Advanced Payroll Management Programme

Payroll has no good failure modes. It is right or somebody is not paid, and an error is simultaneously an employee relations problem, a tax exposure and an accounting misstatement. The common causes are a master file that anybody can edit, variable inputs arriving by email on the day of the run, no reconciliation between the payroll and the ledger, and statutory returns prepared from the payroll rather than reconciled to it. This week treats payroll as a controlled process, through the cycle and into the returns and the year end.

It runs 6 times over the published calendar, in 6 cities. Every date is the same programme with the same content and the same certificate.

• Control the payroll master file so a change is authorised and traceable.
• Run the cycle with a cut off that variable inputs actually respect.
• Reconcile payroll to the general ledger and to the bank every period.
• Treat benefits, allowances and deductions with the right tax consequence.
• Prepare and reconcile statutory returns so a review finds nothing new.

Payroll managers and officers, HR staff responsible for payroll inputs, financial accountants who post and reconcile it, and internal auditors reviewing the function.

Short input, then work. Across 5 days of roughly 6 teaching hours each, the balance sits deliberately with the second: a programme where the trainer talks for six hours produces notes rather than capability.

• Your own material

  Exercises run on situations delegates bring, not on a case study written for a different organisation in a different decade.

• A capped cohort

  Small enough that everybody is asked something. Executive programmes are capped tighter still.

• Practice under scrutiny

  The difficult conversation, the challenged assumption, the decision defended out loud. Judgement is not built by watching.

• Something to take back

  Each day ends with a thing you can use on Monday rather than a slide deck you will not reopen.

• A control map of the delegate's payroll cycle with the authorisation points named.
• A period end reconciliation pack covering ledger, bank and statutory accounts.
• A checklist for the year end and the statutory reconciliation.

A GATI certificate recording what you attended, issued after the programme has run and attendance has been taken. Attending at least 80 per cent of the days earns a certificate of completion; attending less earns a certificate of attendance stating exactly what was attended.

Every certificate carries a code that anybody can check against GATI's own record, which is what makes it worth holding. It records participation. This site will not imply one it does not have.