How to Spot Audit Your Payroll System

How to Spot Audit Your Payroll SystemHow to Spot Audit Your Payroll SystemThe possibility of payroll fraud occurring is always a concern for a business. But an even greater concern for organizations should be remaining in compliance with all applicable laws and regulations.Fraud is an important issue but compliance is even mora so, says Jim Medlock, director of education and training for the American Payroll Association (APA). An organization is more likely to be found out of compliance and penalized as a result than it is to experience fraud.Alleviating risks, preventing mistakesMedlock advises businesses to conduct periodic spot audits of the payroll process to guard against the risks - and possible legal and financial consequences of noncompliance. Regular audits can confirm payroll accuracy and identify and correct problems, ensuring businesses remain in compliance with all state and local requirements, as well as federal regulations, such as those issued by the IRS and the U.S. Department of Labor.Common pitfalls for companies include failing to calculate overtime pay correctly, including the employees regular rate of pay, especially if a worker also receives additional wage payments in the form of shift differentials, commissions or bonuses.Auditing your payroll process isnt overly complicated, according to Medlock. Even the smallest businesses usually have automated payroll ordnungsprinzips that have the capability to produce reports on demand.These reports allow employers to verify various aspects of payroll, such as whether mandatory deductions are being made and whether pretax deductions are handled properly. In addition, the IRS provides tools that give employers the ability to verify that withholding amounts and various tax payments are being reported and paid to the proper agencies.The value of regular payroll system auditsMedlock recommends auditing the payroll system every pay period. In addition, payrolls should be balanced and reconciled every pay period, as well as on a quarterly and annual basis. By reconciling your payroll system in a timely manner, problems can be identified and corrected sooner rather than later, reducing the potential for penalties.A payroll audit is best performed by compliance consultants or skilled payroll professionals. Even if a company outsources its payroll function to a service provider, Medlock cautions this doesnt remove the company from bearing responsibility for payroll accuracy.You can outsource the responsibility, but not the accountability, he says. It always comes back to your organization.He cites a case where a companys payroll service provider failed to pay taxes to state authorities, but the company was still held responsible for the problem, as well as any back taxes and penalties. Medlock notes that service providers rely on calculations and other information supplied by the employer, so employers must ensure they provide accurate inputs to the payroll process.Ensuring accurac yIn addition to auditing your payroll system automatically, Medlock suggests taking the following steps to ensure payroll accuracySegregate duties - The likelihood of payroll fraud occurring can be reduced by not allowing one employee to be responsible for multiple aspects of payroll.For instance, reconciliation shouldnt be performed by the same person who issues paychecks otherwise, you have the same individual validating his or her own work. The more you can divide duties among employees, the more youll have a system of checks and balances.Stay informed - Payroll and tax issues are always changing, and the professionals best equipped to manage ever-evolving changes are those who engage in continuous learning.Companies can help their staff enhance their skills by encouraging involvement in organizations such as the APA. Managers also should support ongoing education, including regulatory compliance training opportunities and professional payroll certifications, such as the Fundam ental Payroll Certification (FPC) and Certified Payroll Professional (CPP) designations.Subscribe to our newsletterWhen you subscribe to the Robert Half newsletter, youll get articles and resources to help you build and manage a winning payroll gruppe - all sent directly to your inbox. Click the button below to sign up todaySUBSCRIBE NOW

A city is facing a ninja shortage even though the pay is $85,000 Ladders

A city is facing a shinobi shortage even though the pay is $85,000 LaddersA city is facing a ninja shortage even though the pay is $85,000 LaddersYou may have heard about Japans demographic crisis - but the country is facing another, lesser-known crisis as well.Japan does not have enough ninjas.In an episode of NPRs Planet Money podcast, Sally Herships visited Iga, a small city in central Japan that claims to be the birthplace of the ninja.Each year the city of around 100,000 swells by around 30,000 as tourists come to experience the annual ninja festival.Unfortunately, Iga is suffering from depopulation. Its facing a shortage of those two key things you need to keep an economy humming stuff to sell and people to buy the stuff, Herships cohost Stacey Vanek Smith says.Iga is also losing its young people, who dont want to live in the rural countryside They want life in the big city like Tokyo or Yokohama.In order to revive the local economy, the mayor of Iga, Sakae Okamoto, is promo ting its ninja heritage