Tanda Blog

Bryn Tardent-Powell

16 July 2020    |   

This guide explains how to lodge a tax declaration form, to the Australian Taxation Office (ATO) online without having to print, type, or scan a thing.  Firstly we describe the traditional method using the ATO business portal. Then, a new, faster, and easier method using ATO compliant digital onboarding software.    Option 1 – The traditional method via the ATO Business Portal An option to lodge the tax file number (TFN) Declaration form online via the ATO business portal has existed for some time.  While many employers still distribute paper forms to new employees, the ATO will now accept a digitally signed form which is a welcome advancement. This method of lodging through the ATO business portal still has major limitations not yet addressed by the tax office: ❌There are no digital “checks” available to reduce errors in the ATO digital form. ❌Paper forms are prone to manual entry errors. ❌Duplication of work is required to enter this data again into accounting or payroll software. ❌The ATO form is more complex than other methods available. To lodge directly through the ATO website you will need to have an ATO business portal account. Copies of the process and the digital version of the TFN Declaration form are located here.   Option 2 – The more efficient method using the ATO-compliant Tanda Onboarding tool This faster option to lodge a tax declaration form forms uses Tanda’s software which meets ATO compliance requirements and lodges forms directly.  Not only is this option faster, but it solves the major limitations of the traditional TFN Declaration form. The form is compliant with ATO ‘SBR’ requirements, meaning Tanda collects all the required information but using an easier format. The benefits of using Tanda Onboarding include: ✔️Inbuilt logic to pick up incorrect TFN numbers, and assist to catch common mistakes before they happen. ✔️The fastest method available by eliminating the need to double enter form responses. ✔️Automatically create the employee in MYOB or Xero Payroll systems to eliminate errors and save time. ✔️Tanda Onboarding is the simplest method available to collect the required information.    How it works: Send a link to Tanda Onboarding directly to the employee by email or text message  Instantly collect the receipt of the tax declaration form on completion by the employee Allow you to lodge the tax declaration form directly to the ATO with no data entry required Send the employee automatically to MYOB or Xero    Automate more than just the tax declaration form Tanda Onboarding also partners with accounting systems MYOB & Xero to provide automatic transfer of the details filled out in Tanda Onboarding to your new employee in your payroll file. Tanda Onboarding will still work and lodge the TFN Declaration with all other systems. This means you can not only collect all the required payroll documentation but also automatically create the new employee in MYOB or Xero with no manual entry required. Looking to get started with Tanda Onboarding? Sign up for a free Tanda trial account, and follow the guide to experience all the platform has to offer.

Tasmin Trezise

15 July 2020    |   

Most people never have to worry about the payroll compliance process required to get someone paid. It’s not a hugely riveting subject; staff go to work, they work, they get paid. However, as Fair Work’s list of big names failing to pay minimum entitlements continues to grow, we’re often left wondering why it is so hard to pay employees correctly.  What most don’t realise is that behind every pay run is a series of legal interpretations with varying degrees of complexity and ambiguity. Australia is routinely identified as one of the most complex countries to run payroll in, with workforce administration, payroll compliance requirements, and regulations identified as the major complicating factors. With each new wage rate transgression, I’m reminded of an old industry saying, “a good payroll officer is somebody nobody knows.” An understanding that attention is only paid to your payroll when there are errors, under-payments, or the pay is late. Far from magic, the time and expertise required to calculate pay could convince any seasoned mathematician to hang up their wand. In total, Australia has 122 Modern Awards with the average Award having between 180-200 individual rules. These rules specify pay rates for overtime hours during the week and weekend, overtime for RDO, public holidays, late-night shifts and employee classification, just to name a few. With so many complex rules, it’s easy to see why some of the best and most experienced in the business have found themselves out of the good graces of the Fair Work Commission.  It’s become increasingly clear over the last 12 months that meeting Fair Work’s requirements is becoming less and less feasible for your average Australian. If big business, backed by payroll teams with decades of experience can be caught out, what chance does your average Australian small business stand? For the past seven years, Tanda has made it their business to know the intricacies of payroll, building software that automates the increasingly complex entitlements put in place by the Fair Work Commission. Our award engine reduces the administrative burden of paying your staff correctly by managing the various rates and entitlements for you. Being smarter and more innovative is the only way to control labour spend in the productive, high-wage workplaces of the future. It’s time to use wage compliance management as a competitive edge. To put our award engine to the test sign up for a free trial of the system. 

