As a farmer you would know that setting up an employee on the farm for payroll purposes is NOT straightforward and in fact is more complex than other businesses.
Firstly. There is the complexity of the roster which has a direct impact on the number of rostered days off as well as the number of entitled annual leave days. If you do not get this recorded correctly, it is inevitable that either you or your staff will be short-changed.
Secondly. Rosters help to determine just how many hours an employee is contracted to work in a week, this then determines what a full-time salaried employee’s hourly rate works out to be. One of the reasons for getting this number right is when an employee works on a statutory holiday and gets paid at time and a half of their hourly rate – how would you go about calculating this correctly if you haven’t initially worked out their hourly rate correctly in the first place?
Thirdly. Accommodation is often provided to farm workers as part of the package, which has an impact on the hourly rate being paid.
Finally. Although accommodation is part of the remuneration in many cases (has an impact on the hourly rate) it is not subject to KiwiSaver – so your payroll system needs to be able to account for this automatically.
Using a payroll system on the farm without accounting for any of the above factors unique to the farming industry will invariably result in getting the payroll calculations wrong.
At AgriSmart we not only address all the unique points discussed above but we also make your farm payroll really easy. We will help you set up your employees correctly and all that needs to be done is for your staff (or you on their behalf) to record the hours using smart phones or PC, and the rest is done automatically including:
- Topping up salaries if the minimum wage is breached.
- The pay is adjusted for working a statutory day, with time and a half for hours worked and day in lieu automatically recorded.
- Any bonus payments can be easily accounted for and the tax amount calculated automatically.
- The different types of bonus payments have an impact on Gross Holiday Pay calculations, our system enables you to record these correctly so your employees always get paid the right amount.
- A payslip is generated easily which can be accessed by your employee.
- A bank schedule is generated for all amounts to be paid in a pay period which can be used to upload into your bank site for ease of payment.
- IRD monthly schedules are completed automatically, that can be printed and posted, or electronically filed on line with the IRD.