with the aim of drawing more tourists.Right now in Iga, we are working very hard to promote ninja tourism and get the most economic outcome. For example, we hold this ninja festival between late April to around the beginning of May. During this period visitors and also local people come here. Everybody will be dressed like a ninja and walks around and enjoys themselves - but recently I feel that its not enough, Okamoto tells Hership.Japan is currently experiencing a major tourist boom - the United Nations World Tourism Organization (UNWTO) estimates that almost 29 million tourists visited Japan in 2017. Thats an increase of almost 20% from the year before.While some cities are benefitting economically from the influx of tourists, rural ones like Iga are apparently not.With the hope of encouraging tourists to stay longer than a day in Iga, Mayor Okamoto is relocating city hall and building a second ninja museum in its place. While the budget is not disclosed , Okamoto has received funding from the central government from the public - Japans government is funding ninjas, Herships says.The project faces some hurdles, though. Iga needs to attract labor forces to work and live in the rural city as the ninja tourism scheme is extended.This means not just builders and planners - but also ninjas themselves. Theres a ninja shortage, Herships says, or - to be accurate - a ninja performer shortage.This issue is especially difficult given Japans extremely low unemployment rate, which is just 2.5%.It is therefore hard to find workers in Japan, let alone highly-specialized ninja performers.Ninja is not an inheritable class. Without severe training, nobody could become a ninja. Thats why they have silently disappeared in history, Sugako Nakagawa, curator of the local Ninja museum, told Reuters in 2008.But this job does have a lot to offer, Herships says. First of all, the pay is quite competitive, today, ninjas can earn anything from $23,000 to a bout $85,000 - which is a really solid salary, and in fact, a lot more than real ninjas used to earn in medieval Japan.Herships quotes the International Ninja Research Centre, which states that in Iga, the typical ninja earned between $8,000 and $17,000 a year - salaries adjusted for inflation.Mayor Okamoto faces an uphill battle, though. The Mie Prefecture (the prefecture where Iga is located) as a whole attracted just 43 new young residents last year, meanwhile, Iga alone lost 1,000 residents.If ninjas are going to save Japans depopulation crisis, theyd better act fast.This article first appeared on Business Insider.

This 10-minute routine will increase confidence and self-esteem

This 10-minute praxis will increase confidence and self-esteemThis 10-minute kenntnisse will increase confidence and self-esteemThe two most important times in your day are just before you go to bed, and just after you wake up. These are your bookends. If you learn to master the bookends of your day, you will quickly gain greater control over the rest of your life.You are the most important human being in your own life. While most people are trying to impress other people, its far mora inspiring to live a life that impresses yourself. Rita Mae Brown said, The reward for conformity is that everyone likes you but yourself.Living in alignment and with intention is how you create inner confidence and peace. It does not matter how many times youve failed in the past. It doesnt matter how messy or conflicted your life may be right now. You can quickly learn to develop confidence and a deep sense of self-love. George Eliot said, It is never too late to be what you might have been.With this short routine, you can come to love and appreciate yourself far mora. This love and appreciate will give you momentum and motivation to make increasingly better decisions throughout your days, so that overtime, your life gets exponentially better.10 minutes before going to sleepWhen performance is measured, performance improves. When performance is measured and reported, the rate of improvement accelerates. - Thomas MonsonBefore going to bed at night, pull out your journal and simply report to yourself what you did that day. If youre a fast typer, youre better off using a computer than a handwritten notepad for this journaling session.Report and account to yourself how the day went. Be completely honest and vulnerable with yourself.Share both your wins and your losses. Think about the triggers that may have set you off on a wrong course. In the process of accounting what happened during your day, write down how things could have gone differently if you had been more intentional.- - - According to Dr. Martin Seligman, former president of the American Psychological Association, there are several differences between optimists and pessimists.PessimistsPessimists explain negative events as a permanent fixture of their identity (something they cant change). They view themselves (or life in general) as the problem, and there is nothing that can really be done.OptimistsOptimists explain negative events as situation and short-lived. When something goes wrong, they focus on situational factors that can be altered and improved.