Bryn Tardent-Powell

10 August 2020    |   

The manufacturing industry presently accounts for 5.6% of Australia’s economy. The industry is responsible for producing a wide range of products including food, beverages, tobacco, textiles, chemicals, machinery, and furniture and as such covers a large number of Australian workers. Although there is some variance, the majority of employees in these professions are covered under the manufacturing award. Despite a recent slowdown, industry prospects are looking up. The latest quarterly survey of industrial trends found that while COVID has heavily impacted the industry, many firms are able to see past current challenges and expect a return to normality in the near-term. The industry is facing challenges, the most significant of which is managing talent. This begins with an accurate and reliable payroll that balances labour expenses with profits.  What is the Manufacturing Award? The Manufacturing and Associated Industries and Occupations Award 2010 [MA000010] outlines the award for this industry. It covers all employers and employees throughout Australia who are involved in any manufacturing-related work. Examples of these occupations include engineering and manufacturing tradespersons and apprentices, laboratory technicians and testers, and locksmiths. Classifications and minimum award rates for an adult employee can be found below. However, there are exceptions that need to be taken into account. Using the manufacturing award is not always as easy as it appears.     Read more: Australian Manufacturing Back on Track: How to ride the sector’s trends Manually calculating manufacturing award rates Many business owners and managers manually compute manufacturing award rates through the P.A.C.T. Pay and Conditions Tool. Using this tool, you can look up the award rates for your employees based on their occupation. You can also use the leave and shift calculators. The more staff you have, the more time consuming and difficult this becomes. Payroll errors are a frequent occurrence for businesses who choose to manually calculate their employee’s entitlements, and these mistakes can be costly. For example, inaccurate calculations can result in compliance penalties, retroactive tax payments, and labour hours spent rectifying mistakes flagged by employees.  Read more: Taking Back Time: Solving the enduring wage theft problem in Australia Automatically calculating manufacturing award rates With many Australian business owners in manufacturing industries unable to manually calculate the increasingly complex award entitlements,  automatic award interpretation software has become the new industry standard. Within Tanda, our award engine automatically adds compliant pay rates to your rosters and timesheets, including base rates, overtime, allowances, and higher duties. All managed awards, including the manufacturing award, have built-in base rates that sync with payroll and update when Fair Work mandates change. This means that award rates are updated in accordance with all future Fair Work changes and birthdate rollovers for employees, keeping businesses compliant without constantly monitoring Fair Work’s site for updates to complex rule sets. To put our award engine to the test sign up for a free trial of the system. 

Bryn Tardent-Powell

28 July 2020    |   

In 2019, the Australian retail industry achieved a turnover of $AU329.6 billion, making it one of the largest industries in the country. There are almost 140,000 retail businesses in Australia, employing approximately 1.2 million people. This accounts for 10.7% of all employment, meaning a large number of Australians are covered under the retail award.  What is the Retail Award? The General Retail Industry Award [MA000004], is a comprehensive set of pay rules created and maintained by the Fair Work Commission. It advises employers of the minimum entitlements they must provide employees and covers the specific pay rates, allowances and rules relating to all employees working in the Australian retail industry. Examples of those covered under the award include employees working in food retailing, supermarkets, grocery stores, department stores, clothing and recreational goods retailing amongst other types of businesses. A full definition of the scope of the award can be found here under “3. Definitions and interpretations”. Below are the minimum rates for the various levels of employment. The current rule set came into effect on the 1st of July 2020. Additional changes are scheduled for the award on the 1st of February 2021, where employees will be required to revise their rates to reflect the updated entitlements.  Limitations of The Award System Australia has 122 Modern Awards, with the average Award having between 180-200 individual rules. These rules are extremely comprehensive, covering overtime hours for weekdays and weekends, RDO overtime, public holidays and late-night shifts. While the award system does provide an airtight set of instructions for employers, many are finding that the increasing complexity of entitlements is proving difficult to keep track of.  Historically, business owners and managers have used the Fair Work Commission’s calculator to manually look up entitlements for each employee, before entering the rates into their payroll system. However, the more staff you have, the more time consuming and complex this process becomes. A 2019 study by the Australian HR Institute revealed that 33% of Aussie businesses admitted to making errors on every single monthly pay run. With 241 individual rules and classifications within the General Retail Award, it’s no surprise that errors are a frequent occurrence.  Read more: Why is it so hard to pay people correctly in 2020? Automatically Calculate the Retail Award Rate With many Australian business owners unable to manually calculate the growing list of entitlements, automatic award interpretation software has become the new industry standard.  Within Tanda, our award engine automatically adds compliant pay rates to your rosters and timesheets, including base rates, overtime, allowances, and higher duties. All managed awards, including the retail award, have built-in base rates that sync with payroll and update on staff birthdays or when Fair Work mandates change. This means that award rates are updated in accordance with all future Fair Work changes and birthdate rollovers for employees, keeping businesses compliant without constantly monitoring Fair Work’s site for updates to complex rule sets. To put our award engine to the test sign up for a free trial of the system. 

