Is your payroll process as secure and efficient as it could be? Find out with SAO’s suite of payroll resources

It can be challenging to find the time to focus on improving your payroll process amid the constant demands and deadlines of payroll activities. While payroll may be a routine and repetitive process, it's still vulnerable to fraud and human error. Coupled with new and evolving ways to pay your employees and automate payroll, your process may not be as secure and efficient as it could be.

SAO has a suite of resources that can help you evaluate your payroll process and explore ways to improve it. Our guides, checklists and articles provide valuable advice that you can use right away to ensure your internal controls are keeping your government safe. And don't miss our new training on payroll at the Washington Finance Officers Association's (WFOA) annual conference in Tacoma.

SAO's payroll-related resources and articles

• Payroll Guide – This comprehensive resource can help you develop policies and identify best practices and other ways to improve your payroll process. Leadership, managers, supervisors and payroll clerks can all find information tailored to them in this guide.
• Internal Control Checklist for Payroll Systems – This detailed checklist can help you assess your government's internal controls over payroll processes.
• Segregation of Duties Guide – This guide contains a chapter on payroll and how to segregate duties (see Section 2, Chapter 3). It also suggests compensating controls when it's not possible to segregate duties due to the size of your staff.
• Overtime is too costly to ignore. Use your data to monitor it – This blog post offers different ways to look at your overtime data to identify irregularities.
• Looking for new ways to electronically pay employees? Learn about payroll cards – This blog post describes how payroll cards work and offers tips for implementation.

Live training coming up at WFOA

Looking for more in-depth training on payroll internal controls? SAO's Assistant Director for the Center for Government Innovation, Debbie Pennick, CPA, will offer a one-hour session on payroll at the upcoming WFOA conference on Sept. 14 at 2:50 p.m. You can register for the conference here.

For help

Remember, we are here to help. If you have specific technical accounting questions, please submit them using our HelpDesk in the client portal.

We also have financial management specialists at SAO's Center for Government Innovation available to talk with you about best practices, resources or internal controls. For assistance, reach out to us at Center@sao.wa.gov.