the case?.

Procrastastudy

Seanachai wrote: »

Hey , I get paid on the last Friday of every month and the staff where I work have asked management if this can be changed to every four weeks. The feedback we've got so far is that it's being 'looked into' and that the payroll company told them it's a huge task. Does anybody here that works in payroll or similar know if this is the case?.

Slightly pointless unless you can't budget your money. It would increase costs as you'll have 13 or 14 payments per year at varying dates.

28064212

Seanachai wrote: »

Hey , I get paid on the last Friday of every month and the staff where I work have asked management if this can be changed to every four weeks. The feedback we've got so far is that it's being 'looked into' and that the payroll company told them it's a huge task. Does anybody here that works in payroll or similar know if this is the case?.

Yes, it can be a huge task, depending on the payroll system in place and the various processes used.

More importantly, there's no business case to be made for it. It's time, money and effort for zero return

Mr. Loverman

Payroll is actually tricky. Not that there is anything technically difficult about it, but it's something you have to get perfectly right (because people go mad when there is something wrong with their pay) so it's stressful which means mistakes are more likely which makes it more time consuming, etc.

I would imagine the "it's a huge task" thing has to do with them having to recalculate how much everyone is being paid if they move to a four week cycle. This is a problem for them because a) it's a bit of work and b) the current system works fine whereas the new system may have mistakes.

I used to do payroll.

Mrs OBumble

It would also turn into a PITA the for workers once you'd had a couple of 5-week months, because pay would get out-of-cycle with rent (most places pay monthly) or mortgage payments.

Yes I know you'd get your money sooner, but it's so much easier if it comes in a few days before the big payments are due.

GerardKeating

Seanachai wrote: »

Hey , I get paid on the last Friday of every month and the staff where I work have asked management if this can be changed to every four weeks. The feedback we've got so far is that it's being 'looked into' and that the payroll company told them it's a huge task. Does anybody here that works in payroll or similar know if this is the case?.

Ask them to change to a specific day in the month, maybe the 25th of the month. This would more evenly space out the payday with no real down side to the company.

Seanachai

Procrastastudy wrote: »

Slightly pointless unless you can't budget your money. It would increase costs as you'll have 13 or 14 payments per year at varying dates.

Budgeting money maybe if you were on €25k + and didn't have medical expenses piling up.

seamus

Seanachai wrote: »

Budgeting money maybe if you were on €25k + and didn't have medical expenses piling up.

The point is that the total amount of money you receive doesn't change, so it's a matter of learning to manage your own cash flow. Regular payments at four-week intervals might help in some regards, but they'll kill you in others, such as when a payday falls in the middle of the month and you have to try budget to pay your rent two weeks later.

If you budget properly you should be theoretically capable of receiving your entire years salary in January and making it last till the end of December.

To the original question, yes it can be a lot of work for the company. Our company payroll system comes with a standard configuration that allows payment of wages in 52, 26 or 12 "periods" (weekly, two-weekly, or monthly). In order to deviate from any of these standard cycles, we would need to configure the system to allow us to run payroll for 13 periods per year. This reconfiguration in itself would cost a fair bit of cash in consultants' fees and staff time in testing and verifying the system works as it should.

On an ongoing basis then, the payroll department's workload has been increased by 8.5% because they have an extra payroll cycle per year. The company's banking costs may increase if the company has to pay any charges on their transactions.

There may also be end-of-year tax implications from having an "odd" number of periods in a pay year, especially since there is an extra "day" every year which would have to accounted for (13 "months" = 364 days.

There would be zero benefit to the company.

Eoin

GerardKeating wrote: »

Ask them to change to a specific day in the month, maybe the 25th of the month. This would more evenly space out the payday with no real down side to the company.

That's what they have in my place, and I don't think it would help the OP. You still get 5 week months, plus the 25th can fall on a weekend, so the actual date you get paid will vary.

kayos

Eoin wrote: »

That's what they have in my place, and I don't think it would help the OP. You still get 5 week months, plus the 25th can fall on a weekend, so the actual date you get paid will vary.

In most cases where they have a "fixed" date for payments its "On or Before" that date. e.g. Sunday gone was the 25th salary was in my account on the Friday. So unless something goes wrong you know that you will be paid by a given date.

The last Friday lark means the date can vary hugely.

Nov - 30, Dec - 28, Jan - 25, Feb - 22, Mar - 29, Apr - 26, May - 31

But if its about budgeting for things like rent open a second account transfer the required funds when you do get paid and have the payments come out of that account. Or visa versa set-up a second account lodge your shopping/entertainment/food money over and work off that each month.