 In this presentation we will discuss payroll ethics and practices. Payroll is going to be a subset of accounting and within the accounting field like any type of profession, accounting being a profession and payroll being a profession in and of itself as a subsection and of its own right. And any profession has to deal with some type of information that's not even between the individuals involved. Meaning the person that is processing payroll may have more information than the people other people involved that are dealing with payroll and therefore the likelihood of some type of fraud or some type of problem happening without it being detected is higher. Therefore the professions in general professions usually happen when there's type of this type of information type of information that's more specialized and payroll is going to be a definitely area of specialization where we need some type of regulations within the profession in order to make sure and reduce the types of problems that could result within the payroll processing. The AICPA or American Institute of Certified Public Accountants list out some responsibilities for accountants in general some guidelines. One has to do with responsibility. The accountant must maintain the confidentiality of personal records which of course applies highly to payroll being an area that's going to have more information in terms of a personal nature, personal records, information like social security numbers that we need to keep in confidentiality. Then we've got the public interest the accountant must always perform his or her duties in the best interest of the public and the company stockholders in the company stockholders. Now that's going to have to do with of course if we have in our objective not being a personal objective but being as acting as agents for the company in order to make sure the company represents and shows the financial data well not just for the company but for the users of the financial data and that's going to be typically the shareholders and that to the public as well. So we want to make sure that our goals and our objectives when we think of the profession is in in alignment with that for the external users and if we're acting as that being our in case then we're acting in a way that's typically good for the profession in general. We have integrity which has to do with the accountant's behavior must be honest and beyond reproach at all times so integrity is going to have to do with certain types of things to make sure that when we look independent both in appearance and in practice as much as possible and therefore we can say that you know there's reliance on the numbers the more integrity there is in the profession there's more reliability in the in product that being the financial statements and all of this with payroll and the financials of course has to do with trust and you need to have that factor when dealing with the financial statements and dealing with accountants because it adds value both to the individuals to the profession and to the in product being the financial statements and the payroll. Then we have objectivity and independence the accountants must be able to perform his or her duties without pressure from supervisors. Now of course we're going to be working within an accounting field and we're going to have of course supervisors and whatnot but we need to maintain some level of independence we want to make sure that people that are critical to the decision making process don't feel pressure to do things that they believe are not you know ethical or not of the ethical responsibility of the in product that we're trying to make the financial statements or would be in such a way that would be pressured to do something that they think would not be in alignment with some of our other responsibilities principles including responsibility and public interest and integrity so we want to make sure that they have that certain level of objectivity because that objectivity leads to the trust leads to integrity leads to the public interest leads to responsibility and then we're going to have the due care we want to make sure that the accountant must remain current with regards to professional development and evolving legislations so and part of that of course is is within the profession where whether we're in a payroll profession or a certified public accountant a certified public accountant is going to need that continuing education and when we think about these skills involved here and that specialized knowledge there we need to both have integrity and we need to have that responsibility and that objectivity but all of that doesn't do any good we don't still we can't still have the trust unless we know what we're doing unless we have the knowledge in the first place so most of the professions end up themselves whether we think of a medical profession the accounting profession a payroll profession a legal profession there's really at least you can break it down to two things that you want from these type of professionals if you go into a doctor a lawyer accountant payroll you want to one know that they know what they're doing and that has to do with due care you want someone and that has to do with any profession typically having a minimum standard typically having some type of test that needs to be gotten to and typically needing to renew that information given the fact that things change in these professions laws change medicine changes the accounting profession dealing with laws change in particular payroll law so we need to make sure that we have the the current information that's what we want when we go to professional no matter who the professional is and two we want to be able to rely on them notice the rest of these basically has to do with uh reliability this one has to do with do we do they have the skills needed do they know what to do do i am i talking to someone who's going to be able to cure me or someone that can help me better myself if i'm talking to a medical doctor i'm talking to someone that's going to be able to help me illegally do they have the skills to do that and then we want to make sure that their perspective is the same are they acting responsibly are they in the public's interest are they acting basically as my agent rather than in their own personal interests which may be counter to my interest do they have the integrity do they have that objective objectivity and independence in order to act freely and give me advice that they think is best rather than feeling pressure from on some outside source to give advice that isn't as good when discussing the practical components of payroll how are we going to implement payroll and some of the things that we need to keep on on top of in terms of our payroll processing and being able to to know the current topics within payroll had to do things with like direct deposits and electronic payments and keeping up with new laws things like time keeping how are we going to keep up with the time keeping how are we going to record the time keeping what type of database system is going to be put in place what kind of separation of duties are we going to have between the workers in order to implement that time information we also have different locations as the world is becoming more connected we're going to have employees that are going to be in different states different countries and that's going to add to a level of complexity in terms of how are we going to connect all this stuff together and how are we going to deal with the different laws and regulations we also note that payroll as the laws change and grow are going to be it's more of a component that's not really in and of itself although it's becoming more of a profession it also reaches out into other types of areas within the business including of course like human resources and in terms of managerial planning so we need to make sure that we have that specialization in order to know what's specifically needed in terms of the payroll practice and we also need to know how the payroll practice is being integrated and used and is part of different areas within the business and be able to work with those different areas the human resources with the planning portion for management