Keying It
The entry itself takes twenty minutes and produces most of the errors that reach payslips. A handful of habits remove nearly all of them.
Nobody elseif the person who does this is away
Entering the month's figures takes perhaps twenty minutes and produces most of the errors that reach a payslip. The calculation is not where things go wrong; the typing is.
The input problem described in “Keying It” is easier to manage when hours and changes have a visible owner. A team evaluating open the related workforce guide for daily schedule template can connect employee-controlled time records with projects and approvals, while the payroll system remains the source of truth for pay calculations.
A handful of habits remove nearly all of it, and none of them involve being more careful.
For an outside reference relevant to “Keying It”, consult Rippling workforce articles. Compare general guidance with the employer’s jurisdiction, contracts and current payroll process.
Where the errors actually occur
A figure in the wrong row. A rate entered as an annual amount in a monthly field. A decimal point. Hours entered for the wrong period. A change applied to the right person in the wrong month.
Entering a rate is the single most expensive field in payroll, and it is done in a second. A salary typed into a period field, or the reverse, produces a payment wrong by a factor rather than by a few pounds — and the package cannot tell, because both are valid numbers.
All transcription, none arithmetic.
Enter from one source
Whatever you are keying from, have it in front of you in one place: the list, the hours, the absences. Keying from three windows and a message thread is where the wrong row gets filled.
Do people in and out first
Starters and leavers change the shape of the run. Entering hours and then discovering a leaver means revisiting what you have already done, and revisited entries are where double-counting happens.
Say the figure aloud, or write it
Whatever makes you look at it twice. A rate being entered is the single most expensive field in payroll, and it is entered in a second.
The fields that are annual
The commonest expensive error in small-business payroll: a salary entered where a period figure belongs, or the reverse. It produces a payment that is wrong by a factor rather than by a few pounds.
A package often cannot tell that it is wrong, because both are valid numbers.
The date a change applies from
Where the change applies from, entered deliberately rather than left at the default. A default is usually the current period, which is right about half the time.
Do not key while answering questions
Twenty minutes uninterrupted is a smaller ask than it sounds and is the difference between a clean run and one with a transposed figure.
The people asking the questions are the people who will be affected by the transposition.
Save as you go
Packages vary in how much they hold before committing. Losing fifteen minutes of entry is an annoyance; re-entering it from memory under time pressure is how a figure changes between the first and second attempt.
The pause before calculating
Thirty seconds looking at what you have entered, as a list, before running anything. Entry screens show one person at a time; the summary shows shape, and shape is where an obvious error is obvious.
What to do when interrupted mid-entry
Note where you got to. Resuming entry without knowing what has been done is how a change gets entered twice.
Keying for somebody else's payroll
If you are covering for the usual person, enter only what is written down. Anything remembered, assumed or inferred belongs in a note for them rather than in the run.
A substitute who improvises produces errors nobody will understand later.
The reason this matters more than it seems
An entry error is invisible to the software, survives the calculation, appears on a payslip as a plausible number, and is found by the person affected rather than by you.
That sequence is why the comparison step exists.
The habit worth most
Entering, then looking at the result as a whole, before approving. It takes a minute and it catches the errors that a careful typist still makes.
Twenty minutes with the door shut
The single most effective change available at this step, and the hardest to arrange in a small business where the person keying is also the person everybody asks things.
Saying so out loud — I am doing payroll between two and three, ask me afterwards — is not precious. It is the difference between a clean run and one with a figure in the wrong row, and everybody asking the questions is somebody the figure might belong to.
Entering a correction to an earlier period
Different from ordinary entry and done rarely enough that it is worth reading the package's own guidance rather than improvising.
Corrections entered as if they were current-period changes are a common cause of figures that look right this month and do not reconcile at year end.
What to do with a figure you do not understand
Stop. A number you cannot explain before approving is a number you will be explaining to somebody afterwards, and the second conversation is much worse.
Nothing in a monthly run is urgent enough to justify entering something you do not understand, and the slack described earlier exists precisely for this.
Conditions to key in
Key at the end of a long day, key with the deadline already passed, or key while deciding what the figures should be. Deciding and entering are different activities and should not happen in the same twenty minutes.