If you are finding the formalities of employing a domestic worker a chore, you will welcome these inexpensive websites that keep records and make payments for you.
Since legislation was changed to bring domestic workers into the fold of protected employees, the new obligations placed on employers have generated a great deal of paperwork. Employers have to pay Unemployment Insurance Fund (UIF) contributions on behalf of their domestic workers, and they have to issue detailed payslips showing earnings and deductions as well as any in-kind payments and overtime.
In addition, employers have to provide a contract of employment and a certificate of service when domestic workers leave their employ. In between, they have to keep year-to-date figures of their employees' earnings and deductions and a record of any leave owed, and be able to show these to their employees when asked.
UIF legislation covers workers employed for more than 24 hours a month in your home, in any capacity. As an employer, you have to register with the UIF and supply monthly information about your workers' earnings. Failure to do so could result in a fine of R5 000.
To ease the burden of all these formalities, at least four websites are offering payroll services to employers of domestic workers. For a small monthly fee, you can save yourself a lot of bother and ensure that you keep within the law. These websites enable you to enter and store your worker's personal and pay details and to generate the necessary payslips. In some cases, you can instruct the website to email this data to you, while in other cases you must print it off the webpage.
The sites also offer to take care of your UIF commitments. They calculate the amounts you owe, deduct them from your bank account and hand them over to the fund, together with all the necessary paperwork.
And these services include ensuring you have the necessary records, should you need them in the future.
Insight IT Solutions, which specialises in web-enabled payroll and human resource software services, has developed UIF Solutions ( www.uifsolutions.co.za).
You can arrange to have payslips emailed to you on the first and the 20th of the month and for the UIF contributions to be paid automatically. If you need to adjust a payslip, because, for example, your employee worked overtime, you can do so on the website.
In addition, the site offers the following services:
- Registration with the UIF, at no cost, and the payment of any outstanding amounts.
- Inclusion of pension or provident fund and medical scheme contributions on your employee's payslip.
- Recording of loans to employees, with deductions for repayments reflected on payslips.
- Calculation of pay and UIF that takes into account variances in the number of weeks in a month - you only need to enter details that change, for example, if you employee takes a loan or works overtime.
- The ability to programme in mandatory annual wage increases.
- The drawing up of contracts of employment and certificates of service.
- Recording of annual, sick and family responsibility leave on payslips.
- Access to an employee's past records online for up to three years, as required by law.
- Logging of any transgressions by your domestic worker - for example, absenteeism without notice, late arrival, abuse or misuse of property, unsatisfactory work, refusal to carry out a legitimate instruction and so on. The site then recommends appropriate action based on Commission for Conciliation, Mediation and Arbitration (CCMA) guidelines - for example, the issuing of a letter of warning. Then you can print a disciplinary charge sheet, which you can give to your employee. Subsequent recommendations will take into account the earlier transgressions and you will always have an online record of your employee's transgressions and the steps you took.
- Access to all legislation relevant to you as an employer of a domestic worker.
Bruce van Wyk, a director of Insight IT Solutions, says the website will soon enable you to keep track of all the leave due to your employee, and see how much the balance of the leave is worth in cash.
The company is also considering a facility to enable you to pay your employee's wages straight into his or her bank account.
UIF Solutions charges R19 a month for all these services for three workers. Alternatively, you can pay a discounted annual fee of R199. The fee for each additional worker is R12 a month or R144 a year.
EEZIWorks, a payroll, human resources, e-recruitment and lifestyle management company, has set up a webpage called EEZIDomestic ( www.eezidomestic.co.za) for employers of domestic workers.
Payslips are generated as PDF files to ensure that they cannot be tampered with. This means you need an Adobe Acrobat reader to open them, and you can download Adobe Acrobat from the website.
You can arrange for the payslips to be emailed to you weekly or monthly, and set up regular payments to the UIF. The site also offers the following services:
- Registration with the UIF at no cost;
- An online facility to update your personal details or the personal and pay details of your worker;
- Ability to record and review the leave your employee takes;
- Management of savings plans and loans that must be deducted from your employee's pay;
- Email updates of changes to the law;
- Employee interview guidelines;
- Sample contracts;
- Documents to assist you with leave requests, pay increases and disciplinary action, for example, a warning letter, against your employee; and
- Records of payslips and UIF paid for five years.
The site also offers assistance with CCMA procedures. Email support is included in the monthly fee, which is R25 for one domestic worker, R45 for two, R65 for three and R85 for four workers. You can also arrange a one-on-one consultation with EEZIWorks in a major centre for R350.
David Zulch, of EEZIWorks, says new services are planned, including a webpage on which jobseekers and employers can advertise and information on dealing with HIV/Aids in the workplace.
Cybertek, a company that provides internet technology to businesses, has a website called UIF Direct ( www.uifdirect.co.za).
Here you can record your banking and personal details and the salary details of your employee. UIF Direct will then register you with the UIF, at no cost, and will correspond with you via email regarding the payslips you need (weekly or monthly, for example) and whether any deductions should be included. Payslips are emailed as Word documents on the 25th of each month. And your UIF payments will be taken care of by debit order monthly or quarterly.
You can get back-copies of payslips and UIF payments for three years at no extra charge, and you can download a copy of an employment contract.
UIF Direct charges R30 a month or R70 a quarter per domestic worker.
icanonline ( www.icanonline.co.za) is an online banking, shopping and financial products website set up jointly by Nedbank and M-Web.
Services on the site include a UIF Manager, but this is available only to icanonline clients. To become a client, you need to set up an online bank account with a deposit of at least R80.
To use the UIF Manager, you need to be registered with the UIF and have a UIF number. Then you can access the UIF Manager from the iConsole menu. In the UIF Manager, you can enter the details of as many domestic employees as you want and generate online payslips, which can be printed from the site. The UIF you owe will be included on the payslips and you can then request that this payslip be used to generate a UIF payment from your icanonline bank account.
You cannot arrange for payslips and UIF payments to be generated automatically, but you can request that an email reminder be sent to you each month.
In addition, the site offers:
- To keep a record of the leave your employee has taken (but not the total due or any balances);
- A click-through to sample contracts on the Department of Labour's website; and
- A list of frequently asked questions about UIF.
There is no additional monthly charge for using the UIF Manager, but icanonline bank accountholders are charged a fixed monthly fee that includes five free online transactions. If your UIF payment is one of these five free online transactions, you will not pay anything, but if you have used more than five transactions, the fee is R2 (excluding VAT) per transaction.
This article was first published in Personal Finance magazine, 2nd Quarter 2004. See what's in our latest issue