OKLAHOMA CITY (Dec. 22, 2022) – One in five payrolls in the United States contains errors, each costing an average of $291, according to a new Ernst & Young survey. The study also shows the negative impact of traditional payroll methods where perfect payrolls often do not occur.
“Payroll errors have consequences for employees, businesses and the broader economy,” said Chad Richison, founder, chairman and CEO of Paycom. “Organizations need to ensure their payrolls are 100% accurate and not hindering their businesses or people. With Beti®, Paycom’s self-service payroll solution, employees are empowered to identify and correct errors ahead of time so everybody wins. Beti is the future of payroll.”
More than 40% of surveyed organizations facing litigation as a result of payroll errors resort to cutting jobs. More than half of those facing regulatory and compliance issues as a result of payroll errors also resort to cutting jobs. Others facing regulatory and compliance issues reported declines in employee morale (41%), fines (15%) and reputational decline (36%).
EY targeted companies with 250 to 10,000 employees and collected responses from 508 individuals who work at companies headquartered in the U.S. and work with payroll.
Survey results indicate an average 1,000-employee organization spends an aggregate of 29 workweeks fixing the most common payroll errors.
Time/attendance and expense errors were the most common payroll errors, occurring on average more than once per employee per year. Those errors cost about $250,000 per 1,000 employees, according to EY. Errors recorded include:
| Payroll error category | Errors per 1,000 employees, per year | Cost per 1,000 employees, per year |
| Time/attendance and expense | 1,139 | $250,000 |
| Vacation/PTO/sick time requests | 721 | $220,000 |
| Benefits | 503 | $140,000 |
| Schedule earnings and deductions | 410 | $135,000 |
| W4 and tax allocation changes | 229 | $135,000 |
| Direct deposit | 159 | $45,000 |
The top five most time-consuming errors to fix — time punches, expenses, uniforms charge errors, sick time not being entered and errors setting up health savings plans — take nearly 29 40-hour weeks to fix per 1,000 employees. That’s more than half a work year spent on manual processes instead of strategy to advance a business. Fixing missing and incorrect time punches was the most time consuming; companies spent 26 minutes per employee fixing these errors in the last fiscal year.
The EY report comes on the heels of a Morning Consult survey commissioned by Paycom showing payroll errors cause nearly 1 in 5 American adults to take drastic actions and nearly 60% would have difficulty paying bills and making purchases if just $100 were missing from their check. The good news: Outdated payroll and related problems are easily fixable. For example, Paycom’s Beti guides employees to find and fix payroll errors before submission.
More information on the EY report can be found here.