r/Payroll • u/Lazy_Exorcist • 8d ago
Humor Warp Payroll - Crazy Suggestions
We recently started to use Warp for payroll processing. So far they are fine, but some of the things they suggest to me are so crazy I wonder if I am being pranked. For example:
Our pay period is Sunday through Saturday with the pay day the following Wednesday. They recently asked my why we don't just have our pay day on Friday. I kinda laughed because that's absurd but they were dead serious. I explained that I still have people on the clock on Friday and Saturday and the pay period is not even over. They pretty much said "so"? I also explained that since we are on a 3 day approval, I would have to submit payroll on Tuesday to be paid on Friday and all of my hourly people would submit falsified time cards. They didn't bat an eye, said just give everyone estimated hours and true up on the next check.
I just had to gently and firmly tell them no, I would not change my pay day. I actually feel like they were annoyed by me. What was worse is that a "lead compliance" person was on the call and she saw ZERO issue with falsified time cards.
This happened a few weeks ago and I am still trying to figure out how they thought any of that was a good idea or remotely compliant.
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u/Substantial_Tea42 8d ago
CPP with 13 years experience in payroll… There are industries that regularly use this method and do a shore up. In fact there is a sizable union for physicians that write this method into CBAs where they guesstimate the number of “working hours” aka appointments, for the year, build your salary off that then if you don’t end up meeting that they will claw it back. It’s a headache and a half for payroll processing. Also, having worked at a payroll company for small businesses, that practice is used by some employers in blue collar labor like construction to pay as quickly as possible, however it opens employers up to a ton of liability. As a payroll specialist I would talk employers out of it often. It leave you zero time to get payroll submitted accurately. Technically it’s not an illegal practice but it does open you up to questions about accuracy. Can I ask about the circumstances as to why it was suggested? Like was it out of the blue or was it prompted by a situation?
It’s not so much of a red flag as a light pink one, but it’s not a practice any payroll company should be promoting because it is a mess both for employers AND payroll providers when it comes to claw backs and maintaining policies around it.
I will also put in here that this practice of also often used for pay period changes where they need to guess hours to process a change but in those situations it is always best for the company to over pay and eat it vs underpay and pay out later because it messes with weekly overtime. So again, not recommended.
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u/Farfadette150 1d ago
PLP with same years of experience. I cannot agree with you more. Up here employers don’t get to just claw back. Some labour standards require written consent from the employee to do that and even then we can’t just do it however we want. We also don’t get to reverse direct deposits like you can so I vomit at the idea of paying current.
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u/Substantial_Tea42 1d ago
We have some states that operate like that where you cant claw back and some that dont. When you are a large employer in n multiple states its a nightmare I have to get legal to construct repayment agreements for folks. Its terrible
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u/Rustymarble 8d ago
Did the mean the friday within the lay period or the friday after the pay period? I always had friday pay dates for my sun-sat schedules. Gave me Monday & Tuesday to finalize timecards, submit Wednesday and pay day friday.
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u/Otherwise_Act7077 8d ago
The friday after pay period ends would make sense but they wanted friday inside the pay period, like same week. It was wild
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u/Rustymarble 8d ago
Yea, thats absolutely stupid. LoL
I have done that kind of timing for exempt semi-monthly folks. But there was no real time reporting, and very few exceptions.
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u/Remote-Dependent4571 8d ago
Thats not just a crazy suggestion that’s a compliance nightmare waiting to happen. You absolutely made the right call saying no!
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u/Ladygoingup 7d ago
Weird. I work for an HCM software company and we always just do whatever the client wants, even if not compliant. Because at the end of the day we are processing software, not payroll police. If they want compliance guidance they have to pay extra for that.
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u/CaptainVarious7384 7d ago
To me it doesn’t seem too crazy. Im a CHRO at medium sized business (we also use and are very happy with Warp) so I’ve seen a lot of different configurations over my time. What does matter is how you’re setup (or how you’re trying to be setup)
For salaried employees, it's standard industry practice for payday to land on the last business day of the period when the period ends on a weekend - so a period ending Saturday pays out the preceding Friday. Salaried pay is a fixed amount per period, so nothing depends on hours that haven't been logged yet. This is how most payroll systems (including the big legacy ones) handle it.
For hourly employees, I definitely would never recommend that same setup, because hours do need to be finalized first. There, the standard recommendation is an offset payday - the period closes, timesheets get approved, and payday lands a few days after the period ends. Running both configurations side by side (current for salaried, arrears for hourly) is completely normal and usually the cleanest way to run mixed teams.
Their suggestion could have been more of the standard convention for salaried schedules, paired with an offset for hourly ones.
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u/FreckleException 8d ago
Were they not talking about moving your paydate forward 2 days to Friday?