Swirl: A Story of Payroll Transcendence
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Vino Volo's payroll process was in a panic. I implemented a new payroll package and then wrote a custom application - Swirl - to take care of all of Vino Volo's special payroll needs and integrate their Point of Sale with their Payroll systems. The change in the process was transcendent - it was transformed from panic to bliss.
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Swirl: A Story of Payroll Transcendence
- 1. Kyle Johnson kyle@kgj.co (415) 860-8050 A Story of Payroll Transcendenceat Vino Volo Swirl
- 2. Kyle Johnson kyle@kgj.co (415) 860-8050 The year was 2012.... Vino Volo was growing rapidly, with 18 wine bar locations already open across the United States I was tasked with managing IT, Business Systems, Analysis, and Financial Planning Our HR & Payroll specialist quit, leaving nobody to pay our employees Can you take over HR & Payroll? asked the CEO Sure! } I didnt know what I was getting into
- 3. Kyle Johnson kyle@kgj.co (415) 860-8050 Payroll isnt that hard, right? There were 150+ hourly employees across 9 states California doesnt play by the same rules Employees had different rates of pay based on their position and the shift they were working Tips were pooled between employees based on the number of tipable hours they worked in the pay period Some employees worked at multiple locations so their overtime needed to be calculated and coded properly Vino Volos payroll requirements were complicated
- 4. Kyle Johnson kyle@kgj.co (415) 860-8050 The process was even more complicated....
- 5. Kyle Johnson kyle@kgj.co (415) 860-8050 1. Email PDF of punch report At the end of the pay period, each store manager would generate a PDF report from the Point of Sale and email it to payroll
- 6. Kyle Johnson kyle@kgj.co (415) 860-8050 2. Add new employees Add new employees to 3 different sheets and tie the formulas in a very, very complicated spreadsheet. If this was done by a non-expert, things went horribly wrong.
- 7. Kyle Johnson kyle@kgj.co (415) 860-8050 3. Manually enter the hours Payroll would receive the PDFs and then manually enter the hours into a spreadsheet - every column represented an employee and every row represented a day of work. There was one spreadsheet for each location. This spreadsheet calculated overtime and tip pooling. Due to time constraints, 3-4 people would help enter data.
- 8. Kyle Johnson kyle@kgj.co (415) 860-8050 4. Enter the total tips by store The spreadsheet would then divide the tips based on the hours worked by each employee. In this stage, it was also necessary to figure out how many hours were training hours and manually input them into a special column so they wouldnt be tipped.
- 9. Kyle Johnson kyle@kgj.co (415) 860-8050 5. Export to CSV and upload Export the output of each spreadsheet and then upload it to the Paychex payroll system.
- 10. Kyle Johnson kyle@kgj.co (415) 860-8050 6. Fix things in Paychex The Paychex import didnt work very well. It was especially problematic if an employee had multiple rows with hours or tips. Every employee that worked at multiple stores had to have their checks adjusted in Paychex.
- 11. Kyle Johnson kyle@kgj.co (415) 860-8050 7. Run journal, reconcile it.... Run a payroll journal, reconcile every employees check, and ensure that all charges went to the right department. There was so much manual data entry in this process that the CFO and I both audited the payroll journal. This process was repeated until everything was correct....
- 12. Kyle Johnson kyle@kgj.co (415) 860-8050 OK, that doesnt work This process was effective with 3-5 stores With 18 stores it was completely broken It was fraught with errors and unscalable Temps and new hires couldnt understand the process It was time to make big changes
- 13. Kyle Johnson kyle@kgj.co (415) 860-8050 New payroll provider Paychexs CSV import didnt work - it assumed one line per employee check and one column per line on an employee check Our paychex package was expensive I researched new payroll providers, Paylocity was the winner We could import anything we wanted on the checks They were a lot cheaper We implemented Paylocity, transitioning all our data
- 14. Kyle Johnson kyle@kgj.co (415) 860-8050 What about those crazy spreadsheets? The spreadsheets had to go Time & Attendance systems I researched didnt support tip pooling or employees working at multiple locations They were expensive I didnt want to introduce a new system to the store operators There wasnt anything available to solve our problems It was time to build something myself....
- 15. Kyle Johnson kyle@kgj.co (415) 860-8050 The requirements Import Time & Attendance data from Squirrel, transform it, and export to Paylocity Calculate overtime and doubletime Pay employees different rates based on their shift types Pool tips pro rata based on hours worked
- 16. Kyle Johnson kyle@kgj.co (415) 860-8050 Introducing Swirl Swirls main dashboard shows totals for each store this pay period, making it easy to see where you are in the process. This screen also makes auditing totals easy!
- 17. Kyle Johnson kyle@kgj.co (415) 860-8050 The new process is infinitely smoother....
- 18. Kyle Johnson kyle@kgj.co (415) 860-8050 1. Import Punches Select the store and the CSV file. Easy. If there are any issues with the import, Swirl walks you through steps to correct them.
- 19. Kyle Johnson kyle@kgj.co (415) 860-8050 2. Enter tips Select the store code and enter the tips for the pay period. Swirl only lets you select stores that havent already entered and shows what youve already entered below.
- 20. Kyle Johnson kyle@kgj.co (415) 860-8050 3. Export to Paylocity Behind the scenes this is where the magic happens. Overtime is calculated, tips are pooled, everything is coded to the correct store, and then formatted perfectly for Paylocity.
- 21. Kyle Johnson kyle@kgj.co (415) 860-8050 4. Run journal, celebrate Payroll done. No unnecessary data entry.
- 22. Kyle Johnson kyle@kgj.co (415) 860-8050 Transcendence Vino Volo now processes payroll for twice the locations using a single payroll temp instead of the all hands on deck that involved temps, managers, and the CFO The process is faster, more scalable, and more accurate Vino Volos payroll costs per employee dropped dramatically with the new payroll provider Multiple, HUGE pains were eliminated
- 23. Kyle Johnson kyle@kgj.co (415) 860-8050 Still going strong Vino Volo processes payroll for 32+ locations in 15 states and provinces across 2 countries with the help of Swirl Since launching, Swirl has processed 200,000 punches and 1,000,000 employee hours for Vino Volo
- 24. Kyle Johnson kyle@kgj.co (415) 860-8050 Want to know more? Email me at kyle@kgj.co Next: Technical Stack...
- 25. Kyle Johnson kyle@kgj.co (415) 860-8050 Appendix: Technical Stack Swirl
- 26. Kyle Johnson kyle@kgj.co (415) 860-8050 Technology stack Server: LAMPy on Rackspace Cloud Ubuntu, Apache, MySQL, and Python 2.7 Frameworks: Flask, Bootstrap