- - - During your evening journaling session, write down how you could have altered the situation. Have no negative judgement about yourself. Just report back what happened and what you learned.While writing about what happened and what you learned, your mind will naturally begin projecting the future and what you could be doing differently. Ride this natural stream of thought and begin writing down how you plan to live tomorrow differently.Wri te in an affirmative way how you want to see tomorrow happen. Be positive and optimistic. Thomas Edison said, Never go to sleep without a request to your subconscious. As you write down how you intend to see tomorrow, feel and imagine yourself being excellent tomorrow. Make a mental commitment that youre going to wake up at a certain time and that youre going to crush the next day. Imagine yourself the following evening in the same place you are now reporting how the day went, and being able to report incredible success and progress.Write down the potential barriers that could come up. In psychology, planning for obstacles is known as implementation intentions. Write about how you plan to face those obstacles or challenges when they come.Avoiding problems is far more intelligent than trying to overcome them. Consequently, write down how you can avoid being triggered into negative traps in the first place.Even if you had a bad day, this routine will make you feel better. Youll have b een honest with yourself about what happened. Youll have been able to re-live your day. Just by virtue of that fact that youre spending some time reflecting on how things went, youll begin to feel gratitude for the little things.If you had a negative experience with a friend, child, or spouse, your love for them will deepen as you reflect on how things could have gone differently. Youll commit to yourself that you will be better tomorrow. This commitment to yourself will also be a commitment to those you love - that tomorrow you will shift the pattern and help them feel more love than they ever have before.Over time, youll begin looking forward to these evening reporting and accountability journaling sessions. They will become one of the most treasured parts of your day. They will inspire you to live better each day so that you can honestly report to yourself how well you did.Your love for yourself will increase because day-by-day, youll be living more intentionally and congruently . Mahatma Gandhi has said, Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony.The more harmonious your life becomes, the happier and more confident youll be. This evening writing session will help you develop incredible love and compassion for yourself. Jean Shinoda Bolen said, When you recover or discover something that nourishes your soul and brings joy, care enough about yourself to make room for it in your life.10 minutes after you wake upResearch confirms the brain, specifically the prefrontal cortex, is most active and readily creative immediately following sleep. Your subconscious mind has been loosely mind-wandering while you slept, making contextual and temporal connections. Creativity, after all, is making connections between different parts of the brain.In an interview with Tim Ferriss, Josh Waitzkin, former chess prodigy and tai chi world champion, explains his morning routine to tap into the subconscious breakthroughs and connections experien ced while he was sleeping.Unlike 80 percent of people between the ages of 1844 who check their smartphones within 15 minutes of waking up, Waitzkin goes to a quiet place, does some meditation and grabs his journal.In his journal, he thought-dumps for several minutes. Thus, rather than focusing on input like most people who check their notifications, Waitzkins focus is on output. This is how he taps into his higher realms of clarity, learning, and creativity - what he calls, crystallized intelligence.Writing in your journal first thing in the morning has a few key purposesTo clear your mindTo trigger and remind yourself your goalsTo experience deep gratitude for the dayTo help you get creative insights about people you need to reach out to, or projects youre working onYour mind is beautifully attuned first thing in the morning. If you learn how to use your morning-mind, youll get the most important ideas of your life. Youll get insights and inspiration that will help you live better throughout your day. This is the crystalized intelligence that Waitzkin is talking about.Important ideas can change your life. Those ideas wont come if you dont give your mind the space to focus. Thats where this morning journaling comes in. This morning session is more meditation than anything else. Youre allowing your mind to loosely wander while you write down your goals, dreams, plans, and what you aim to accomplish that day.As you remind yourself of your goals and dreams, you want to be highly affirmative about what you intend to do that very day.Who do you want to be?How do you want to show up?What do you need to focus on first?Who do you need to reach out to?Affirm in writing that youre going to succeed that day. Affirm in writing that you will accomplish all of your goals, both short and long-term. By affirming and deeply visualizing and experiencing yourself succeeding, you are creating an emotional climate of success. You are creating a powerful state from which to operat e in the world. This is a peak-state.The goal of the peak-state is to be completely in the moment, to clear your mind, and to avoid unhealthy subconscious loops. You want to be completely clear on how youre feeling RIGHT NOW.Do these emotions match the goals you want to achieve?Do these emotions match