Dickinson says that organisations are often quite nervous about outsourcing their accounts and payroll, worrying that they are handing over their signed cheque book to a third party, but, he claims, they have no need.
"We basically prepare a file for the payment of invoices and it is up to the organisation to retain cash and treasury management, and to approve the payment," says Dickinson.
"It's about control and auditing. Traditionally outsourcing in this area has just been focused on the imaging of invoice data but not the workflow, but that is where the real value is. Yes we need to scrape data for the customer, but we also can process the invoice through the system as well," he says.
Many organisations know that in terms of their accounts payable processes they need to do some process improvement but that costs money and time and it's hard to justify that when it is not the core competency, says Dickinson.
"A retailer, for example, would much rather spend that money on opening new stores and hand over their accounts within an enhancement-style outsourcing contract, without the capital expenditure and upfront costs of doing it themselves. It normally costs less than doing it manually and there is no risk," he says.
According to Wendy Blanch, director of payroll specialist PayLogic, payroll has become an increasingly complex and time- consuming area as legislation is constantly changing. "With new tax laws coming in, payroll is becoming increasingly complex, and outsourcing the function means you don't have to hire a trained payroll person," says Blanch. "Some clients come to us and in addition to doing their payroll, which is our area of specialisation, we also do their accounts."
PayLogic has customers with four employees up to 120, each using its Internet-based service. Time consuming tasks such as printing, back-ups, system upgrades, and employee declaration reporting are included, alongside reports which are couriered to customers' door each day, or viewed online via a secure login. Customers can also view up to a whole financials year of reports online, and at the end of the year these reports are archived onto a CD so the customer doesn't have to load any addition software onto their PCs.
"From electronic remittance, to end of year payment summaries going straight to the ATO, we take away all of the time consuming paperwork," says Blanch. "We also offer add ons such as employee self service, which means that if your organisation is PC-based your employees can log in with a secure name and see their pay slips, earnings, and change their banking details, for example. Other features include end of month ledger files, which can be customised for each client," she adds.
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