From 6 Hours to 15 Minutes: Automating Portico Payroll Exceptions

One of the most tedious and time-consuming activities in Fiserv’s Portico core processing system is entering “payroll exceptions.” The repetitive manual entry also creates plenty of opportunities for human error—and payroll mistakes can be a disaster for the reputation of any credit union.

I developed an application called the Portico Payroll Processor to automate the process of identifying and entering payroll exceptions into Portico.

At the first credit union where I deployed it, a process that took about six hours every other week dropped to less than 15 minutes—saving approximately 200 staff hours per year while eliminating manual-entry errors.

Before: About 6 hours every two weeks
After: Less than 15 minutes
Annual labor saved: About 200 hours
Result: Payroll exceptions entered automatically, with manual entry errors eliminated

What Are Payroll Exceptions?

Portico’s Payroll feature maintains a payroll group containing each member’s member number, previous payroll distribution amount, and the account where the funds should be deposited, such as primary share, share draft, or money market.

For this particular payroll process, the credit union receives a human-readable payroll report and a corresponding .lis data file. An Operations employee must compare each employee’s current distribution with the previous distribution in Portico. If the amount has changed, an exception must be entered.

Some employees may appear more than once on the payroll report. For example, an employee might have both regular salary and an expense reimbursement. Those amounts must be identified and combined before the exception can be entered.

Finally, the total distributions entered in Portico must balance with the payroll report. If they don’t, the employee has to work back through the payroll member-by-member to find and correct the discrepancy.

For a large payroll group, this makes payroll exception processing tedious, time-consuming, and particularly vulnerable to human error.

What is the Automated Process?

The “Payroll Processor” application that I created completely changed the process.

The Employee:

1. Selects the current payroll file.
2. Selects the previous payroll file.
3. Clicks Process.

The Payroll Processor then:

1. Identifies new employees who need to be added to the Portico payroll group.
2. Compares the current payroll against the previous payroll.
3. Identifies changed distributions.
4. Combines duplicate employee records where necessary.
5. Generates a Portico-compatible .fil file containing the required exceptions.

Back in Portico, the employee imports the file through Transaction Processor, reviews the results, balances the payroll total, and submits the payroll.

What If Our Payroll Has Non-Standard Requirements?

Payroll processing isn’t identical from one credit union to another. The Payroll Processor was designed with that in mind. Rather than requiring a credit union to change its payroll process to fit the software, the application can be adapted to accommodate the credit union’s existing requirements.

One credit union had a quarterly pension distribution that arrived on three separate reports with three separate .lis files. I added an option to the application for them so they could select all three files at once and have it merge them together to compare to the previous quarter’s merged files.

For another payroll group, the reports and associated .lis files used employee numbers that did not match the employees’ credit union member numbers. I added a translation file that maps the employee IDs to the appropriate member numbers.

How Can You Start Using the Portico Payroll Processor at Your Credit Union?

If your credit union uses Fiserv Portico and still spends significant staff time manually entering payroll exceptions, I’d be happy to look at your current process and determine whether the Portico Payroll Processor can be adapted to automate it.