Payroll compliance – or lack of it – has made major headlines in the last year. Some of the biggest Australian and New Zealand companies have found themselves underpaying staff to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars in the worst cases. It’s something we haven’t seen the end of yet says Rob Dryden, CEO of payroll provider iWS.

iWS is a pioneer of the ‘Software-with-a Service’ delivery model. It specialises in providing workforce management, payroll and bookkeeping solutions across Australia and New Zealand, with a keen focus on the franchise space. It counts well-known brands such as Laser Clinics Australia, Oporto and Red Rooster as some of its largest clients.

“The Australian (Industrial Relations) landscape is really complicated, making it difficult for business owners and payroll professionals. I believe the majority of cases we’re hearing about aren’t deliberate – they’re an oversight driven by complex legislation and a lack of technology,” Rob said.

Since launching iWS nearly a decade ago, the service provider has grown to 50 people spread across Australia, India and Sri Lanka and services more than 1,000 businesses, running payroll for 25,000 employees across the region.

Rob said that many of the businesses operate across multiple awards, varying conditions and within an environment of constant change. “A simplified environment would mean fewer errors but it’s not that easy to make the legislation simpler. The answer is to leverage qualified professionals and to make sure your technology is configured properly. The technology won’t solve your payroll issues on its own – it’s only as good as the people who are using it.

"We started iWS because we could see the pain many franchisees went through understanding and managing staff costs as well as accurately paying employees in line with awards. We knew we had to find a solution.”

Rob said they were looking for a new cloud-based payroll system to allow more flexibility around reporting and the pushing/pulling of critical data. DataPay enables iWS to create custom reports to better service their clients and allows for much greater automation of data inflows and outflows.

 

“Datacom is in the business of building out the best piece of payroll software on the market. We wanted to partner with someone who is investing in evolving their tech, not just building a solution and maintaining it.”

 

iWS migrated nearly all of their clients onto Datacom’s payroll system in July 2019. The first pay run on Datacom’s payroll software was completed seamlessly and in less hours compared to iWS' past software.

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