To Meet the Demands of an Evolving Payroll Process, Vitruvian Solutions Unveils Evention Hospitality Payroll Software

Due to a dynamic and demanding workforce, complex labor contracts and increased accounting compliance standards, the payroll process for the hospitality industry is evolving. Vitruvian Solutions has spent time analyzing this changing process and offers a new software solution, Evention, to manage payroll with a focus on the complexities of wage calculations and gratuity distribution.

(PRWEB) June 20, 2007 -- The hospitality industry is finding that employees and labor contracts are becoming more demanding. With a competitive employment market and demanding labor contracts, employees expect to be paid accurately and at increasingly shorter intervals. In discussions with a number of hotels in the Chicago area, Vitruvian Solutions has found that the days of bi-weekly payroll may be short lived as staff push for a weekly payroll process. Employers must now meet this demand and ensure that employees remain satisfied with the integrity of their paycheck while balancing what has traditionally been a time consuming process to calculate wages and distribute gratuities.

The Hyatt Regency Chicago has benefitted tremendously from Evention

As employees' demands increase so do that of the government, making audit-ready documentation a cornerstone of any business process. In larger organizations, Sarbanes-Oxley compliance is now integral to daily operations. Smaller organizations are also adopting these regulations as a "best-practice" and to allow for ease of mergers, IPOs, etc. With payroll data being sensitive and complex, an audit trail from initial time sheets through payroll checks is vital. This audit requirement can hinder a payroll process if not implemented correctly, but can serve as a powerful tool if done right.

With the recent growth in the hospitality industry, employee turnover impacts the entire event payroll process. Due to the high turnover rate in the industry, the payroll process must be able to easily replace employees, and in some cases even allow for sharing of employees between hotels under the same management company. Turnover in the hotel accounting department also requires that the complexity of the payroll process is managed by effective systems and that the departure of key accounting personnel does not negatively impact the payroll process.

To meet the payroll needs of the hospitality industry, Vitruvian Solutions announces the release of Evention 2.0. This is the latest version of their Microsoft Front Runner award winning software that streamlines event payroll for organizations with complex wages and gratuities. Evention enables event administrators to take control of their event payroll by interfacing managers, employee data, payroll data, and event information in a central location that is accessible across a company's intranet. As event managers select employees that work each event, gratuity, wages, and corkage are tallied according to tasks performed. Payroll administrators have instant access to compensation data and can generate payroll detail with the click of a button.

Evention has been developed to handle the complex scheduling and wage and gratuity calculations commonly seen in the event service industry and to do so in a straightforward, easily-maintainable manner. Leveraging the latest technologies, Evention directs payroll data to users with optimal speed allowing managers to spend more time managing their employees and less time with tedious paperwork and data entry.

Evention benefits hotels, caterers, convention centers, casinos, and cruise ships by:

• Streamlining the payroll process and allowing accounting resources to focus on value-added tasks. By implementing Evention, the payroll management time is greatly reduced with significant annual savings. The event managers and accounting department work from a common system, with a centralized database, allowing critical data to be accessible real-time across departments. "The Hyatt Regency Chicago has benefitted tremendously from Evention," said Dan McMenamy, Director of Accounting - Hyatt Regency Chicago. "The user friendly application allowed us to reduce our accounting staff by ½ person making it possible to realize a payback of less than 2 years on our investment." Furthermore, as payroll staff change, the payroll process can continue without the need for lengthy training.
• Eliminating errors in the event payroll and time tracking process. Errors during the payroll processing are common and often involve the time consuming process of issuing manual checks to correct. With Evention, errors are removed by ensuring consistent calculations and eliminating re-entry of data. As stated by Mr. McMenamy from Hyatt, "In addition to accounting savings and efficiencies, employees have great confidence that they are being paid in a very accurate manner. Payroll adjustments have been virtually eliminated in comparison with our former methods and employees seldom disrupt operations with questions and challenges."
• Centralizing systems between departments and eliminating the duplication of data entry. Managers can enter data directly into Evention on their company's intranet, thereby removing the need for paper timesheets to track servers and tasks performed for each event. Accounting departments no longer need to re-enter this data into a separate system but simply process the event and generate the desired reports through Evention. Payroll data can then be exported from Evention directly to an outside payroll processor.
• Tracking of all data transactions and providing the property a complete record of who entered what data and when. In addition, once the payroll administrator establishes the payroll wage and gratuity rules in Evention, they are confident that the payroll will be distributed in the same manner each time payroll is processed.

Evention will also be showcased at the HITEC 2007 trade show, June 26-28, 2007, in Orlando, Florida.

###