| Portia: When he is best he is a little worse than a man: and when he is worst he is a little better than a beast. Merchant of Venice, Shakespeare. |
Dominic Vautier
updated 4-12
again 1-13
This is a typical payroll system developed to run on unit record equipment. In my lifetime I have developed two payroll systems which I think is more than enough for any two lifetimes. Modern payroll systems today are immeasurably more complex than they were 100 years ago and it would take a total madman to get involved in any such activity, especially with tax laws as they now exist. Far better to have a service do it.
To recognize what the flowchart symbols mean please look here.
The purpose of a payroll system is obvious: to pay company employees, to hold out legal deductions, to pay government taxes, and to insure that the system runs without fraud or corruption. Company management needs to know how much is being spent for salary in order to make appropriate decisions.
Salaried employment payroll is
a lot easier to design. This example is the standard time and rate
of pay type.
When the payroll was running there usually was some kind of security on site. When checks were printed, the printer was covered up.
A payroll master file is developed and maintained. This card file contains employee name, address, type of work, department or location, manager, SSN, and pay rate--things like that.Time cards and deduction cards are prepared before the payroll process begins. Cards are collected daily and hours are extended (time worked is converted into gross pay).
Sometimes transactions are generated from the time card. Sometimes time cards are prepunched with employee number and then just keyed with gross pay or hours.
Deduction cards are prepared before any payroll cycle. This file is more or less static and can be manually maintained. It has automatic deductions, like credit union and garnishments which remain more stable but tax and FICA are based on gross and usually had to be calculated each time. People who work a straight shift will not have to be recalculated.
Payroll master cards are matched merged against transactions and extended time cards and a batch proof list is produced by the accounting machine. The proof list is checked against time cards and overtime cards.
Checks are issued either in cards or paper checks. in this case on cards. The cards are interpreted and sorted by department.
The checks are disbursed to managers.