There are no better feelings than seeing your paycheck roll into the bank account, making payroll management one of the most important undertakings in every human resource (HR) department.
During the recent plagued years, the industry was forced into digital transformation to adapt to the new norms of having most employees work remotely. And it is doing more good than harm. Luckily, HRs in Hong Kong are now open to more options in the software market to manage payroll, replacing the human effort they used to spend on data entry, bookkeeping, reporting, and payment processing. The precision required in this task underscores the gravity of HR professionals' role in ensuring accurate and timely payments.
This time around, we sat down with Joey Kwok, the HR Manager at Odoo APAC, to share with us five reasons she loves managing our 200-strong team in the Hong Kong office with the Odoo Payroll app.
1. Seamless Transformation
Integrated and intuitive, Odoo Payroll is a great entry point for HRs to digitize payroll management and explore the opportunity to manage payroll in-house.
—Joey Kwok, HR Manager at Odoo APAC
Payroll management can be intimidating initially, even with the relatively straightforward employment and tax regulations in Hong Kong. This could be why a considerable number of companies still relied on manual labor to process payslips in the pre-pandemic years.
For an undertaking that requires absolute precision, a manual workflow is time-consuming and often leads to human error. Following a tedious workflow to complete salary payments, some companies required their HRs to compile all payments into a disc and deliver them to the bank for monthly processing. "You can imagine how time-consuming it is," says Joey. "Also, who has a CD reader in the office now anyway?"
Now available in Hong Kong, Odoo Payroll consolidates employee contracts, payments & deductions, and leaves management in one place.
Tailored to the needs of businesses in Hong Kong, the Payroll app is feature-rich with a clean interface, making itself a top choice for local users running an SME and those who want to digitize and move payroll management in-house. You don't need to come from tech to understand how everything works—download the localization package, and the app has everything set up for you.
This will save the team many resources that would otherwise be spent on system development and familiarization—developing your own system from scratch can take months if not years. On the other hand, the budget previously spared on outsourcing payroll services can be reallocated to other employee benefits, fostering enhanced retention strategies.
2. Comprehensive HR Solution
You may wonder, "How comprehensive is it exactly?" Think hiring, attendance tracking, payroll, performance review, and time-off management consolidated into one platform.
Synchronized with Odoo Accounting, Expenses, Time Off, Employees, and Attendances, Odoo's Payroll app promotes seamless vertical and horizontal collaboration within the company, enhancing more effective payroll management.
Previously, the team followed this workflow and spent 2 hours on average to process monthly payslips:
Finance compiles all data and submits the expense reimbursement report to HR.
HR calculates gross monthly salary
Log gross monthly salary into the journal entry.
HR imports the report into the standalone payroll system and verifies the legal leaves taken by each employee.
Salary computation is performed for each company member and exported into a file for submission to the bank.
All payslips are downloaded.
The payslips are uploaded and individually encrypted on the company's shared drive
Pay Day!
The good news is Odoo Payroll can do this in clicks thanks to its integrated nature.
With Odoo Expense and Accounting, Finance can now approve all expense reports from each employee and confirm salary payments from HR in seconds.
All employee leaves, be it paid or unpaid, as well as approved allowances and reimbursement before the cut-off day, will be synchronized on Odoo Payroll to reflect on the employee payslip with connection to the Expense and Accounting apps. To pay all salaries in a batch via HSBC Autopay, the department can simply generate a report, which Odoo formats in compliance with the bank's regulations, and submit it to the bank.
Furthermore, the convenience of Odoo Payroll shines through with its ability to send payslips directly to each employee's portal in just one click. This eliminates the need for manual downloading, uploading, and encrypting payslips individually, saving significant time and effort for HR teams.
3. Data Security & Confidentiality
Because payroll contains sensitive information, it should be treated with the highest data security standard. Odoo secures your data through hierarchical access rights and a robust infrastructure.
Hierarchical Access Rights
One of the best things about using Odoo Payroll is the clear access right hierarchy.
—Joey Kwok, HR Manager at Odoo APAC
Before Odoo Payroll's launch in Hong Kong, Joey and her team relied on a functionally comprehensive payroll solution despite the many other limitations. One of the biggest setbacks is that the solution can only stay on one network to ensure data security, meaning the team can only access the system when in the office.
