Lead Payroll Specialist, Payroll Bureau

Responsibilities

• Payroll Operations & Customer Ownership

• Independently manage recurring payroll activities for assigned customers, coordinating inputs, deadlines, approvals, and follow-up to support accurate, timely payroll.

• Maintain an understanding of customer payroll calendars, business practices, entities, locations, and approval requirements; translate those needs into consistent service delivery.

• Review payroll readiness and required inputs, identify missing or inconsistent information, and coordinate customer decisions or corrections before processing deadlines.

• Prepare or import approved payroll transactions, review calculations and variances, reconcile results, and investigate discrepancies within the approved service scope.

• Perform payroll audits and reasonableness checks to identify unusual payments, material changes, calculation concerns, or other exceptions that require review or escalation.

• Serve as the primary operational customer contact, explaining payroll results, presenting action items, setting expectations, and advising customers when payroll is ready for final approval and submission.

• Support payroll corrections and off-cycle requests, coordinating customer instructions, internal dependencies, and appropriate approvals while considering downstream reporting and payment impacts.

• Coordinate post-payroll reporting, reconciliation, issue resolution, and follow-up with customers and internal teams as appropriate.

• Support customer onboarding, transition, and stabilization in partnership with Implementation and other service owners.

• Coordinate additional customer services as the offering develops, which may include ACA, workers’ compensation, or 401(k) reporting, based on approved scope, training, and ownership.

• Service Development & Lead Expertise

• Partner with Payroll Operations leadership to develop and refine workflows, customer playbooks, controls, service standards, and coverage practices for the new offering.

• Contribute to clear handoffs, readiness expectations, approval boundaries, and escalation paths across the customer lifecycle.

• Act as a subject-matter expert for complex payroll scenarios and customer escalations, coordinating with appropriate internal teams and leadership to resolve issues.

• Identify recurring issues, customer needs, product gaps, and process improvements; recommend practical solutions that strengthen accuracy, consistency, and scalability.

• Contribute to service reporting and operational measures, such as payroll timeliness, accuracy, correction trends, customer responsiveness, and processing effort; communicate risks and improvement opportunities to leadership.

• Develop and maintain reusable documentation and knowledge resources, incorporating lessons learned from payroll issues, customer feedback, and service delivery.

• Support knowledge sharing, cross-training, backup coverage, and onboarding of future team members as the managed-service function grows.

• Collaboration, Controls & Continuous Improvement

• Collaborate with Implementation, Tax/Compliance, Customer Success, Support, Payments, Finance, Product, and Engineering to clarify ownership, manage dependencies, and support customer outcomes.

• Preserve customer final payroll approval and follow established authorization requirements for payroll changes, funding-related activities, and other sensitive transactions.

• Distinguish payroll recalculation and reporting impacts from tax-filing execution; coordinate technical tax determinations, filings, amendments, and related matters with Tax/Compliance or the designated owner.

• Maintain accurate records of customer instructions, material decisions, payroll reviews, corrections, approvals, and escalations in approved systems.

• Protect sensitive customer and employee information in accordance with privacy, security, access, retention, and internal control requirements; promptly escalate suspected security or payroll-integrity concerns.