Translating from English Unit 3.3: The Payroll Process by Jeff Hardison

Self Evaluator: ________________                             Peer Evaluator: ________________

Reminder: Use two different colored pens for the evaluator and peer evaluator.

0              The thought is missing, nothing was signed.

1              Too much information, or too many facts, or data is missing. There are some major grammatical errors. It is unintelligible due to major sign production errors or poor grammar.

2              Some/little information, facts or data is missing. Minor grammatical and sign production

errors.

3              All clear and in good form. Your message was clearly understood.

0 1 2 3             Hello. My name is Jeff Hardison. You  know, in corporate America today,

probably the largest single expense that any business has is its payroll.

0 1 2 3             So, I thought that it might be interesting to kinda talk a little bit about how

timecards actually get translated and become checks _ that process, and how it happens. 

0 1 2 3             It’s actually less complicated than I thought. I had a friend of mine, who is

a CPA, kinda go through the process for me.

0 1 2 3             What usually happens in the beginning is that you have an individual who will fill out a timecard, and then that timecard has to be taken to be approved by somebody who has the authority to do so, typically the supervisor of whatever corporation, business, or unit that we’re talking about.   

0 1 2 3             After that, then, the timecard gets submitted into the Accounting Department. Now, what the Accounting Department does, at this point, is they take the card, and then they pull up what they have on the computer, typically, nowadays, they use computers, they pull up a log of all the employees that work there and match up numbers, to ensure that, in fact, the employee is an existing employee, active,

0 1 2 3             because this is one of the first checks that are used in order to prevent someone from trying to embezzle or illegally get money out of a company that they ought not to.

0 1 2 3             Once that’s been done, then what happens is that they then input the number of hours that the individual has had into what they call an “automated payroll system” – so they pull up specifically a kind of program, a computer program, that you then feed in that employee’s number with the hours.

0 1 2 3             And what’s really nice about the computer programs is that it will automatically do all of the tax work for you. It will do the Federal Tax, it will do the State Tax, it will take care of annual leave, sick leave; it will divide all of that up.

0 1 2 3             And, also if you have situations where, perhaps, a corporation does different jobs, it will begin to actually compartmentalize which jobs were done by that individual.

0 1 2 3             the reason that’s so much nicer now in computers is that in the days before computers, that actually all had to be figured by hand. You can imagine how much time that would have taken for someone to have to do it manually.

0 1 2 3             Once that’s been done, then you’re basically pretty much ready to go and start printing the checks. What you then do, once the information, as I said, has been input, is you then go through and do what’s called a “first edit.” And what that is, is that you go back and check to ensure that the inputted information that you’ve inputted actually matches what is supposed to be there, so that you haven’t done something in error.

0 1 2 3             Then you go to the printer, if that’s where you do it, some corporations, now, do not actually print their checks in their own place of business, they’ll often have another corporation or other business handle that,

0 1 2 3             but for those that do, you would then go to the printer, and then you would put your checks in, feed it into the printer, and then basically hit “print.”

0 1 2 3             Then, all the checks come through then, they go through what’s called the “second edit,” which is basically physically looking at the checks.

0 1 2 3             Now, that depends, again, on the size of your corporation – if it’s really huge, and you’re talking, you know, several hundreds or even thousands of people, obviously that’s not practical.

0 1 2 3             But, if it’s a smaller corporation or business, and you can actually do that, they do what’s called a “second check.” Or, just ensure that every check that’s been printed was in fact a check that needed to be, or matches up to what all the employees have done.

0 1 2 3             After that, someone is usually delegated to tear them apart, put them into an envelope, it’s distributed to everybody, and happy hour hits, and everyone is happy.

Total_____/51 points

Comments_______________________________________________________________