PROJECT OVERVIEW

Company Name: The American School in London

Industry: Education

Technology Included: QniPay

Country:  The UK

About the Company

The American School in London (ASL) is a private, independent college-preparatory school in London. Established in 1951, the school today educates a diverse student body from kindergarten to high school based on American pedagogy and US-based curriculum with an international perspective.

Project Summary

The ASL faced a number of operational challenges in its payroll management.

Although the school used a solution called Intellect web 365 for its payroll operations, it had to invest a lot of time managing its academic payroll due to manual workflow. That meant reduced payroll productivity and efficiency.

Besides time and admin expenses, manual processes also lowered data integrity with frequent duplications and inaccuracies. This caused additional overhead hours in sorting out data and ensuring accuracy.

Since ASL’s legacy system was not a cloud solution, it lacked seamless integrations, scalability, and flexibility. Moreover, the system could not import multiple payments in bulk. This resulted in manual processing of each payment into the system, which was cumbersome and time intensive as well as prone to errors. What’s more, it came with a basic user interface that lacked intuitive navigation and a good user experience. For instance, there was no search feature, and the system updates were not frequent.

Part of ASL’s payroll function was to account for different pay rates. But it had difficulty tracking varying pay rates that depended on multiple factors like departments, location, time shifts, and temporary positions. In addition, it had to pay its teaching staff in both dollars and pounds, as some teachers preferred to split their pay checks into two currencies. And since foundation employees were hired from the US directly, ASL also had to contribute to the US pension plan, social security, and Medicare for their American staff as per US law, and to the UK pension plans for their British staff. It also had to comply with regulations and tax codes in both countries. So, ASL wanted to avoid any discrepancies in currency exchange and other currency-split issues.

ASL, thus, needed a new cloud-based payroll solution to improve its payroll workflows drastically, keeping the costs as low as possible while ensuring both HMRC and IRS compliance. Additional requirements included seamless integration capabilities with ASL’s existing ERP, Dynamics 365 Business Central, which was further connected to Office 365.

Considering the intricate needs of ASL, we proposed QniPay a one-stop solution that would not only automate the school’s manual payroll processes but also consolidate all its payroll data into a centralised cloud database with real-time visibility.

QniPay enabled ASL to collect, manage, store, and share their employee data automatically and securely. This allowed the school to effortlessly capture pay rates from Business Central and process them with corresponding timesheet entries to calculate employee wages and salaries accurately.

It also helped ASL ensure both the UK and the US compliance by accurately incorporating information on employee salary, taxes, overtime and holiday benefits, pensions, national insurance, statutory payments, and deductions.

Since QniPay is a separate portal that works on top of Business Central without additional licensing requirements, ASL was able to lower its per-user cost as well as the total cost of ownership.

QniPay’s experts implemented the payroll solution in 45 days and ASL has been receiving ongoing support since the deployment.

RISKS AND CHALLENGES

1.  Manual Payroll Processes

Handling payroll manually invited issues such as data duplication, discrepancies, non-compliance, inaccurate leave and attendance, inaccurate timesheet entry, and process inefficiencies.

2.  Fragmented Payroll Data

ASL had trouble with tracking and applying correct pay rates. Due to different working locations, per site for employees, different time shifts, multi-employment contracts, and job types (permanent or temporary), pay rates varied. Without a centralised payroll solution, manually adjusting pay rates can result in payroll inaccuracies and unpaid overtime.

3.  Process Complexity

Difficulties in tracking holidays due to complex business requirements, thus, causing operational gaps and poor compliance.

4.  Multi-Currency Payments in Bulk

Relying on manual processes and calculations for hundreds of payroll accounts and making bulk payments in multiple currencies resulted in exchange rate discrepancies and currency split issues

5.  Reporting and Analytics

Reporting requirements included periodic payroll reports, accounting and finance reports, compliance reports, and more. Since these were all manually done, it took time and overheard costs with the possibility of errors and lateness.

6.  Compliance With Both the UK and the US Laws

Since ASL hired its permanent staff from the US directly, they had to be paid in both currencies. Additionally, ASL had to account for and make contributions to UK and US pension plans for its staff based on where they were hired. Plus, it had to automatically remain compliant with the changing regulations, which was difficult with manual processes.

APPROACH AND SOLUTION

Based on ASL’s payroll requirements, QniPay was the best-fit payroll solution. It supported the business-critical needs of ASL like bulk multi-currency payments, US and UK-based compliance, and reporting needs. It also consolidated the fragmented payroll data and tracked all variable pay rates, making payroll data more accessible and accurate for admin and user purposes. Moreover, it would eliminate most manual processes and streamline ASL’s payroll function to add more efficiency and productivity.

For unbiased project implementation, ASL relied on QniPay’s product-agnostic approach to evaluate the features and benefits of various payroll solutions. Comparing their features and benefits against the payroll requirements, ASL decided to adopt QniPay.

Since ASL also needed to keep the solution costs low while leveraging the full benefits of the new solution, we employed our configure-first approach. What it does is utilise inexpensive configurations instead of costly customisations to keep the development costs in check. For instance, QniPay is, by default, an HMRC-compliant payroll system. However, as ASL also needed to remain compliant with US regulations, QniPay successfully configured the solution to achieve that.

Following that, our quality experts carried out quality assurance and user acceptance testing in the new environment to iron out any issues and validate the new solution design based on ASL’s payroll needs. To ensure higher user adoption, QniPay’s change management team also implemented a simultaneous changes management programme with training and support activities.

With the new payroll system, ASL gained several benefits. QniPay simplified payroll processing and management as well as ensured dual compliance, and brought all payroll, financial, and employee data together. The school was able to manage its employee payroll from one place and send online payslips and create accurate payroll reports. Besides that, the school also automated complex HMRC and IRS compliance requirements while managing its finances with Dynamics 365 Business Central and Office 365 integrations.

RESULTS

The American School in London received these benefits from QniPay implementation:

• Higher user adoption with improved user experience
• Effortless integration with D365 Business Central and Office 365
• Timely payroll processing with accuracy and compliance in the UK and the US
• Greater scalability and futureproofing of business requirements
• Centralised platform that provides a single, holistic view of all payroll data

WHAT OUR CLIENT SAYS

“With QniPay, we automated all our manual processes, which helped us save a lot of time and operational costs. Our timesheet and employee data are now centralised and easily accessible. We do not have to adjust pay rates and track leave and holidays manually. This was all possible with the help and advice of QniPay’s experts, who were simply great to work with. They were flexible, friendly, and open to new ideas and discussions.

They clearly understood our processes and user requirements and bravely took on our payroll challenges. With excellent communication and professional consultation, they enabled us to adopt a robust payroll solution without high long-term costs. We also enabled us to make a fluid transition into QniPay in just forty-five days with full project and change management.

During the transition, we received 24/7 support from QniPay despite the geographical time difference. This and the intuitive user interface of the app ensured higher user adoption. We cannot wait for our next transformation project with QniPay!” -Si Hei Hoang