Case Study

The Challenge

Select Mortgage needed an efficient way to process the payroll for their team of advisors. Compensation contracts are commission-based and diverse, with variability based on monthly mortgage volume, custom commission rates, and custom percentage splits. While some standard contracts are shared by a number of their advisors, they use many custom contract types, which means that a simple “one size fits all” payroll solution is not possible.

In order to process payroll, Select administrators previously tracked each advisor’s mortgage deals in separate spreadsheets to calculate commissions by month. The relevant details of each individual mortgage deal were manually entered, and commission amounts were calculated based on the individual’s contract. In addition, Select’s advisors maintained accounts payable, meaning that payments were manually deducted to cover those expenses. Every week, the net payroll amount for each advisor would be manually entered into an external system to credit each advisor’s bank account.

The entire payroll process was cumbersome and manually intensive. Select reviewed several off-the-shelf payroll systems, but none accommodated the necessary customization and workflow they required.

The Solution

Caorda created a completely custom payroll system for Select Mortgage. The process started with the creation of a business analysis document, outlining the full requirements and system workflow. Once the requirements were complete, a database architecture plan was designed to support the application, and then custom development was undertaken.

The payroll application has the following high-level features:

• A directory of advisors with all relevant information needed for payroll
• The ability to create custom compensation contracts
• The ability to track accounts payable for advisors
• Imports a source file from the mortgage underwriter with all mortgage deals to avoid manual input of core fields
• The ability for administrators to edit, review, and approve all deals for payment
• Calculates commissions automatically based on advisors’ contact details
• Allows for payroll deduction to cover accounts payable
• Tracks all commissions by month to ensure that commissions are always calculated correctly
• Creates an automated report based on the payroll calculations, which is uploaded to the external system for payment
• Includes a complete series of administration reports
• Allows advisors to log in and retrieve their individual payroll details
• Calculates a report for year-end T4A processing

The Result

The end result is a completely customized payroll system that replaces an antiquated system of spreadsheets and significantly reduces manual intervention and duplication of data entry.

As a result of these workflow and process improvements, there has been a reduction in the time that administrators spend processing advisor deals and generating the bi-weekly payroll.

Services performed:

• Business analysis
• Custom development
• API integration
• Database design