the future you are trying to create?If your current emotions do not match the future youd like to create, then your behavior will be low-level and your day will be a repeat of the past. In order to create a new future, you need to proactively create the energy and emotions that matches the future you intend to create. You do this at the beginning of your day so that you can live out your day from those emotions. If you start right, youll be far more likely to continue right throughout the day.While writing in your morning journal, feel and know that youre going to succeed today. Know that the goals you aspire toward are already yours. Allow yourself to experience deep gratitude while w riting in your journal about the accomplishments youre going to have that day.Be as imaginative as possible. Albert Einstein has said, Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited to all we now know and understand, while vorstellungsvermgen embraces the entire world, and all there ever will be to know and understand.Allow your mind to go places. Dont squelch inspiration. Allow bold, big, and incredible thoughts to flow to you as you meditate and write in your journal. Be completely optimistic and affirmative about the goals and plans you set.Know in your mind that you can do it. As Napoleon Hill famously wrote, Whatever the mind can conceive and believe, the mind can achieve.This whole process will allow you to not only get clear, but also to get inspired. Every morning, you should be elevating your way of thinking and living. Your goals should continually be expanding because each day youre gaining confidence and learning.The clarity, affirmation, gratitud e, and inspiration from this routine put you into a deep level of presence, creating a peak-experience. According to Abraham Maslow, Peak experiences as rare, exciting, oceanic, deeply moving, exhilarating, elevating experiences that generate an advanced form of perceiving reality, and are even mystic and magical in their effect upon the experimenter.These peak experiences are rare because very few intentionally create them. You can and should be having peak experiences daily. As you have peak experiences every morning, and then act from those experiences, you live an intention and present life. You reshape your subconscious and become a super-learner, allowing all of life to come in.Peak experiences are rare for most people because they have deep emotional blocks, which cloud their minds. Due to the lack of clarity and lack of routines to get clarity, people live reactively to their environment and their body. They seek dopamine and distraction and sugar and carbs and the downward cycle continues - as does their confidence, self-love, and imagination. Over time, they become pessimistic about themselves and about life.ConclusionA man cannot be comfortable without his own approval. - Mark TwainYou yourself, as much as anybody in the entire universe, deserve your love and affection - BuddhaUntil you value yourself, you wont value your time. Until you value your time, you will not do anything with it. - M. Scott PeckTo love oneself is the beginning of a life-long romance - Oscar WildeThese journaling sessions can absolutely change your life. In the evening, you develop greater love, appreciation, insight, and compassion for yourself. You notice things you may not have seen in the busyness of your day. You report your learning so that it becomes more engrained. You make better plans for the future and positively affirm to yourself that youll succeed.As you write in the evening, youll shift your subconscious patterns while you sleep. When you wake up, youll have new memories, new emotions, and new neural connections to work with.As a result, its very important not to immediately get sucked BACK into the old reality of yesterday. Dont pull out your smartphone. Instead, seize access to those new neural connections through meditation and journaling. Go to a quiet place and pull out your journal. Begin writing down the things you plan to achieve and the person you intend to become.During your writing session, youll come to expect flashes of insight during the writing process itself. Psychologists call this epiphany ability and self-help gurus call this auto suggestion. They are both a way of saying that youll get inspired insights and clarity if you give yourself the space, and if you come to truly believe and feel what youre seeking to have in your life.When you do these two routines, your behavior DURING YOUR DAY will improve. Youll stop being so reactive to environments, emotions, and other people. Youll avoid terrible situations that were o nce your norm.Your days will get better and more intentional. Your life will transform. Youll begin living your dreams. Soon, those dreams will expand through the inspiration you get and the experiences you create. Your confidence will soar because youll be living in greater alignment with yourself.Youll love yourself.Youll have greater confidence.Youll appreciate those you love more.Youll be happier.Your emotions will translate to those around you and theyll love and appreciate you more.Youll be far more present and powerful.Youll end the cycle of addiction. Youll be clear.Ready to upgrade?Ive created a cheat sheet for putting yourself into a PEAK-STATE, immediately. You follow this daily, your life will change very quickly.Get the cheat sheet hereThispostfirst appeared on Medium.