Global Payroll

How Papaya Global Teched-Up the Payroll Space

Global payroll in the modern age is a technological process with many moving parts all working together in the background. We break down the various elements and how they contribute to fast, accurate, and compliant payroll every pay cycle.

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Written by

Alex Margolin

Last Update Jul 24, 2023

Key Takeaways

The Papaya Platform is an end-to-end payroll and payments solution that centralizes global payroll processes
It utilizes technologies like OCR, RPA, and ETL to standardize and integrate payroll data into a recognizable format
Papaya offers accurate payroll calculations, compliance checks, and seamless cross-border payments, providing a streamlined and user-friendly experience

The Papaya Platform, also known as the Papaya OS, is an end-to-end payroll and payments solution – from onboarding to cross-border payments – through a single dashboard. It supports all types of workers (payroll, EoR, and independent contractors), merges all the siloed data streams, produces a global view, and automates workflows.

It accomplishes all of this by utilizing various technologies throughout the payroll payments process.

StairwAI to heaven

The first step of the payroll process is pulling data from multiple sources. Payroll data is rarely homogeneous; each country has its own regulations, tax codes, language, and sometimes currency, which means the line items in payslips differ from place to place. In addition, some of the relevant data – time and attendance reports, PTO, expenses, commissions, etc. – is delivered via digital images, such as scanned documents and image-only PDFs.

This is where a manual payroll process – or software that dates back to the 1990s (as most does) – becomes a real disadvantage. Making sense of all this data by hand in multiple locations becomes increasingly untenable.

The Papaya platform uses Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software to “read” data that arrives as digital images. OCR software is sometimes called the “eyes” in a technology suite because it detects letters on the image and converts them to text files, essentially allowing computers to read pictures of text.

After the OCR software converts the incoming data to text files, they need to be standardized. This is done by Robotic Process Automation (RPA), a software bot utilized to automate processes and improve workflows. In combination with AI, RPA bots can be taught to improve their performance and take on new tasks, such as onboarding employees, processing invoices, and producing summary reports.

Once the data has been standardized, a data integration process called Extract, Transform, Load (ETL) is used to consolidate it into the Papaya OS, where it can be translated to a recognizable format – the Papaya language standard. Then, the platform utilizes accounting codes to sort out all the payroll components: salary, health insurance, pension, etc. The result is a simple ontology of payroll elements that allows employers to know exactly how much is spent on each line item.

Data sync in record time

When all the payroll elements have been mapped, it’s time for Papaya’s accuracy engine to kick in. The way it works is simple: the platform has a built-in cost structure for each employee, constructed during the onboarding process, with changes updated each month during the “salary updates” step of the payroll run. This allows for verification of the current data and ensures that it matches the expected costs. If there’s a discrepancy in any line item, the engine will spot it and send an alert.

Completing the picture is Papaya’s compliance engine. With local labor laws, tax codes, and benefits regulations in more than 160 countries baked into its system, this automated feature can detect any compliance gap and alert the payroll manager in time, ensuring your company is always on the right side of the law.

When all payroll data has been collected, converted, and calculated, another essential Papaya feature kicks in. That’s when all the workforce management tools used in most offices, like HCM and ERP, become part of the process. Papaya connects them all, bringing all workforce data together into a single unit.

The integrations are simplified through Papaya’s advanced technology, like the HCM Cloud Connector, which makes it easy to sync all HR data throughout the system. Without the Cloud Connector, the process can take months or even a year to implement. But for Papaya, it takes a single day.

A consumer-like payment experience

The final step of the payroll process is, of course, paying your employees on time in their required currency. Papaya Global can deliver seamless, compliant, and secure cross-border payments, making it the only provider currently offering embedded international payroll payments. Moreover, it guarantees that all mandatory payments, including to tax authorities and benefits providers, are made within 72 hours – the fastest delivery on the market.

Papaya’s payment execution platform allows companies to pay their entire workforce simultaneously in more than 160 countries – in one click. Additionally, our innovative dry-runs and KYC processes, and the fact that we built our own payments network, provide unprecedented visibility and control over the entire payroll payment process.

The streamlined process is possible because of Papaya’s unified approach, bringing payroll and payments together into a single, fluid process. From marking payments as payroll, through identifying the ultimate debtor, to our advanced virtual wallet capabilities – we integrate it all into your payroll processes.

In other words, just like our whole platform, it’s both useful and easy to use. And that’s a recipe for success in any industry.