The Monthly Reconciliation Problem
Payroll is rarely difficult in principle. It becomes difficult because of how the inputs arrive:
- Attendance is exported from one system and leave from another
- Adjustments are applied by hand and remembered by one person
- Nobody can explain a figure without rebuilding the calculation
- Corrections are found after the payment has already gone out
- Statutory rules are applied from memory or from an old note
- The same reconciliation is repeated from scratch every month