Going Global

by

Jeff Fenter & Alex de Lorraine

California Payroll Conference September 11 and 12, 2014

Bit of Bio

Jeff Fenter

Jeff Fenter is the Senior Manager of Global Employment Tax at Google Inc. and

responsible for compliance, strategy and audit defense in 57 countries. Previous

to joining Google, Jeff was a Director of Employment Tax Consulting at PwC. Jeff

has over 18 years of experience as a employment tax professional responsible

for developing and implementing strategies to manage the complications of

domestic and global payroll and employment tax issues.

Alex de Lorraine

Alex de Lorraine is Head of North America Payroll Operations at Google Inc. and

Motorola Mobility. Previous to joining the payroll department he was managing

Global Invoice Operations for Google’s European, Middle Eastern and African

entities. Alex has over 12 years of experience developing and implementing

strategies, improving complex processes, managing projects and operations.

Going Global

Global Employment Tax & Compliance

Jeff Fenter

California Payroll Conference September 11 and 12, 2014

Global Tax - Environment

US based corporations/businesses growing outside of the US

Financial needs of governments

New legislation and taxes

Increased audit activity

Overall focus on Risk and Governance

Primary Areas of Tax Compliance

Accuracy Timeliness

Payment of

Taxes /

Remittances

Filings &

Returns

Withholding &

Taxation

Who is responsible for tax &

compliance?

Who is Responsible?

Who is Accountable?

The person assigned the work

Who is Consulted?

Who is Informed?

The person who makes the final

decision and is the ultimate owner

The person who needs to be

consulted before the final decision

The person who must be informed

that a decision has been made

Structuring a Global Tax Department

Centralized

Decentralized

Central management with local delivery

Shared Service

Center?

Co-Sourcing?

Tax Centers?

Global Tax – Organizational Design

Considerations / Questions Common

denominator

Who will you interact with STAKEHOLDERS

What services will you provide SERVICES

How will you interact with stakeholders CHANNELS

How will the business operate PROCESSES

What metrics and data will you rely on INFORMATION

What systems will you use TECHNOLOGY

How will you be structured ORGANIZATION

What resources and skills are needed PEOPLE

Where will you be located LOCATIONS

Tax – People, Process, Technology

People Roles:

Governance

Source of knowledge (SME)

Managing law and regulation changes

New Programs implementation

Understanding and managing tax authorities

Audits and audit strategy

Communications and reporting out

Vendor management

Tax – People, Process, Technology

Process Roles:

Record retention

Exposure analysis and risk assessment tracking and mgmt.

Change management

Audit management

Technology Roles:

Payroll process & intakes

Benefits process & intakes

HR process & intakes

Monitoring processes

Challenges

Who is responsible for compliance and how does that interact with tax?

Tax and compliance is impacted by HR, Fiance, Payroll, Compensation, Legal, and many more that have opinions, concerns, and exposure related to tax compliance

Is tax a “consultant” or is tax a “decision maker”?

Are roles and responsibilities clearly defined? Globally vs. Regionally?

Are relationships strong and working?

Are skills and resources better served at the local location vs. a regional or global location

People – recruitment, training, retention

Technology or lack of technology

Thank you for your attention

Going Global

Global Payroll Operations

Alex de Lorraine

California Payroll Conference September 11 and 12, 2014

Automating Source to Gross

Original Business Problem

Our Solution: gPayroll

Quick Demo

Impact

Remaining Gaps/Longer Term Vision

Discussion

Problem: Cycle Time

Why did we bother?

Extensive manual processes required to prepare input files for 33

different EMEA PSPs and do 100% validation and reconciliation

Related Issues

Data quality was fragile - both inputs and outputs – exclusive

reliance on manual diligence

Insufficient controls – could easily forget a file or step

Downstream Effect

Stale data

Delayed one-time payments

Poor employee experience, especially for new hires

Our solution: gPayroll

Allows us to import all pay-impacting source files

Converts data into local currency as needed

Parses files by country as needed

Merges & Transforms data into a format our PSPs can consume

Executes validation routines on this data to flag erroneous records

Enables review & auditable correction of input errors/warnings

Provides a control point to ensure all required files are uploaded

Zips and encrypts files prior to them being sent to PSPs

Reconciles return files from PSPs against inputs

Serves as an archive for all payroll inputs in prior pay periods

Quick Demo

Demo

gPayroll - The Homepage

gPayroll - Entity Selection

gPayroll – Germany Home

gPayroll – Pay cycle overview

gPayroll – Upload Data

gPayroll / Validations

gPayroll – Validations cont.

gPayroll – Merge Outputs

gPayroll – Encrypt and Send

gPayroll - Reconciliation

gPayroll – Reconciliation cont.

gPayroll – Reconciliation Errors

gPayroll - Archive

Impact

Shaved off 5 days from our processing cycle.

4 days on the source to gross side.

1 day on the reconciliation side.

In Ireland in first month live (Nov’13), gPayroll allowed us to include:

67 new hires

80+ job changes, and

300+ bonuses which would otherwise have been pushed to Dec payroll.

We now have the tool live in 55 countries for some portion of the

payroll process. We are now continuing increasing the usability

including integrating a task management workflow.

What impact did gPayroll have?

Shaved off 5 days from our processing cycle.

4 days on the source to gross side.

1 day on the reconciliation side.

In Ireland in first month live (Nov’13), gPayroll allowed us to

include:

67 new hires

80+ job changes, and

300+ bonuses which would otherwise have been pushed to

Dec payroll.

We now have the tool live in 55 countries for some portion of the

payroll process.

What's next?

Establish direct interfaces with all source systems

Leverage return files from PSPs for global adhoc reporting

Provide global consistency of output files where our PSPs cannot (GL Feed, Global Banking, Stock Recon Tool, etc)

Organize data by employee to create a powerful admin tool for the payroll customer support team

Incorporate task/ workflow/ compliance management so that there is one central hub for all operational activities in Payroll

Create a management dashboard to improve operational oversight

Enable secure file transmission/download access for PSPs

Discussion

How do your cycle times and business cutoffs compare to Google’s?

How does your company handle source to gross file prep?

Still manual? Using an aggregator? More accommodating PSPs? Custom interfaces to PSPs? Other home-grown tools?

What level of reconciliations do you perform and using what tools?

Eyeballing? Excel? Or None - It’s the PSP’s job to get it right the first time?

Do you have a a global reporting solution?

Do you have a task management/checklist solution?

How do you conduct research when responding to employee queries?

If we open-sourced gPayroll, would you be interested in using it and contributing to it’s development?

Thank you for your attention