Jess Golding

3 July 2020    |   

In a first for workforce software, leave management now has intelligent automation. We believe that intelligent automation will transform the way you run your business. Automation is already everywhere in Tanda. From simple functions like sending bulk rosters to all staff, to more complex operations, such as our Cognitive Rostering. Only Tanda automates the filling of leave hours. It does the job faster whilst still leaving you in control. Set-up your Autofill workflow in Settings > Time Off Autofill builds on leave management’s powerful integrations to Tanda’s award interpreter, rosters, mobile app, and more. It moves leave calculation beyond one-size-fits-all numbers to ease the labour of manual entry. When your employee puts in their leave request, Autofill does so much more than automatically put 7.6 hours per day.  Autofill automatically populates leave requests with days and times from regular hours of work or rosters. Your payroll officer gets an immediate calculation of leave hours based on these items. Tanda is already an industry leader for workforce management software and with Autofill, our product is even more powerful. Autofill for Leave moves leave calculation beyond one-size-fits-all numbers. Businesses want to eliminate hours of repetitive work without being robbed of control. Autofill automates the same steps every manager goes through to set exact leave hours, before handing back to them for final approval. Instead of doing it all manually, they just need to check and approve. Depending on how you process leave, choose to fill first from either Regular Hours of Work (RHW) or Rosters — with the other being a fall back if there is no data in the first step. As we build out RHW to work to fit more use cases, we recommend setting RHW as #1. Additional use cases can include: Full-Time staff working an average of 38 hours per week Fortnightly regular hours Minimum guaranteed hours  If the employee doesn’t have RHW entered in Tanda, we still recommend filling from RHW first. If Tanda does not detect RHW, the leave hours will still be filled from their roster. Important: If you’re filling from the roster you must check that the leave request only includes ordinary hours (e.g. does not include hours the employee would not have worked or that would have been overtime). Try Autofill now. At Tanda, we always wonder what it would take to reduce our customers’ workload. As compliance requirements continue to move into the digital space, Autofill will help you keep track of accurate leave hours without spending hours behind a screen. Try it on Tanda now.

