Payroll data becomes more important

One clear result of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) is that getting good data out of your payroll, timetracking and HR system is going to become even more important than ever. It is also clear that those systems are going to have to be tightly linked together, if exist as one system. In reading the provisions of the ACA one begins to wonder if this new set of regulations could even have been contemplated in the years before robust workforce management systems existed. This much is clear now though: in order to comply with the new regulations flowing out of the ACA, every employer is going to need to have a way to capture, track, report on and analyze their data relating to their employees.

Some key data items that employers are going to have to know and report on within the next year or two: hours worked, full-time equivalent hours worked, average hours worked per week by employee, hours worked over a various "look-back periods", average hourly rate of pay over a period of time, prior year w-2 wages by employee for affordability provisions, break of service periods, and the list goes on. You will also have to manage various calculations and statuses such in areas such as affordability, part-time vs. full-time, and ACA status changes. For access to Health Care tax credits small businesses will need to be able to know how many FTEs (Full Time Equivalents) they employ as well as the average wage paid at their company.

While many of the key provisions and regulations are still being "clarified", here is what is obvious:
1. Employers will need to have easy access to their employee-related data and will need a flexible reporting tool to pull out that data in a variety of ways
2. Timetracking (now essential), payroll and HR can no longer live separately. Benefit eligibility, enrollment, affordability tests and employment status will all rely on a combination of time data, HR data and payroll data
3. While employers can go it alone, a new daunting compliance challenge has been laid done by the ACA, forcing businesses everywhere to think about how and who can help them cope in this brave new era.

PayNorthwest with its WorkforceLumina system and its team of professional service personnel are poised to help employers of any size comply and thrive in today's challenging business environment.