“[Payroll errors] of any kind are bad,” Carmichael said. “But that is definitely the worst scenario.”
Payroll issues plague even the most prominent campuses. Yale University in January told same-sex couples who work for the school that a 2010 payroll mistake meant thousands of dollars would be deducted from their early 2011 paychecks.
Connecticut recognizes gay marriages, but because those marriages aren’t recognized by the federal government, the Yale employees had to compensate for the mistaken tax benefits they were given. The error affected about 60 employees.
Colleges face the unique challenge of employing students who work part time for a variety of campus departments. A student, for example, might work at a sporting event, in the student union, and at the campus gym during the same week, reporting to three supervisors and being paid at different rates for each job.
“This has always made the student population particularly difficult to manage,” because students might make time sheet mistakes that aren’t caught by employees who enter payroll information, Carmichael said.
USD employees have improved productivity after the automation of payroll services, according to the report. Knowing that their paychecks were processed manually, employees regularly checked to make sure there were no errors from the previous two-week pay period.
Before the change was made, “correcting an underpayment in a paycheck typically took an employee away from their job for an average of 20 minutes,” the report said.
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