Payroll auditing guidance is lacking for those persons in a multiemployer employee benefit plan who are responsible for and who perform payroll audits. Best practices in payroll auditing, procedures and methodologies of performing an audit have not been given enough focus. This book helps trustees fulfill their fiduciary duties by understanding payroll audits. Topics include performing the payroll audit, selecting the employers to be audited, the roles of the parties involved, the future of payroll auditing, and more. Available in print, e-book (pdf) and CD-ROM formats. Lawrence R. Beebe and Philip Vivirito. 132 pages. International Foundation. 2008.

Ensure that payroll is punctual, accurate, secure and used effectively as a management tool Managing the payroll is often seen as a purely administrative function. But, aside from the legal and financial implications of payroll errors, payroll has significant implications for the organisation as a whole. So this 6-Step audit first of all ensures that your payroll: Meets all relevant legal requirements Is secure against the risk of mistakes and internal and external fraud Is managed efficiently and cost-effectively Is supplied with timely and accurate information about all employees Then it goes on to consider the overall role of the payroll function and allows you to consider: How the payroll function could be better integrated into the HR function Whether any of the information held by the payroll function could usefully (and legally) be shared - e.g. flexible working schemes may hold two sets of time and attendance data How far payment methods and timetabling meet employees' needs and the needs of the company Whether payroll resources could be used by other departments at 'quiet' times Whether payroll should be seen as a separate profit centre, and how it might earn revenue.

This book will help anyone who is responsible for a payroll department to manage payroll functions with the maximum efficiency and within compliance requirements. It will demonstrate the optimal methods for the basic functions of payroll through to year end and management. Proposed chapters include: Part One Basic Functions of the Payroll Department 1. Time Records, 2. Form W-4, 3. New Hires, 4. Errors and Corrections, 5. Tax Deposits and Reporting, 6. Garnishments Part Two Staffing the Payroll Department 7. Creating a First Rate Payroll Department, 8. Managing the Staff, 9. Staff Motivation and Morale, 10. Working with Human Resources and other Departments Part Three Management Issues 11. Customer Service, 12. Fraud, 13. Dealing with the Internal Revenue Service, 14. Handling Department of Labor Audits, 15. Compliance Issues, 16. Research Needs Part Four Benefits and the Payroll Department 17. Should Payroll Handle the Company's Benefits? 18. Year End and Year Beginning Issues Part Five Payroll Systems 19. Objectives of a Computerized Payroll System, 20. Interfacing and Integration, 21. Selecting a Computerize Payroll System, 22. Controls and Security for the Payroll System, 23. Disaster Recover a Must, 24. Time and Attendance Systems, 25. Employee Self Service Systems Part Six Paying Employees 26. Paper Checks are Still an Option, 27. Direct Deposit, 28. Paycards Part Seven Year End 29. Start Year End Off With a Memo, 30. Year End Teams, 31. Check Lists, 32. Reconciliation of Payroll at Year End, 33. Form W-2 Part Eight Payroll and the New Year 34. Setting Up the Payroll System for the New Year, 35. Setting Up the Payroll Department for the New Year Part Nine Professionalism and the Payroll Department 36. What is a CPP? 37. Why you should become one, 38. Studying for the test, 39. Ongoing training, 40. Professional organizations

The book is written with the objective of automating the audit decision in detecting variations or exceptional data between the current and preceding or penultimate month in payroll processing, using an Expert System. The book begins in Chapter one with an introduction. Chapter two is a review of the expert system theory and empirical literature on its use in business applications while Chapter three presents the methodology of research. Chapter Four dwells on the design and development of the expert system software for payroll audit. Finally, Chapter Five concludes with a summary and recommendations. The payroll audit decision expert system is therefore highly commended to end-users such as internal or external auditors, accountants, fraud examiners, risk consultants and enthusiastic readers seeking to detect and prevent Payroll fraud through an Expert System. The book is also written for the consumption of interested Expert System researchers.