Get Full Government Meeting Transcripts, Videos, & Alerts Forever!
Get email alerts on the Payroll Implementation topic
No spam. Unsubscribe anytime.
Bourbon County sets Nov. 3 deadline for clerk to deliver payroll records after vendor warns of delay risk
Summary
After weeks of implementation work with payroll vendor Emerson & Company, commissioners set a Nov. 3 deadline for the county clerk to provide required payroll and tax documents. Vendor representatives told the board delays would threaten continuity and lose the benefit of onboarding work already done.
The Bourbon County Commission set a Nov. 3 deadline for county clerk staff to provide documents needed to complete a payroll system conversion after a tense exchange over timing and responsibility. The board approved the date in a motion following a presentation by Tim Emerson, managing member of payroll vendor Emerson & Company, who said the company was prepared to process the county’s first payroll in mid-November if outstanding records arrived promptly.
Emerson told the commission his implementation team had completed training and set up in the vendor’s PayEntry time-management system and had sent invitations for employees to create accounts. He said outstanding items — including proof of Kansas withholding tax registration, wage-and-total reports for recent pay runs, a declaration page for workers’ compensation rates, and employer policies governing accruals and overtime — were “vital” and ideally needed by the end of the meeting day to keep the project on schedule. “We are on target for the first payroll to be processed the week of Nov. 10 for the Nov. 14 check date,” Emerson said, adding that missing items risked losing the historical continuity the county could capture if the conversion occurred this year.
County Clerk Susan Walker told the board her office has competing priorities, including ongoing election work, and said some documents would take time to assemble. Commissioners expressed frustration at what several described as a protracted implementation timeline that began this summer. After discussion the commission adopted the Nov. 3 deadline by motion; commissioners said they would revisit the matter and consider other options if the materials were not delivered by that date.
The board’s action is a deadline for administrative documents and does not itself alter personnel policies. Emerson said the vendor would continue to support the county implementation and reengage if the timeline shifted, but warned repeated delays would require re-onboarding and could increase costs. Commissioners directed staff to follow up, and the vendor to provide a deliverables checklist to the clerk and to commissioners. The motion passed by voice vote.
The implementation conversation included explanations of software permissions and time-sheet editing. Emerson and a vendor trainer, Cassie, described how the platform can be configured to allow employee edits to timecards or to restrict edits to supervisors. They said best practice is to lock post-punch edits so supervisors perform corrections, but that the county had asked for an ‘open’ configuration and the vendor had implemented training and supervisory approval workflows accordingly.
The board did not vote to cancel the Emerson contract. Instead commissioners set the Nov. 3 operational deadline and asked for a written list of outstanding items and progress reports from vendor and clerk staff.
Commissioners requested the clerk provide the listed documents to Emerson by Nov. 3 and to report back to the commission if items could not be provided on that schedule.
