Shire of Plantagenet goes live with Altus Payroll

The Shire of Plantagenet, located in WA’s Great Southern, went live with Altus Payroll on June 24th this year, as part of their digital transformation journey with IT Vision. This was timed with the first pay period of the new financial year, meaning that the payroll officer won’t have to work across two systems come the end of this financial year.

Leading up to go live, IT Vision provided weekly training sessions via Microsoft Teams to support staff at the Shire. This gave staff the ability to ‘move around’ the Altus Payroll platform to get familiar with its functionality and features before going live. The training sessions also provided staff with hands-on experience, such as doing data entry.

“This continued for a couple of months, which I found very valuable because by the time we went live, I was already comfortable in the system,” said Donna Fawcett, Human Resources Coordinator at Shire of Plantagenet.

Following these sessions, the same IT Vision consultant visited the Shire of Plantagenet to conduct staff training over a two-day period. This included teaching Shire employees how to use the system, logging them into the app, and taking them through the timesheet entry process. The training session gave employees a chance to adapt to the Altus Payroll app and build their confidence in the transition from a completely paper-based payroll system to a digital one. While staff are still adjusting to the changes, the Shire has seen a positive response to the Altus Payroll platform.

“On the whole, the staff have taken to it really well - they tend to get their timesheets in on time and don't make too many errors. It has been a steep learning curve for them, and the more they're using it, the more they like it. The app gives them more control, for example they can easily update their bank details, check their leave, or use the leave accruals projected time feature, which they really like. It also puts the responsibility of getting things right back into their hands and I haven't had any negative feedback, which is great,” said Donna.

Since go live, the Shire has experienced numerous benefits of the Altus Payroll platform. With payroll processing time now significantly reduced, the Shire is benefiting from enhanced productivity and time savings.

“Having Altus Payroll saves me about two and a half days a fortnight, just purely from not having to deal with manual timesheets, processing paper-based leave forms, even processing time on pay day takes less time compared to our previous system,” Donna commented.

The Shire has also recognised the user-friendly features of Altus Payroll in comparison to their old payroll system.

“The other benefit Altus Payroll has over our old system, is that it remembers information from the previous payroll and retrieves that data, so you can go back and look at something you did 6 months ago. From a payroll point of view, that's really helpful”, she added.

IT Vision wants to thank the Shire of Plantagenet for their active involvement in the Altus Payroll implementation and looks forward to providing ongoing support for the Shire and its staff following a successful go live.

“The system has been brilliant! It's been running very smoothly, and we've had very few problems with it. As far as the Altus payroll platform goes, I'm a big fan.”

- Donna Fawcett, Human Resources Coordinator at Shire of Plantagenet.