Elevate Your Employee Salary Advance Management

A Greek philosopher by the name of Heraclitus once said, “change is the only constant in life.” Heraclitus was certainly right as life is known for notoriously throwing curve balls at individuals when they least expect it. 

An employee at your company can encounter a financial emergency while sitting on their desk obliviously working on an assigned task. This is a common occurrence especially with the current high inflation rate in economies across Africa. Instead of going to a loan shark or applying for mobile loans that normally have high interests, employees will approach you choosing to solve their financial problem via the company’s salary advance policy.  As a HR, it is your responsibility to see to it that the employee salary advance management process runs smoothly. Unfortunately, the process itself can be tedious. For the salary advance to be disbursed, the request has to be reviewed and approved in accordance with the company’s  policies. Once this particular step is complete, you have to go back to the employee’s payroll and probably alter their salaries manually, so that the funds can be disbursed. At this stage, there are some HR professionals who forget to clearly communicate the state of the employee’s salary advance. 

Depending on the company’s policy on salary advances, this can surface as a problem in the future when the same employee needs another salary advance. Well, instead of brewing multiple mugs of coffee and pulling all-nighters on salary-advance related tasks, how about automating the review and approval process of salary advances?

 Benefits of automating salary advance using a HR software

A salary advance is an employee’s saving grace. They apply for it when they have hit a financial hurdle. For the company, salary advances can be beneficial in terms of taking care of their employees needs and increasing employee retention, productivity as well as loyalty. However, there is a lot that goes into the salary advance process and this can impact an employee negatively. For instance, a problem can arise during the approval process which would lead to a delay in the disbursement of funds. Automatically, this will translate into an employee’s financial issue ballooning. 

In order to help an employee easily and quickly as well as save  time, it is best  to automate the salary advance using a HR software. Here are some of the benefits of using a salary advance software; 

• Seamlessly reviews the salary advance request.
• Automation of the approval process depending on the company’s policies on salary advances.
• Ensures the employer and employee receive a report on salary advancement for transparency purposes. Additionally, the reports can be used by management when it comes to budgeting, assessing the reasons why employees request advancements and which period of the year they request these advancements. As a result, companies are able to effectively cater to the needs of their employees.
• Disburses the amount of money requested by the employee within a short time.

The software also helps you correctly calculate the tax and/or interest required when disbursing the salary advance. Now that you know how this salary advance module can make your life better, how about finding out where you can find one that is suitable for you?

ElevateHR’s new salary advance module

ElevateHR is a cloud based HR platform that is dedicated to meeting all your HR needs. It offers various modules that alleviate the day-to-day stresses that HR professionals encounter. In line with their ultimate goal, ElevateHR have released a salary advance module to help HR professionals meet the salary advance needs. This module has the following features; 

•  Automation of the review and approval process.  This module allows you to set the number of steps and reviewers on each step to review
•  Automation of funds disbursement once the review process ends and the request is approved
•  Sends notifications to employees and management regarding salary advances in a transparent and clear manner
• Reports and analytics

1) Automation of the review and approval process

Through ElevateHR software, employees can quickly and easily send in their advance requests. The advance request can either be normal or special i.e., normal advance requests are holistically recovered within the month while special advance requests are typically recovered using installments with three months being the maximum amount of time an employee can be given to repay the advance. This depends on the company’s policy around salary advance management.

After sending the request, the HR department will receive the advance request on the admin dashboard. Once they do, the HR assigned to this task will be able to approve or deny the request depending on the virtual checklist embedded in the salary advance module. This checklist will be wholly dependent on your company’s salary advance policies. For instance, the checklist might include the following;  

• Has the individual taking the advance ever been in a disciplinary case? How severe was the case?
• How long has the employee been with the company?
• What is the employee’s employment status? i.e., intern, permanent, casual, contract.
• If the employee’s status is contractual, what period has been stipulated in their contract?

 Once again, the company’s policy around salary advances is what will shape this virtual checklist and determine whether an employee gets an advance or not. 

Instead of taking a lengthy amount of time for a HR professional to approve or deny an employee’s salary advance request, ElevateHR’s software ensures that the process is fast and efficient.

2) Automation of funds disbursement once the review process ends and the request is approved

As their request is being processed, the employee can track the status of their request. Meanwhile, the HR professional assigned to this task performs the action of either approving or denying the request. Once a decision has been made, an employee receives a notification either on their app or email indicating that their request has been either approved or denied. 

Once the request is approved, the finance department processes the advance payment. Now, there are companies where the final approval of the salary advance request sits with the finance department. If this is the case, once HR approves, the finance department will receive a notification to approve or disapprove the request as well. If they approve the request, they will disburse the funds while catering to which form will best suit the employee. 

It should be noted that the salary advance will be deducted at the end of the month. 

3) Sends notifications to employees and management regarding salary advances in a transparent and clear manner

Data helps companies make informed decisions. ElevateHR software ensures that once the salary advance has been processed,  both parties, employee and management receive a report detailing all the information regarding the salary advance. These reports help to determine; 

• How many employees have asked for salary advances during a given amount of time
• When employees tend to request for salary advances
• What category of employees tend to request for salary advances
• Trends around the period they ask for these advances
• The reasons employees are taking salary advances and whether the company can intervene

These automated reports generated by ElevateHR’s software help improve how a company takes care of its employees and inadvertently boosts productivity. 

To summarize, this is how the ElevateHR’s module works;

• Employee sends a salary advance request
• HR receives this request via the admin dashboard
• HR uses a checklist to either approve or deny the request
• Employee tracks the status of their request
• HR performs the action of either approving or denying the request
• Employee receives the notification of approval or denial on their app or in their email
• HR processes and disburses the salary advance funds
• Employee receives the funds
• A report is generated and shared with the employee and management

So say goodbye to manually navigating the salary advance process. Request for a demo of the newly launched salary advance module here!