Emerson Domingo

4 December 2019    |   

There is a pattern consistent in most industries. Companies that succeed are ones where frontline managers have influence in improving the execution of business strategy. Former Schering-Plough (now Merck & Co.) CEO Fred Hassan says frontline managers ‘represent an all-important feedback loop that allows the CEO to stay abreast of the latest developments in the business.’ At Tanda, we believe frontline managers need to be in the frontline — enabling their team to be their best selves. In the past 6 months, our product team has been working on making each task you do on Tanda quicker and easier. So you can use our software less and grow your business more. Here are 50+ features that do exactly that. 1. Tailor Tanda to your business needs with The Platform The Platform lets you customise your Tanda workflow. Using custom objects and custom fields, you can create new ways of storing and communicating information. No matter how big or small your team is, they are always informed. Learn more about The Platform > 2. Demystify part-time compliance by rostering from Regular Hours of Work Having a permanent part-time (PPT) staff is more cost-effective than a casual team. However, the administrative requirements of having PPT staff may be a discouraging factor for employing them. One of the most labour intensive requirements for managing PPT staff is rostering. Keeping track and manually implementing regular hours of work (or contract hours) in rosters can be exhausting — especially if it’s for an entire team. Rostering from Regular Hours of Work removes these administrative hurdles. Learn how to roster from Regular Hours of Work > 3. Brand-new, more powerful, more customisable rosters Our new, more powerful rosters have the same features you’re used to, but with more functionality on top. See what’s new > 4. Approve and edit timesheets from anywhere No need to stay behind a computer to go through your team’s timesheet. With the Tanda app (version 0.34.3 or newer), you can edit and approve timesheets from anywhere. See what else you can do on the mobile app >   5. Onboarding: Multiple contract uploads and welcome messages In the first days of your newest hire, a smooth onboarding is one of the best ways to ensure early success. One of the core parts of this process is signing a contract. The easiest way to do that is with Tanda’s onboarding offering. Learn more > 6. Customise leave by hiding leave balances and leave types This is helpful for leave staff cannot apply for (e.g. public holiday paid/not worked); less common leave types, such as long service leave; and types that are not commonly taken by your team, such as maternity leave for a majority-male staff. Learn more > 7. Pay overtime for work outside contract hours Learn more > 8. Key Alert: Maximum qualification hours reached A key alert can now notify managers if an employee will go over their qualification max hours. Learn more > 9. Roster edit history filters Filter roster edit history by staff and action. Learn more > 10. New Employee Navigation: See unavailability, leave, clock-ins, and other employee information in one place Everything about your employees is now all in the employee profile. Learn more >

Rosie Ramirez

4 June 2019    |   

“Staff members have good and bad days. We need to adjust. There will be times when there is a short deadline. We need to drive and lead because we are the team leader. There will be times when you’ve got the flexibility to take staff on a journey,” says leadership expert William Gooderson of PwC. Once a British Royal Engineers Major, William is a class unto himself. After leaving university in 2003, he spent the next 9 years leading troops in Europe and Afghanistan. What was first a job with 30 soldiers soon grew into missions with over 2,000 people involved. But his journey into challenging work had just begun. Throughout the next few years, he would continue working with people in various fields. Becoming a master of work in the service of others William Gooderson left the army and moved to Australia to work in construction and government. Soon after, he joined consultancy firms and began to specialise in leadership and coaching. Today, he brings all of these different experiences to the table. “We’re very fortunate within the military to spend a year learning leadership before you actually run any teams. So you learn a lot of experiences before you get a hands on,” he shares. “That’s where I’ve realised the lessons that I was getting or taking for granted through my military career would actually be very relevant to industry and the corporate mindset.” 1. Strive for a flexible coaching style “Industries spend less money on training its leaders than it does on any other area of development,” William lamented during his talk at the Workforce Success Conference last year on the Gold Coast. Indeed, there is little hope for an organisation if it doesn’t coach the next level of staffing. He encourages leaders to first determine how much time they can invest. “Do you have the time capacity and energy to take your staff on the journey? Or do you need to be more direct? [Are] there staff members struggling because you keep giving them direction and they’re not listening?” he asks. “Maybe they need actually to be given a bit more of a pointed approach to how they need to undertake things.” The key is staying flexible and adapting to how people are feeling. Read more: From Battlefields to Boardrooms: Finding Good Managers with William Gooderson 2. Track performance, give and take feedback Two-way communication is important for every organisation, regardless of the industry. Tracking performance without communicating is a clear waste of time and resources. And above all, there must be a way for employees to give feedback. “There is a real importance around […] the opportunity for staff to be able to give that feedback to their team leaders. If they can’t, the team leader can never learn where the staff is being challenged,” he says. “Without [the feedback loop] you aren’t really going to struggle to be an effective team leader an effective team member.” He adds that it’s impossible to get it right every time, but each mistake is a learning point that can be developed for next time. Read more: Actionable feedback from the front line 3. Use tech to bridge communication gaps “We now live in a very much a data-driven world where you can live and work in the global workspace,” he muses. Managers can take advantage of this and use it to do more face-to-face interactions. A telephone call or an email doesn’t have the ability to convey emotions. But he also reminds managers to balance it out with other aspects of the job. “It doesn’t have to be daily. We’re all busy. Your staff members are busy, the [operation] teams are busy, but there is nothing to stop you walking the floor on a Friday, or actually getting out and about. Drop by saying hi and make them feel like you’re actually listening,” he advises. Managers need to communicate well and often to achieve success. Read more: Four Ways to Keep your Managers on the Frontline Leadership is communication “You can’t just have communication on its own and expect it to work. You need to have an environment where people feel like they can communicate. You need to make the time to communicate. You need to provide opportunities and transparency. [You can’t just be] a one trick pony every now and again where you release a statement and expect everything to come back to it,” he advises. For William, communicating means listening as much as talking. It also means building a strong rapport that will make communication easier. Finally, he stresses taking care of the core leadership team that you work directly with. “They will know what’s going on the level below and the level below,” he notes. Regardless of how many people are in the team, the principles are the same. It’s the core leadership that bridges you to them. “Talk to them, work with them, understand them, and then it’s your job to trust them to do the same to their team,” he advises. “If you have good communication and good leadership then you will hear the problems. It will be communicated all the way through the chain.” Want to communicate with your staff better? Eager to train the next generation of leaders? Learn from William Gooderson and other topnotch speakers at the Workforce Success Conference on 26 July 2019. Get your tickets now!

