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Payroll
At the end of each pay period, a business needs to pay its employees.

A payroll system uses a computer to calculate the wages of each employee, print out pay-slips and record the information for accounting purposes.

Input : This may come from ...

  • a database of employees details (salaries, pay rates, bonus rates etc)
  • if employees are paid by the hour then timesheets would be used to input and validate the number of hours worked and number of hours overtime. (possibly using OMR or OCR techniques)

Process : The computer needs to calculate ..

  • the gross amount earned by each employee.
  • any bonuses
  • any deductions such as tax, national insurance etc
  • the net amount earned by each employee.

Output : The computer would need to ..

  • print pay-slips with amounts and deductions(using pre-printed stationery)
  • update the employee database.
  • output details of payments to BACS (Bankers Automated Clearing Service) to pay money directly into employees' bank accounts.
  • print summary reports.

Validation : A range check could be used on the number of hours worked.

 

 A pay-slip - some parts are pre-printed and some are printed by the computer when the payroll system is run.
A Payroll system is usually run as a batch processing system. Data may be entered for a number of departments or branches of a company and then the processing is done when all the data has been collected.

As there is no urgency for the output, the payroll processing may be run at off-peak times (eg overnight).

 
The database of the employees and the time sheets will need to be kept secure from unauthorised access. (Employees must not be able to alter their data!)

 
The employee database is updated in the payroll process. A backup copy of the database is made before this is done.

The new database is called the 'son' and the backup is the 'father'. Previous generations of backups are referred to as 'grandfather' etc...

 

 This system of keeping generations of files is needed in case there is a problem when the payroll is run or if the file is corrupted. The files can then be re-created.