A unionized payroll management system

A multi-union employer used spreadsheets alongside its payroll platform to handle pay scales, overtime, shift differentials and contributions under several collective bargaining agreements. Contract changes required manual retroactive calculations.

LinkIT built a payroll engine that stores those rules with their effective dates.

The problem

Calculations needed to use the correct agreement and rule version for each pay period. Payroll staff also needed to review retroactive changes and trace reports back to time entries and calculations.

What we built

The engine selects the applicable versioned rules for each employee and pay period, then calculates pay from the imported time records.

• CBA rules: pay grades, step tables, shift differentials, overtime thresholds, holiday schedules and premiums.
• Time-entry imports: normalized hours, shifts and job codes from the existing attendance system.
• Retro-pay processing: recalculation of affected periods, comparisons with amounts paid, variance reports and correction entries.
• Contributions: dues, pension and benefit calculations, remittance files and reconciliation records.
• Reporting: payroll and union summaries traceable to time entries, rule versions and calculation logs.
• Administration: tools to configure grades, activate agreement versions, preview changes and review calculation history.

Keeping rule data separate from calculation logic lets administrators update effective-dated agreements without changing application code. Stored inputs and rule versions support repeatable calculations and review.

How we approached it

The client’s labor-relations team worked through contract provisions and prepared hand-calculated test cases for overtime, mixed-union shifts and mid-period changes.

The engine then ran alongside the existing payroll process. The team investigated differences before adding contributions, remittances and reports. The first retro-pay batch produced variance reports and entries for payroll staff to review.

The administration tools let payroll and labor-relations staff inspect the rules, preview changes and trace the calculations.

Delivered system

Pay, retroactive adjustments, contributions and reports use the same versioned rules and calculation records. Payroll staff review changes before processing them.

Discuss your payroll requirements or explore custom software development.