the State Civil Service Payroll Accounting System Design and Implementation

1.0       Background of the study

In a company (public or private), public service, payroll is the sum of all financial records of salaries for an employee, wages, bonuses and deductions. In accounting, payroll refers to the amount paid to employees for services they provided during a certain period of time. Payroll plays a major role in a company for several reasons.

According to (Fergus 2006), payroll is crucial because payroll and payroll taxes considerably affect the net income of most companies and public service, and they are subject to laws and regulations (e.g. in the Nigeria payroll is subject to federal, state and local regulations). From an ethics in business viewpoint payroll is a critical department as employees are responsive to payroll errors and irregularities: good employee morale requires payroll to be paid timely and accurately. The primary mission of the payroll department is to ensure that all employees are paid accurately and timely with the correct withholdings and deductions, and to ensure the withholdings and deductions are remitted in a timely manner.

According to (Ngene 2007) Payroll is one of the incentives that motivate employees. When employees are paid as and when due for the work they do, then they will be motivated to put on their best to their service. In any establishment, be private, government oriented or public, payroll is the process used by employers to pay his workers which can be hourly, by piece or unit, salary or other method. It is also a process used to pay employees accurately and on time too. It is the account of how much compensation all employees of an establishment are due. A pay slip is issued to the employees at the end of each month which contains the employees’ name, deductions, allowances etc.

 Mbam (2007) said that this research work is to design and implement payroll accounting system that incorporates all the employees’ financial records which at the end of every month, a pay slip will be issued to the employees. This research will help to solve the problems that were prevalence in the case study. Such problems include delayed processing of files, misappropriation of fund, dumping of pieces of paper, mutilation, lack of secret as regards to the organizations’ information and among others non-payment of workers’ salaries as at when due. The system will promote timeliness and accurate payroll processing and equally enhance security measures that will prevent access from unauthorized individuals.

According to (Onu, Ugwu and Okpara 2007), the payroll module which helps in data processing, processes monthly pay of all the employees in state civil service commission. The module maintains staff loans, advances, tax and other deductions from staff pay. It also performs annual increment on the salary of qualified staff each month. The payroll list every employee for whom the computer has produced a payroll cheque and shows for each employee what deductions are subtracted from gross earnings to arrive at net pay. This report is reviewed by the manager of the payroll department before the cheques are released for distribution.

1.1       Statement of the Problems

This section highlights the problems of the existing system. Some of the problems include the following;

i. Misappropriation of government fund.

ii. Miscalculation of the staff salaries.

iii. It is stressful as a result of over population of staff.

iv. There is greater delay in the processing of the staff salaries.

v. Lack of effective security measures and confidentiality.

vi. Difficulty in sorting of files.

vii. Excess expenses in buying of the materials needed for the work.

viii. Limited time and resources needed for the research work.

1.2       Motivation

The motivation for the adoption of this research topic is because of the delay and time consuming in preparing and paying of staff salary. The researcher intend to solve these by developing a payroll system that will take care of these challenges.

1.3       Aim and Objectives of the Study

This project is aim at designing and implementing a payroll accounting system for state civil service. In addition to this, the following objectives will also be achieved:

i. To use computers in pay rolling of staff salaries.

ii. To increase security of staff records.

iii. To accurately compute the salaries of the workers.

iv. To improve the speed of processing the salaries of workers.

1.4       Purpose of the Study

The purpose of this research is to design a staff payroll system that will resolve the problem in delay of payment of staff salary.