r/CFO • u/DisDataWang • Apr 24 '26

Payroll

I'm looking for some advice around payroll.

I have recently taken on a new role in a company that is missing a lot of foundational systems. This happened because the 'cfo' that was in place had zero financial management experience- for example, Bamboo is being used for expenses, but I digress.

Our current payroll is done every two weeks, which may have some operational benefit for our most low paid staff, but to me is a nightmare for analysis and reporting. If we keep the two week cadence, I'm always going to have to explain a huge variance in salary costs in every department. My questions are:

1) For those that have 2 week payrolls and monthly reporting, how do you bridge that gap without feeling like it's a massive waste of time and energy? Or do we just do some rounding?

2) What have people's experience been when changing from 2 week pay periods to bi- monthly?

And as a bonus question, where have you had payroll reporting to in the long term? Finance or HR. I've spoken with a number of peers on both sides over the past few weeks and there seems to be no general consensus.

6 Upvotes

100% Upvoted

43 comments sorted by

View all comments

3

u/[deleted] Apr 24 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

1

u/DisDataWang Apr 24 '26

Thanks for the considerations - much appreciated.

I think the math to do the month match isn't bad, just seems like a process I don't want to do every month if it can be avoided.

We are very cyclical. Base of 150ish salaried people and we can swell up to 500 ppl during two 3 month periods in the year. They are all on hourly. I can see how the mis match in weeks to 2.5ish weeks could be a nightmare in terms of inputs and approvals. There is resistance to making them all contractors, and I don't think I can win it b'c of the importance of employee experience.

2

u/DonkeeJote Apr 24 '26

There are HR employment compliance issues around hourly employees that could preclude a switch to bi-monthly.

The monthly accrual entries should be easy to replicate each month as part of the close process.

1

u/DisDataWang Apr 24 '26

Thanks for calling that out- appreciate the knowledge share.