An organization has its weekly payroll processed by a Bank. The Bank receives timesheets and payroll adjustment forms and issues checks (cheques) and reports back to the organization. What is the most effective way to ensure data accuracy for payroll?

Payroll reports should be compared to input forms.

Third party validation of input forms and checks (cheques).

Checks (cheques) should be compared to input forms.

Manually recalculate net payroll.

Checks (cheques) should be reconciled with output reports.

Explanation

The best way to confirm data accuracy, when input is provided by the company and output is generated by the bank, is to verify the data input (input forms) with the results of the payroll reports. Hence, comparing payroll reports with input forms is the best mechanism of verifying data accuracy. Recalculating gross payroll manually would only verify whether the processing is correct and not the data accuracy of inputs. Comparing checks (cheques) to input forms is not feasible as checks (cheques) have the processed information and input forms have the input data. Reconciling checks (cheques) with output reports only confirms that checks (cheques) have been issued as per output reports.