How to move past common payday pain points

Payday might be the best day of the working month for your team, but, as an employer, those joys are quickly overshadowed by payroll stressors. From outdated, time-consuming processes to the general headache of pay packets across different salaries and teams, there’s simply too much to think about around this time. And that pressure will only grow if you fall foul of fatal payroll mistakes.

Setbacks, including incorrect figures and haywire tax exemptions, are costly, time-consuming, and stressful enough for a fair few sleepless nights. More than that, the employee impact and the resulting damage to your brand reputation if you fail to rectify the issue could all put your business under significant strain.

This is especially true if you experience multiple payroll issues each month, with ongoing problems pointing towards operational inefficiencies that you should definitely address. In this article, we’ll consider a few of the best ways to do precisely that, so you can finally overcome those pay day pain points.

1 –  Always Automate Pay Processes

Businesses are still handling pay processes manually in 2025, though doing so significantly increases the time pay takes and the risk of human errors across your pay slips. Rectifying small errors by hand can also take significantly longer, all of which means that automating payroll is one of the best things you can do.

From ensuring streamlined processes to providing an easy-to-use standardised payslip template, automated accounting systems provide everything you need for pay days that are free from headaches. Automated payroll calculations and always-accurate real-time pay tracking are especially essential for both reducing errors and making future issues easier to locate and rectify. Automated processes that you and your HR team can access simultaneously also eliminate communication bottlenecks and ensure that payroll always rolls along as smoothly as possible.  

2 – Track Regulatory Changes

Payroll legislation changes constantly, and employers must track those changes to keep paydays legal and error-free. Awareness surrounding priorities like minimum wage requirements and tax enrollment is especially important for payments that are always compliant,

Luckily, many automated accounting software will adjust themselves in keeping with these regulations, but guaranteed compliance still requires a dedicated payroll or HR compliance lead. This individual will be responsible for tracking and staying ahead of regulatory changes long before paydays and non-compliance fines ever hit.

3 – Plan for Contingencies

The best laid plans don’t guarantee smooth payday sailing. Even with automated systems in place, system failure or unexpected downtime in the lead-up to payday can prove catastrophic. That’s why you need to have a reliable contingency plan in place.

Luckily there are dedicated contingency payroll services out there. Even in-house, avoiding errors despite adverse conditions could mean requiring secondary checks on all paypackets, or knowing how to immediately implement temporary protections like manual system overwrites if you need them. Ongoing team training, even when you’re using automated payroll software, will also prove key to payday survival, no matter what happens.

Payday isn’t for the faint of heart, but you can avoid its worst pain points using these top tips.