Uniqlo

Retailers need to stay flexible and agile throughout the year to stay and top, but this is more important than ever in the run up to Christmas. With popular high street stores seeing footfall skyrocket over the festive season, employing extra staff is often a necessity, but with this added help brings added administrative burdens.

Uniqlo is Japan’s leading clothing retail chain and Uniqlo UK has operated since 2002. In ten years, the UK subsidiary has grown to 450 employees within 10 branches and a Head Office based in London.

Because of the global HR and Time & Attendance software, implemented by their Global Head Office in Japan, a key requirement for Uniqlo UK was for the information from both the HR and Time & Attendance systems to populate their payroll system and prevent re-keying of information. 

With the introduction of Real Time Information (RTI) also on the horizon, having payroll software which is compliant with this new legislation is vital. RTI is viewed as the biggest change to payroll since PAYE was introduced in 1944 and will affect over 1.4 million businesses from April 2013.

Payroll at Uniqlo UK is looked after by Payroll Manager, Michael Wallbridge, who comments, “I process the payroll for all our UK stores so particularly at Christmas, when we take on another 200 employees, I need the process to be as quick and seamless as possible.”

In 2007, payroll software solution Earnie IQ from IRIS Software Group was deployed and configured so that the hours employees have worked are pulled through from the Time & Attendance system to populate the payroll while employee data such as ID number and name and address are all transferred to Earnie IQ from the HR system. 

Wallbridge adds, “Being able to get data into Earnie from both our HR and Time & Attendance systems is a huge time saver. When I do need help the support team are very good and I know they are always on hand to give friendly knowledgeable assistance.” 

Wallbridge regularly needs to provide information on things such as staff turnover and employee costs to Area Managers, Finance, HR and the Global Head Office in Japan and uses the Quick Report Writer within Earnie IQ on a daily basis to do this.   

“In my eighteen years in payroll I have never had a reporting tool that is as quick and easy to use as the one provided with the software – it couldn’t be simpler to use. Not only that, reports can be printed, exported to Excel or turned into a PDF...what more could you ask for?” 

For a free demonstration of Earnie IQ   please click here or e-mail sales@earnie.co.uk