Hospital Intranet Content: Paycheck & W2 vouchers on the Intranet

Several years ago I was tasked with implementing a solution where payroll check stub vouchers were published on the intranet so that employees could view, download and print their pay check stub if they wished. Back then modern payroll systems were just beginning to adopt the practice of generating electronic files that were usually emailed to the employees instead of printing and handing out or even physically mailing of the stubs to the employee. So on that initial implementation I ended up doing some fairly tricky programming to accept the payroll data from electronic dumps of the print outs then I re-presented this data in a web friendly format on the Hospital’s intranet site for the logged in user to see only their payroll check data.

These days distribution of electronic paycheck stubs does not have to be so complicated. Enabling your Intranet for secure electronic access to payroll information is quite feasible.

I recently was asked to publish payroll vouchers for a different hospital. This client was manually emailing each employee with their PDF file which was a terribly time consuming process and in the end not the safest approach as emails can be accidentally sent to the wrong recipient or forwarded or viewed by those who should not have access. So for the second implementation I took a simple approach and created a utility that the payroll department can run to import all of the PDF pay check vouchers securely into the database. By importing the PDF files into the database the files are extremely secure since the only way to reach the vouchers is by accessing them through the intranet site’s user interface and hackers couldn’t access a repository of PDF files and see what they were not supposed to.

There are many benefits of publishing the paycheck vouchers directly on the Intranet. First the vouchers are much more secure than if they were distributed via email or by placing the vouchers on a network share. Next printing is greatly reduced or even eliminated in some instances saving not only the environment but money as well. Finally by having a single distribution channel in place, the effort of getting the check stubs to the employees is greatly reduced and a history of paycheck stubs is maintained on the Intranet which further discourages printing of the check stubs.

So what does it take to implement such a solution? The short answer is that this is not too complicated or difficult. The biggest challenge is determining a way to link a PDF check stub voucher file to a logged in user in the intranet portal. In both of my previous experiences publishing pay check vouchers on the intranet I keyed off of the employee ID of the employee. For example the files were named in such a way that the employee ID was contained in the filename. During the process of importing the PDF files the file name is parsed and the employee ID is assigned to the pay check voucher in the database. Next, employee ID’s need to be assigned to the user record in the intranet portal. The best approach is where employee ID’s are assigned in Active Directory; that way a login is associated clearly with an employee ID. In my second implementation this was not an option so the utility I developed to import the PDF vouchers also has a screen where Payroll/HR can assign employee ID’s to the logins in the intranet portal. Once the link between a login and a PDF is established we use the portal’s Electronic Employee File component to publish the link to the PDF file.

Implementing your pay check vouchers on the intranet has many advantages and is relatively cheap and easy to do. It just makes sense that the hospital’s intranet site should be where employees go to access their pay check stubs. Yearly W2 vouchers can be handled in much the same way.