Associate Director, Payroll

Emory Healthcare • Atlanta, GA

383d

About The Position

The Associate Director of Payroll at Emory University is responsible for organizing and directing the daily operations of the Payroll Department. This role involves providing leadership in the absence of the Senior Director, managing payroll processing, ensuring compliance with federal and state laws, and overseeing departmental policies and procedures. The position requires a strong focus on accuracy, compliance, and performance management within the payroll function.

Requirements

• Bachelor's degree in Accounting, Business Management, or a related field.
• Six years of payroll experience including experience in a supervisory role.

Responsibilities

• Provides departmental leadership in the absence of the Senior Director.
• Responds to department and employee payroll inquiries and requests.
• Participates in developing departmental short and long-term goals and objectives.
• Analyzes departmental strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and constraints to give direction to staff.
• Establishes and administers departmental policies, procedures, and related forms in accordance with state, federal, and organizational guidelines.
• Makes recommendations for implementing changes to maintain compliance.
• Provides ongoing performance feedback, addresses problems, orients and trains employees, verifies competencies and identifies and suggests ways to develop skills.
• May hire, train, supervise and evaluate staff.
• Directs, schedules and monitors workflow.
• Monitors departmental expenditures against budget(s) to locate errors and/or omissions, balances account records, and reconciles discrepancies.
• Manages accurate and timely processing of payroll, reviews data, runs trial payrolls and creates department reports.
• Reviews and approves payments such as garnishments, tax levies, child support, and other invoice payments.
• Oversees recording of appropriate employee deductions and responding to court orders, garnishments, tax levies, or other deductions.
• Coordinates direct deposit activities by calling in ACH totals for the bank, resolving problems with banks, and maintaining records of direct deposit transactions.
• Processes journal entries to clear payroll suspense.
• Performs reviews of financial information and reports to manage quality control for accuracy of accounting data.
• Works with staff to identify solutions and maintains follow up to ensure ongoing accuracy.
• Manages compliance and registration associated with employees working outside the state of Georgia.
• Ensures compliance with governmental laws on payroll accounting and taxes.
• Prepares regular periodic federal and state tax reports and returns and makes required deposits.
• Files taxes in applicable states on a next day, monthly basis.
• Works in conjunction with the Associate Director of State/Local Compliance for identifying employees that are working in states outside Georgia.
• Contacts department HR Reps and employees to verify and send the correct state withholding form to the employee.
• Updates the tax panels in PeopleSoft and moves the wages and taxes from Georgia to the correct state.
• Reviews, verifies and corrects year-end reporting and employee W-2s.
• Assists with the processing of W-2s.
• Reviews and corrects ACH returns and reconciles banking discrepancies with accounting.
• Reconciles withholding and benefit deduction accounts and employee monthly earnings; prepares journal entries to correct and/or reclassify payroll expenses.
• Reconciles the payroll accounts in Blackline monthly.
• Executes and monitors payroll to general ledger interface.
• Interprets applicable regulations to maintain records and files.
• Establishes filing and auditing procedures to ensure accuracy and compliance.
• Maintains all required records for easy accessibility.
• Prepares weekly, monthly, and quarterly tax deposits, quarterly 941 reporting, W-2/Equifax, W-2C's, year-end reconciliations, and file uploads as needed.
• Updates payroll system tax table setups, as needed.
• Generates audit reports with each payroll run to ensure completeness and accuracy.
• Identifies payroll processing issues and partners with PeopleSoft HR/Payroll system technical teams to test solutions and resolve.
• Provides input for process improvements to enhance and/or streamline payroll operations.
• Functions as the lead resource for system upgrades, testing, and special projects.
• Researches and provides resolution for complex payroll inquiries and discrepancies.
• Ensures payroll and tax documents are filed timely and accurately.
• Manages the posting of payroll to general ledger and performs timely reconciliations to ensure the financial records are accurate.
• Partners with other colleagues in the Office of the Controller to provide monthly reconciliations in a timely manner.
• Supports financial audit work associated with payroll.
• Assigns responsibility for the preparation of operational and statistical reports for management and regulatory agencies.
• Reviews completed reports to assist in decision-making and to comply with regulations.
• Works with IT staff to develop efficient ways of processing information and identifies areas in which state-of-the-art technology is needed to enhance operations.
• Works with technical teams to analyze payroll issues, provide appropriate action plans, and test resolution.
• Provides ad-hoc and standard reports by leveraging system queries and reports.
• Creates the payroll calendars for the year in PeopleSoft and adds the supplemental calendars for each month.
• Generates monthly overtime, late payments, overpayment reports and other ad hoc reports, as requested.

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Mid Level
• Industry: Ambulatory Health Care Services
• Education Level: Bachelor's degree