A Payroll Built on Trust and Risk
Holy Cross School, Nagpur, had 85 employees across teaching and non-teaching staff. Their payroll was calculated manually in Excel by the accounts clerk who had done it for 11 years. The process worked because of her expertise, but that expertise lived entirely in her head.
The Vulnerability
In 2023 the accounts clerk took a 3-week medical leave. The payroll had to be processed by a colleague who did not know the formulas. There were errors in 12 payslips. Three staff members escalated to the principal.
Setting Up BatchBoard Payroll
All 85 salary structures were entered over two days. The accounts team found this clarifying. It forced documentation of the special cases that had lived only in the accounts clerk's memory.
Three Months of Automated Payroll
Payslip generation time dropped from 2.5 days to 4 hours. Staff queries about payslips dropped 80 percent because staff could see their own payslips and verify the calculations themselves. Errors: zero in the three months following setup.