Rosie Ramirez

23 May 2019    |   

John is 5 minutes late for work every day while his colleague Martha is late for 30 minutes once a week. Do these late clock ins really matter? For many businesses, they do. In shift work industries and frontline roles, frequent tardiness can mean disruption and loss of profit. Even just 10 minutes of being late accumulates over time and eats away at the bottom line.  But in a 2017 CareerBuilder survey, 29% of respondents said they came in late at least once a month. 49% blame the traffic for their tardiness, 32% blame it on oversleeping, while the rest blame bad weather, procrastination, and “too tired to get out of bed.” How can managers discourage lateness among employees? How to increase employee attendance Many traditional managers believe that harsh sanctions are the best way to eliminate lateness at work. However, sanctions lower employee morale. They can drive productivity down and result in a high turnover rate. That’s why at this year’s Workforce Success Conference, we are inviting students to propose ways to increase employee attendance in Australia. Read on to know more about the tried-and-tested ways to increase employee attendance. Get the chance to improve on these methods by signing up for the case competition today! An internship and cash prize awaits the winner. 1. Track time and attendance accurately The first step to making sure that proper clock ins and outs are observed is by tracking them accurately. Otherwise, your company will be exposed to a risk of time theft, or employees being paid for the hours they did not work. Lax monitoring systems make companies vulnerable. Manual time clocks are no longer reliable, as they are susceptible to time theft. Investing in cloud-based time and attendance software saves you time and energy on processing employee timesheets. Download a clocking system app for free and give it a try. Read more: Time Theft: Top 3 ways employees steal time and how to stop it 2. Address frequent lateness ASAP Feedback and coaching are important parts changing behaviour. Those who fail to meet time and attendance targets could be doing so for any number of reasons, such as single parenthood, chronic illness, or even financial instability. Understanding what they are going through is instrumental to helping them perform better. Managers should be able to empower employees to comply with their work hours. Schedule consultations with them to identify the issues and address them accordingly. Download and customise: Written warning – Late Attendance 3. Reward good employee attendance Deducting pay for frequent lateness is one solution and is a common one. But employee incentives for punctuality serve to underscore the importance of time and attendance in a more positive way. There are many ways managers have incentivised coming in on time. They require some work for managers, but the effect on morale and productivity cannot be understated. Here are some of the most frequently used strategies to increase employee attendance. Provide free breakfast once a month One popular way to reward punctuality is to provide free breakfast. This can be done once a month on a set day, or even more frequently, but on random days. Those who have good attendance will feel the benefits of coming in early, while those who don’t will start thinking about it. Give out tokens to multiple employees Gift cards, lunch vouchers, and company apparel cost little but are always appreciated. Keeping the rewards budget-friendly will allow you to give them out to more people and more often. It’s also a great way to keep attention on the program. Create a “Hall of Fame” for time and attendance Publicly recognise employees who consistently come in on time and do not have unexcused absences. It will boost their morale, and hopefully inspire others to follow suit. Give consistent performers time off Don’t think of this as an additional expense, because a consistent performer will have more than made up for it. This can be the high value reward given out during your end-of-year party. Include a plane ticket and hotel accommodations if you can afford it! Read more: Only a Matter of Time: Punctuality and attendance in multicultural workplaces Forge the workforce of the future Modern managers are people-centric. Many of them want to create a work culture built on trust, respect, and balance. When employees are constantly late to work, there are usually reasons that lie below the surface. Empowering them through attendance programs are more likely to increase morale and productivity. Sanctions and punishments for lateness are sometimes necessary, but there is plenty of room for creativity in this area of management. In the end, increasing employee attendance will benefit not just them, but also their team and the company as a whole.   Ready to forge the workforce of the future by increasing employee attendance? Form a team of 3-5 students and sign up today. A cash prize and internship awaits! We’ll email you more details and provide consultation once you sign up.

