Board, finance staff agree to four business days for payroll time sheets after compliance dispute

Board members and central finance staff debated a new timing requirement for delivering employee time sheets to county payroll, then agreed to try a four-business-day timetable as a compromise.

Central finance staff member Daisy Denton told the board that county finance had asked for time-sheet materials much earlier than the district’s current practice. Board members and payroll staff explained that school principals and payroll processors typically deliver time-sheet notebooks to finance around the third business day of the month; bank processing for payroll requires files by roughly the 10th of the month.

Board members said the county had proposed a one-business-day requirement that payroll staff called infeasible. After discussion of holidays, weather disruption and staffing constraints, members and staff agreed they could aim for four business days before the 10th to allow the district and county to meet bank deadlines. Board members said the four-business-day target is an operational compromise and still must be adopted through the financial management committee and into written procedure to reach formal compliance.

Clarifying details from the meeting: principalsand payroll administrator Amanda Jenkins currently organize time sheets for hundreds of employees; on some months notebooks arrive on the third or fourth business day due to storms or other delays. Board members asked for flexibility in months with holidays or severe weather and instructed finance staff and payroll to work together to set recurring deadlines and a process to flag months when extra time is needed.

Next steps: board members asked central finance to bring a formal policy or procedure to the financial management committee for adoption; staff and board agreed to monitor whether the four-business-day practice is operationally feasible and return to the committee if it is not.