Payroll Outsourcing

Outsourcing Payroll: Why and How

1. The Starting Point

In labor disputes, it turns out that more than 80% of pay stubs are false or contain errors.

These disputes are very often ruled against the employer, even though the employer had every means to avoid them.

Why are these errors so common?

There are two causes, which reinforce each other:

Reason 1: a lack of qualified personnel.

Processing payroll in-house requires technical expertise that few companies actually possess.

Cause 2: The cost of accurate payroll.

Setting up a reliable payroll system requires additional investments:

• purchasing hardware;
• purchasing payroll software;
• user training;
• maintenance contracts;
• supplier support.

The result of this equation is well known: many employers handle their payroll with insufficient resources and only discover the problem when a dispute arises.

To break out of this deadlock, ensure that pay stubs comply with the law, and free themselves from recurring tasks, employers entrust their payroll and personnel administration to external service providers.

2. Why outsource payroll?

Three benefits, on three different levels: legal certainty, time, and continuity.

2.1 Entrusting Your Payroll to Specialists: Security

You gain access to expertise that may not be available within your company, and you avoid the risk of errors.

Key point: Payroll specialists assume liability for the services they provide. In other words, the risk no longer falls solely on you.

2.2 Focus on Your Core Business: Time

In business, it’s the repetitive, time-sensitive administrative tasks that take the biggest toll:

• processing and printing pay stubs, in compliance with the law and your collective bargaining agreement;
• payroll journals;
• expense reports;
• payroll tax returns.

These tasks take up energy and time that you’d rather devote to other priorities. They require a considerable investment of time and effort, and the results aren’t always satisfactory.

The reasoning is simple: a lot of effort for an uncertain result, on a task that isn’t your core business. Outsource it to a service provider who specializes in this area.

2.3 Increase Your Flexibility: Continuity

In Mali, the environment is more social than economic. The person who manages payroll in-house is also an employee: she has absences—whether excused or not—vacation time, maternity leave, and sick leave.

Every absence therefore results in a delayed payroll. By outsourcing, you’ll never face this situation again: service continues, no matter what happens.

3. How do you outsource payroll?

Scope of the Service

Our service covers the entire payroll process:

Collection of your payroll data, processing, and then generation of documents for your employees, yourself, and social security agencies.

Our service starts with as few as one employee.

Taking Over Payroll Mid-Year

You don’t have to wait until January. When we take over payroll mid-year:

1. Employees retain their accrued rights and benefits;
2. After aggregating these rights and benefits, we record the information you deem useful to share with us;
3. Processing is carried out using software commonly used in Mali: SAARI or Malipaie.

What You Receive, on Time

After processing the payroll, we’ll send you:

Document	Purpose
Printed pay stubs	Distributed to employees
Social security reports (INPS and CANAM)	Obligations to government agencies
Expense reports	Accounting tracking
Payroll logs	Traceability and accounting
Leave records	Tracking Accrued Entitlements
Status of Advances and Loans	Financial tracking of employees
Staff-Specific Reports	Headcount tracking

Billing

Our services are billed based on the number of pay stubs issued. The cost therefore directly reflects your actual headcount: no fixed investment, no licenses to amortize.

4. Flexibility: You’re never locked in

This is often the first concern, and the answer is simple.

You can bring your payroll back in-house at any time during the year, just as we can take it back at any time.

We guarantee full data portability under the best possible conditions. Your data remains yours.

The essentials in 5 points

1. More than 80% of pay stubs contain errors in dispute situations, and the fault almost always lies with the employer.
2. The cause is not negligence, but a lack of available expertise and the cost of reliable in-house payroll processing.
3. Outsourcing offers three benefits: legal certainty (the service provider assumes liability), time freed up for core business activities, and service continuity.
4. The service ranges from data collection to document delivery, starting with just one employee, and is billed per pay stub issued.
5. The service is fully reversible: you can take back control whenever you want.