Jana Dee Reserva

15 July 2020    |   

Handling more than a hundred employees and keeping them happy and satisfied isn’t a walk in the park. It’s one thing to manage who you hold throughout the year. It’s a whole other challenge entirely to go through an extensive hiring and orientation process when you coordinate with some of the largest healthcare organisations in the country. Care Agency Services knows this well. It’s a Queensland-based staffing agency specialising in Aged Care and Disability, providing support staff to clients located in Brisbane, Ipswich, Caboolture, Logan, and the Gold Coast. ABOUT Care Agency Industry: Aged Care Size: 100+ staff Location: Australia (QLD) Care Agency Services (CAS) delivers high quality, qualified aged care professionals to some of the biggest not-for-profit clients across Southeast Queensland. CAS uses Tanda to onboard, roster, and record attendance, so they can provide fast, timely service every single time. At CAS, the recruitment team is tasked with onboarding hundreds of staff members per year. Because they work with some of the largest healthcare organisations in Australia, they need a system that can keep up with them as they scale. The Opportunity The clearest opportunity was in improving Care Agency’s onboarding process. Effective onboarding improves the bottom line. For some, the struggles come with the time it takes to complete everything. Care Agency Services were able to pinpoint their effort: according to HR and Recruitment Manager Chris Gleadhill, their onboarding process was “involved.” Steps Care Agency needed to take regularly to onboard include: Sending forms and documents, such as the tax file declaration, through the post Employees filling these out and sending them back through the post (which usually takes a week’s turnaround)  Manually enter details into CAS’ database Fill out tax information at the ATO. Steps 3 and 4 usually take approximately 30 minutes. The Solution Chris had used Tanda before in a previous role and recalled its “functional, easy-to-use” features. He then reached out and proposed the idea to use it for Care Agency Services as well. After implementation, Tanda’s paperless onboarding features brought the time it took for onboarding new employees down from 30 minutes to just 2 minutes.  “Our team is responsive and aims to get back to people within five minutes—which is what sets us apart from the market. Tanda helps streamline this process,” says Chris. CAS partnered with Tanda to improve their onboarding, rostering, and payroll processes. Take a look at the features they used: Onboarding Tanda’s digital onboarding involves sending new employees an online form that they fill out themselves, saving enormous amounts of manpower in the process Managers can receive comprehensive details such as birth dates, mobile numbers, bank details, ATO-approved tax declaration, and super choice. An employee profile is automatically created in Tanda and in their payroll system (MYOB) from the form details. Completing the ATO-approved tax declaration form gets sent directly to the ATO. Rostering Software It’s easier to track and manage time and attendance, accurately attributing time spent with multiple patients. Streamlines shift allocation process to keep response time within five minutes of client enquiry. Award Interpreter Ensures accurate pay through custom award rules, allowances, and pay rates that seamlessly integrate with payroll software. The Results 94% reduction in time spent onboarding Tanda’s digital onboarding tools streamlined the onboarding process and cut its time from 30 minutes to 2 minutes once implemented. Scalable software for all stages of growth Tanda’s simplicity and ease of use meant it could scale alongside the organisation. Care Agency saved two salaried positions while increasing clients and carers. Now, not only has Care Agency Services decreased onboarding times—but improving employee experience—it has also found a product partner that can accompany the business as it scales up and grows. “Tanda has the same capabilities regardless of scale. It’s simple, streamlined, and all digital. We don’t need to wait for the post, or handle too many components to get the job done,” says Chris.

