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Payroll Clerk

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AVG. SALARY

$55,070

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EDUCATION

High school (GED) +

Interviews

Insider Info

You rush to get the salads on the table. Where are all the forks? How will the guests eat? To keep people happy, caterers must get food on the table on time. It is essentially the same for payroll officers.

"It's a lot like cooking for a thousand people," says Brad Fuchs. He's a payroll officer in Berkeley, California. "You have to get everyone's paycheck ready all at one time. You can't serve something late, or people won't be happy."

Sound stressful? Most payroll officers will tell you that doing payroll isn't a low-key job.

"You always wonder how time can go by so quickly," says Fuchs. "You have to get everything ready to feed into the computer, and you can be really pressed for time."

Sharon Conboy, a payroll officer, agrees that the work is stressful. "There are tight time constraints," she says. "It might be Friday afternoon and people want their paychecks. Then you hear at the last minute that 60 new employees need to be set up. You have to work under real pressure to get the work done."

In a perfect world, people work, hand in their time sheets and are paid on time. When that doesn't happen, workers go to the payroll office. "We handle things that are life-and-death matters to these people," says Fuchs. "If something goes wrong, they still need their paycheck."

And things do go wrong. "We've had triple the amount of checks coming off the computer. People get overpaid. People get underpaid. They call and say that nothing has arrived for them," says Fuchs.

What do you tell people who need their money? "You really have to be able to communicate with people," says Conboy. "They can be in tears, not knowing how they are going to feed their family. You have to tell them how you will work through the problem, and then find out what has happened."

Fuchs enjoys trying to trace lost paychecks. "It's like trying to solve a mystery," he says. In the university salary department, Fuchs says that he is the last stop in trying to figure out what happened. "I'm the tail-end of the whip."

Fuchs begins by checking to see if the money is still in the personnel department, or if it got put on the wrong desk. "We even have to figure out if someone has already been paid," he says. "That happens. With direct deposit some people don't realize that the money went in, and maybe has already been taken out again."

Sometimes the mistake is a human error. Sometimes things go awry in the computer system. "If the system goes down when we're trying to do payroll, we can be in a lot of trouble," says Fuchs.

When a paycheck is missing, employees can be upset and angry. Learning to deal with these people can be a difficult part of the job.

Fuchs says payroll officers have to remember the importance of their work. "You have to deal with the fact that so much is riding on what you do. People need to be paid correctly. If they aren't, they can get very upset."

A hardworking employee may not have received her paycheck. She needs it to pay the bills, and to buy groceries for her children. She won't let this matter slide. The employee will march right over to the payroll department and demand an explanation. "The least you can do is pay me on time!" she shouts.

"In fact, that's all of what I do," says Fuchs, reiterating that payroll officers have to keep in mind that their job is to serve the other employees.

Although some people who visit the payroll department are upset or angry, most are pleasant to deal with. "I really enjoy the people contact," says Conboy. "In most cases, we are giving people a reward, so they aren't unhappy to talk to you or to hear from you."

Fuchs says he also enjoys human interaction on the job. Some accounting jobs can involve many calculations, and little communication with others. "I like working with numbers but I also like people," he says. "With payroll, you get both."

Fuchs estimates that he spends as much as 20 percent of his time working with others, rather than punching in numbers. "It's your job to help people, and I like that," he says. "It's something that is so important to them."

People who are only interested in numbers should look in other areas. "If you want pure accounting, this isn't for you," says Fuchs. "You've got to want to help people."

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