Given the seemingly odd conditions, the solution complicates operations for the Odoo HR team, as the team had to serve the system instead of the other way around. Not only did the system put the data at a single source of risk but also prevented the team from managing payroll remotely when they were out of the office.
By defining hierarchical levels, Odoo's Payroll app can be accessed by all team members with preconfigured access rights. Joey can easily control who can view, edit, or modify employee payroll information. For instance, while her department has full access to the company payroll information, members outside her team will only have limited access to their own profiles, even when sharing the same database.
Robust Infrastructure
For those who choose to host your database with Odoo, this app comes with the full Odoo Enterprise suite, supported by the full range of functionalities of other powerful apps, such as Accounting, on the Odoo Cloud.
Odoo guarantees 99.9% uptime and a full backup of your database(s) replicated on at least three different machines on different continents. You can download any version of your backup within the last three months. With this feature, users can easily duplicate their database to test new features or walk through new workflows to manage payroll tasks.
4. Compliance and Employee Experience
In spite of Odoo Payroll's seemingly straightforward operation, we did not overlook compliance with local regulations when designing the app.
Integrating the average daily wage (ADW) calculation into the system, Odoo automatically structuralizes the correct salary of the month if there are any unpaid leaves or maternity leaves taken, in which the employee is still entitled to 80% of their income, compliant with CAP.57 of the Employment Ordinance.
Likewise, this app helps employers compute payslips for departing members, including Payment in Lieu of Notice, Long Service Payment, and Severance Payment, together with their monthly salary, in compliance with Labour Department regulations.
When the tax season approaches, the HR team can generate IR56B, 56E, 56F, and 56G reports within the Payroll app. With these reports, both the employer and its employees can fill out the company and individual tax return forms with ease.
Moreover, the app also assists Joey and her team in processing batch salary payments via HSBC AutoPay and generating files for Manulife's MPF Contribution Remittance, significantly cutting down the time it used to take to handle the data manually across different software.
The easily configured app also allows Joey to set up different allowances. These allowances include housing allowances, a much-welcomed feature yet to be made popular. Offering a wider range of employee benefits, any company using Odoo Payroll will surely attract talents to build a sustainable work environment.
5. User-friendliness
When it comes to HR and payroll management, it is always about the details—Did I get the employee's join date right? Is it two no-paid leaves or one?
This is why an intuitive interface in your payroll and HR suite is more important than you think. Not only can it speed up operations, but a crisply designed interface also assists you with a better presentation of data to spot any incorrect number.
Intuitive design
Compared with other payroll or HR solutions available in the market that mostly look dated, Odoo is user-friendly and no less comprehensive in functionality and in presenting data in a clean interface that ensures data visibility and, hence, accuracy while Joey and her team cross-check.
On the other hand, employees can easily check if they've received the right amount of money from the income and expenses breakdown in the payslip. All payslips are attached to the correct payee account, ensuring the same level of data security while cutting down all the time spent accessing them on the company shared drive.
Dynamic Reports
In addition to its intuitive design, Odoo's user-friendliness greatly aids the team in customizing payroll reports. By allowing the export of selected data based on customized groups and departments, Odoo provides managers with a comprehensive overview of the team's performance, enhancing their ability to assess and analyze data effectively.
Centralized Cloud-based System
Managing the company's payroll on Odoo, a cloud-based platform, Joey's HR team experiences much more efficient payroll management in general.
Connected with other apps like Odoo Time Off, employees can submit leave requests directly into the system, which the HR team can accept on their portal instantly. Odoo automates the inclusion of all granted leaves onto the payslip at the end of the month, eliminating data migration issues, miscommunication, and delays. This integration allows the HR team to boost productivity by multitasking, with Joey reviewing the month's payslips while the team grants leaves, ensuring reinforced accuracy.
It boils down to what Odoo is all about when it comes to the benefits of implementing Payroll in our APAC office: comprehensive, scalable, and easy to use.
Our Own Success Story: 5 Reasons Our APAC HR Manager Loves Odoo Payroll