Jana Dee Reserva

20 March 2020    |   

“To provide the type of healthcare our community deserves.” This is what Australia Health Alliance (AHA) promises to deliver since they opened their first clinic, the AHA Seaford Day and Night Clinic, in 1979. In 2015, they expanded and opened a new clinic, The AHA Seaford Meadows Day and Night Clinic. Every day, the clinics’ 27 staff and 20 doctors are servicing an average of 400 patients.  Each AHA staff works to make health services easily accessible to individuals and families in their community. They introduced online booking, which can be done 24/7 via mobile phones or tablet devices.  AHA streamlines clinic visits by enabling patients to book consultations online. While using technology is a step in the right direction, AHA needed a way to streamline their admin and workforce management, so they can focus more on delivering their promise.  Tending to payroll and other admin woes A typical day working in AHA clinics varies depending on role, but for Madeleine C., group accountant at AHA Clinic, her workdays are filled with different sorts of paperwork.  “A regular day at AHA involves a lot of data entry, paying invoices, reconciling accounts, generating reports, so having a good system in place is very important for me,” shared Madeleine.  When it comes to financial data, there have to be no grey areas. Madeleine’s day is spent making sure that all information is accurate, but it can be easier said than done when awards come into play.  “The biggest problem is always award interpretation. It would take us hours to gain clarification on one small section, especially for the health support services and nurses awards. It’s very complicated, so payroll was just very stressful,” admitted Madeleine.  Timesheet to payroll processing is one of the ways Tanda has helped AHA. Before using the platform, it takes the team one whole workday to process payroll. When Tanda was integrated into their process, it only took them half a day.  Among other things, Tanda has helped AHA with payroll processing and award interpretation. “We have utilised a lot of features in Tanda, but for me, the payroll integration is a huge one. I love how Tanda automatically feeds the correct pay information into Xero. That’s been a big help for me,” shared Madeleine.  Read more: Payroll Compliance: Solving the Underpayment Crisis Aside from payroll, Tanda has helped simplify other workforce management processes for them. “AHA was looking for something that would streamline our whole process, from rostering, wage tracking, to payroll. Even the management of staff leaves. We found that Tanda was able to offer that for us and we haven’t looked back since,” shared Gemma G., Senior Operations Manager at AHA.  Right now, the staff at AHA use the platform to quickly and accurately do tasks such as clocking in and out, rostering, filing and managing leaves, and payroll.  A tall order calls for a larger workforce and an automated system Running a healthcare facility is such a tall order. Each healthcare employee knows that there are high stakes that come with every patient interaction. It requires expertise, quick decision-making, and empathising with patients and their loved ones. A healthcare facility needs all hands on deck in providing the best quality of care to their patients. And inefficient admin practices or systems can be detrimental to that.  AHA recognised the need for a platform that can simplify complex processes so that they can focus more on their mission–and that is to “lead the way for convenient access to quality healthcare”.  Having a workforce management platform that covers all bases has been proving to be a smart move for AHA, especially now that they’re growing their workforce. “AHA is currently undergoing a large recruitment drive. We are in the very fast-growing area of Adelaide, so we’re currently working hard to recruit doctors,” shared Gemma.    Organisations that provide healthcare services are in a unique and challenging position today because of the COVID-19 pandemic. We recognise that healthcare frontliners need an extra helping hand right now. So we’re offering our platform for free to new sign-ups over the coming months. Sign up today and our Workforce Success team will gladly provide a personal, online walkthrough of our platform to help you get started.