Staying on top of construction payroll with today’s complex projects—from dozens to thousands of workers to manage—can be a daunting challenge for even the most seasoned accounting and payroll professionals.

A revolving door of skilled laborers that need to be paid on time, special union requirements and certified payroll to contend with, workers and projects spread out across various regions, states and municipalities — each with their own specific tax rates and rules, a mix of paper and electronic processes to collect employee time and data and distribute wages. These are just a few of the challenging cards dealt to your business and its payroll processes.

Even with these challenges, believe it or not, there are a few aces in the deck. Here are five ways to make your construction payroll process easier:

1. Use Construction-Specific Payroll Software 

Of course there are many generic, off-the shelf payroll solutions available. Your organization may even have a home grown system. But do these systems really meet your needs? Chances are, the answer is no. In order to make your life easier, your software should have the ability to handle today’s construction-specific payroll issues. 

A construction-specific payroll solution should be able to easily address multi-company, multi-project payroll processing, union payroll requirements, have built-in tax codes, be able to easily match labor to specific jobs or project phases and much more. Also, your construction payroll software should be a cloud-based solution, allowing your payroll departments to stream labor hours, calculate pay rates, and process paychecks in real time. Why deal with the headaches of manually collected and processed payroll data and working late hours to ensure this week’s paychecks go out on time?

2. Use Mobile Technology: Save Processing Time by Empowering Your Field Teams

Tired of dealing with paper time cards? A mobile time card solution allows project managers or field supervisors to collect labor hours in a snap. A mobile time card solution, integrated with your back office ERP means your field teams can easily capture hours and digitally sync with the back office immediately.

Think of how much time your company could save every week trying to track down missing time data or rekeying labor hours and wage rates from one system to another.

3. Deploy a Self-Service Model 

Managing hours, paid time off, expense reports and receipts and more can be a hassle for your HR and payroll teams with typical processes. And, when payroll and HR professionals have to juggle multiple employee requests like information updates, pay stubs, wage questions and more, it only adds to the time and stress.

However, technology has made it easier for today’s professionals to self-serve their HR and payroll needs. Web portals, mobile tools and other online features built into construction software suites provide a centralized point of access, available to employees when they need it. Take the online portal as an example, workers can simply log in to see their hours and wage rates, manage time off and benefits, see important documentation, view pay stubs, W2s, tax information and much more. Not only does a self-service approach via technology save time and hassle, it creates digital audit trails to reduce liabilities around payroll and HR processes. And, it further reduces a reliance on paper and manual processes — especially important as fewer and fewer employees want to deal with either during the COVID-19 pandemic.

4. Use Direct Deposit: No More “Where’s My Paycheck?”

It's convenient, reduces payroll processing time and provides a digital stamp — showing when and where a check was deposited. Employees also enjoy the hassle free nature of having a check placed directly in their bank accounts. Additionally, some contractors today are also turning to alternative payment processes like paying wages directly to ready-to-use debit cards or online payment processing sites.

The bottom line is that workers get paid on time without handling paper. HR or payroll departments don’t have to wait for employees to pick up their checks nor do paychecks have to be mailed.

5. Be Transparent: Clear Communication Improves Construction Payroll Processes

Establish — and make it easy for your employees to access — sound policies for wages and taxes, paid time off and sick leave, wage garnishments, union dues, health benefits and other deductions to avoid confusion during the payroll process. This also establishes trust, provides a clear direction and creates a better relationship between employees and your human resources department. The more employees know, the easier it will be to reference rules and regulations and the amount of back and forth email will be reduced. Also, if workers trust their employer, they are likely to stick around for the long haul.