In the February 2nd County Commissioner meeting, it was stated that the county clerk had seven and a half weeks to prepare for the transition to the Pay Entry software. Susan Walker, Bourbon County Clerk, disputed the timeline for the cutover. She said, “Commissioner Milburn had made a statement that the clerk had 7 & 1/2 weeks to learn Pay Entry, which is false.” She went on to explain that they spent 7 & 1/2 weeks sending Pay Entry information and explaining the county processes to them, but that time wasn’t spent training on the software.
Despite statements by Tim Emerson from Emerson & Co in October listing training that had been provided on the PayEntry software, the County Clerk says the first time they saw the software was two business days before they had to run their first payroll.
(Note: Tim Emerson shares the name, but is not the same Tim Emerson who lives near Devin and, with Commissioner Tran, Commissioner Beerbower, and others, sued the Bourbon County Commissioners. Past news reports seem to indicate that Tim Emerson of Emerson & Co. is the son of the Tim Emerson of Bourbon County who filed the lawsuit.)
“We implemented and had training for PayEntry on November the 20th. It was the first time we even saw the product.” Walker explained that PayEntry requires payroll to be run two days before the county wants to pay employees. After training on Thursday, the 20th, the clerk says that they had to run payroll on November 24th so county employees could be paid the day before Thanksgiving on the 26th. The first time she says they actually saw the software was on Thursday, the 20th, and they had to run the first payroll on Monday, the 24th, two business days later.
When asked if Emerson (the accountant who sold the system to the county) provided training to the department heads, she said no, but PayEntry “gave us a piece of paper to hand out that still didn’t help people.”
She went on to explain, “So we had people come in and sit down in our office. We helped them get into the app that had lots of problems. In the app they would try [to] clock in, and they couldn’t tell if they were clocked in or not. If you hit it again, it would clock them out and wouldn’t let them know if they were clocked out.” Walker says those problems are still there along with an issue that allows employees to change the cost center for time entries. “So I might have a deputy[‘s time] show up in the clerk’s office.”
When asked if the PayEntry system provided any capabilities that weren’t available in the previous system, she said that it has an online portal that would let employees download their W2 tax forms at the end of the year. With the previous system, the county printed those forms out and distributed them. However, since the system isn’t integrated with the rest of the county’s accounting, it requires a lot of manual copying of information back and forth between PayEntry and the county’s accounting software. These manual steps are more error-prone and harder to troubleshoot than the integration that the county had previously.
Walker said that the decision to outsource payroll was made after she had asked the commissioners for another employee to help run payroll in her office. The clerk explained, “During budget seasons, I did ask for an additional employee, and they denied me that. That’s part of this process. I go in, and I request what I feel like I need to run my office efficiently. If you deny me, that’s ok.”
But after asking the commissioners for another employee, Walker says, “They came in and said, well, we’re going to outsource now.” She said she was confused by this step and asked, “Why would you do that? Because I’m fully willing to continue doing what we’re doing.”
When asked how much money was being saved by switching to PayEntry, Walker said that the change had lowered the cost from the $6,500 per year that she was getting to run payroll as well as about $5,000 per year for the CIC payroll module. Those two things lowered the cost by $11,500. However, she said PayEntry is costing around $20,000 in the first year with slightly lower cost next year. She provided the following comparison of costs if no additional employees were hired.
The clerk said the commissioners have had to hire an additional employee to run the PayEntry payroll for 32 hours a week and says an additional employee will cost around $32,000 per year in salary. According to the clerk, since the new employee is working more than 30 hours a week, she would be eligible for benefits as well in addition to the cost of the salary.
When asked for comment about the clerk’s concerns with changes to payroll, Commissioner Milburn provided the following information over a text exchange. She pointed out that payroll affects all offices and “any one of us may not run again or may not be elected again.” She said, “It is reassuring to me that payroll will not be changed by the coming or going of the elected.”
She went on to say that the cost for the additional employee who is managing PayEntry is “less than what it cost us in the clerk office,” because the new employee has duties outside of payroll and, as a part-time employee, doesn’t cost the county for health insurance. Commissioner Milburn said this was “as opposed to the full-time employee in the clerk’s office plus the additional $10,000 for oversight of payroll duties that we were paying.” In addition to pointing to cost savings, she said, “I am pleased with the separation of duties that we get with this change.”