2009 - The Year of 27 Payroll Pays?

I've had some interesting conversations over the last week related to payroll for 2009. We use ADP for processing payroll on a bi-weekly basis. BTW - We love ADP payroll services. Anyhow, we received a communication from them about a month ago that warned us that we may be in a rare situation where we have 27 pays in 2009.

In 2009 because of the way the pay dates fall, companies that process payroll on a bi-weekly basis may have a situation where they will have 27 pays. The problem is: what do you do with that extra pay for Salaried staff? Do you:

• Take the salary and divide it by 27 instead of the usual 26. If so, the bi-weekly pay amount is drastically reduced. That's hard on your staff. Probably won't be a very popular decision.
• Just pay the extra pay. If you do this one, you better include it in your 2009 budget. You could do this in lieu of a salary increase. You'll just have to explain that the salary increase will take place on December 31.
• Todd at New Pointe Community Church is brilliant. He decided to shift all of the salary staff to twice a month instead of bi-weekly. They move from 26 or 27 pays to 24 pays per year. The hourly staff stay at bi-weekly. They avoid a huge hit from 27 pays. The only problem with this is that the number of pays that are processed increases. In fact, in some months, there could be one payroll per week.

It's an issue worth considering. It could have a negative affect on your 2009 budget. Has anyone else recognized this issue? Anyone else have a good solution?

Church Management Software

If you're in the market for Church Management Software, Jason posted about a new article on Church Management Software at Ministry IT. This is a good informational article about several of the systems that are available and what they do. It also includes contact information for the various companies that provide the software.

Here at GCC we use Fellowship One as our Church Management solution along with Microsoft Dynamics GP (Great Plains) as our General Ledger accounting solution. We're very happy with both solutions.

I like Fellowship One's scanner based contribution processing and online giving tools. Check images are attached to contributions which eliminates a lot of paper. I also like the ability to search for, locate, and merge duplicate records. The check-in application is pretty cool too.

Great plains offers a great solution for General Ledger accounting. It's got good access security. It offers modules for many different applications. We use Bank Reconciliation, Fixed Assets, and A/P regularly. It's expandable and upgradeable. We use a reporting tool called FRx for writing and running reports.

At this point, Fellowship One and Great Plains do not integrate, but that doesn't offer a huge challenge to us.

McDonald's + Visa = Employer Based Financial Literacy

Looks like McDonald's and Visa are partnering to offer America's largest Employer-Based Financial Literacy Initiative. See article here.

The "McDonald's Practical Money Skills" program is based on Visa's "Practical Money Skills for Life" and is being offered to 500,000 restaurant level employees at McDonald's.

Steve Russell, Cheif People Officer, McDonald's USA said, "Providing information and educating our employees about the importance of financial responsibility has become increasingly important -- now more than ever."

Although I'm happy to see an employer take on the responsibility of personal finance training, I think it's sad that they have to "now more than ever".

I'd love to see more High Schools or Colleges offering personal finance training like Dave Ramsey's Foundations in Personal Finance.

Or, maybe it's not even the school's responsibility. Maybe it's a parent's responsibility to train their children in personal finance. Dave has tools to help.

Churches can help too. Here at GCC, we offer Financial Peace University twice a year. Our next session will be February 23. You can sign up here.

For now, kudos to McDonald's. Maybe other businesses will follow their lead. Dave has plenty of tools to help.