Payroll officer

[Newjobonmonday]

I have a job interview this week for a payroll officer. The interview involves an Excel test and desirable skills include advanced Excel. My Excel isn't bad and, given time to Google, I can do most things in it but this will be timed so no time to look up things I don't know.

Are there any payroll people out there that could tell me what type of Excel functions you use in your job so that I can swat up on them?

The payroll is worked out using excel?
no payroll software?

at a guess , percentages particularly reductions , tax, ni, and so on.
using one sheet to store master data like hourly rates, deductions and such, then calculations using the cells from the master sheet.

all this should be set up already, so I guess they’ve decided to test how much you could set up yourself rather than test if you understand what the existing functions/macros are doing.

Text to column came up in a test I had, more database management oriented but it's a useful function for when you get a load of data all in one cell. It's under the Data tab.

No, there is payroll software, training will be given on the particular software if needed, but the test is Excel.

So just looking for things a payroll person might use Excel for.

I use a lot of VLOOKUP 's in my role. I've become a bit of an expert now!

We run a payroll bureau.

Some clients send in timesheets using excel. We use it to add up hours, holiday hours, extras.

Our biggest client also has columns for bonuses, cycle schemes, medical insurance contributions.

Then we make sure total gross etc agrees with software, but software does the tricky calculations.

We also use excel internally to make sure clients have been processed that month, advised about pensions, tax etc and the dates for reenrollmenr is on there so it's not forgotten.

If they've got an excel whizz in place currently though, they may do allsorts, because it's very useful software internally. We are reasonably proficient but not whizzes.

Sound like they used to use excel for the payroll.
I’m guessing the chief interviewer developed that spreadsheet.
They’re using the test as a candidate filter. Not ideal imo.

Ah yeah we also use it to track holiday due and taken for clients.

The VLOOKUPs poster is a whizz! I use that in another role, but never set it up.

I started doing payroll 50 years ago so it was looking up the tax codes and NI and working it out on a comptometer (a mechanical adding machine.) Haven't used anything but Sage for years and can't think of anything I've used excel for in payroll.

Good luck.

Try and get your head around the sum function, vlookups, countifs and pivot tables.

Thank you, this is really helpful. There is definitely payroll software but it's not Sage. The payroll is definitely not done on Excel. I guess Excel is a test they can give to everyone whereas a test on the specific software wouldn't be fair to those that had never used it.

I think I was heading down the right track. I can do sum, percentages, countif, text to column and have used vlookup once! Started learning pivot tables last week.

I work in payroll software. I wish our users had your excel skills!
You'll be fine

Vlookup, pivot tables, drop down menus (lists?), what if statements

Count if, not what if!

They offered me the job!
Thank you for all your advice, I managed to do all but one of the tasks in the excel test which I think helped. It did involve vlookups, countif, sum, product, putting dates in, conditional formatting plus a few other things.
Fingers crossed I do ok in the actual job!

Congrats OP 🥳 well done!!

Congratulations