Derry City & Strabane District Council

“Frontier Software provides a seamless transition to new pay rules with updates throughout the year. Help desk support is available from both a technical nature and for day-to-day administration of payroll.” 

Payroll Manager, Derry City & Strabane District Council

Derry City & Strabane District Council is one of eleven Councils within Northern Ireland responsible for a range of vital services for people and business. These include planning, waste and recycling services, building control and local economic and cultural development.

The Council felt constrained by the lack of flexibility in their old payroll system; it was not date based and required a lot of manual input, putting unnecessary pressures on the payroll team. Furthermore, the sickness scheme was a largely manual process, making it prone to errors. Frustrated by these limitations, the Council commenced their search for a payroll system that would provide much needed automation. A comprehensive tender specified the requirement to harmonise payroll and HR processes and a number of high quality responses were received. After a very competitive tendering process, Frontier Software’s CHRIS payroll system was selected.

A big win was the software’s date driven capability allowing changes at any time. This enabled forward planning and less pressure at peak/ busy periods such as year end. The Council’s Payroll Manager has no hesitation in recommending the software and is always happy to demonstrate the practical day to day functions that are so beneficial; in particular management of occupational sick pay, year to date and prior years pay history and timesheet input.

The Council also required the programming of an existing bonus system into CHRIS. The design proved very successful and was much easier to use than the old system. The Payroll Manager said: “this demonstrated the software’s flexibility and the Frontier consultant, with vast payroll experience, was able to suggest a lot of adaptations...having a consultant on hand removed a lot of the pressure for the payroll team”. Adding, “Throughout our partnership with Frontier, we’ve had no security breaches, the system meets our strict audit guidelines and regular updates ensure compliance with regulations. After many years, we are still happy with the service from Frontier Software”