Payroll Director

The Payroll Director is responsible for routine and complex supervisory, accounting, and administrative work in managing the payroll function, and performs related duties as required.

The essential functions or duties listed below are intended only as illustrations of the various type of work that may be performed. The omission of specific statements of duties does not exclude them from the position if the work is similar, related, or a logical assignment to the position.

• Provides working supervision for the preparation of weekly, biweekly, monthly, and supplemental payrolls
• Possesses responsibility for inputting, overseeing, record keeping and auditing all payroll activities
• Manages and supervises payroll operations to achieve goals within available resources
• Trains, motivates, and evaluates assigned staff and reviews progress and directs changes as needed
• Responsible for the development and maintenance of a payroll standard operations procedures manual and the related training of departmental personnel in City prescribed procedures
• Ensures integrity of payroll accounting transactions to ensure all employees are paid timely and accurately. Verifies employee salaries and age records.  Provides prompt resolution to any discrepancies.
• Prepares and maintains municipal payroll records and calculations to include appropriate sick leave, overtime, personal leave, vacations and other miscellaneous wage and compensation actions such as periodic wage and salary updates to the payroll system, retroactive pay adjustments, and other normal maintenance requirements
• Interacts with payroll clerks to instruct, guide, and assist with payroll issues
• Ensures accurate preparation and balancing of weekly, monthly, and special payrolls
• Reviews wages computed and corrects errors
• Coordinates, interprets, schedules and processes payments of various contracted benefits contained in collective bargaining agreements
• Periodic reconciliation to various withholding and deduction reports
• Monitors budget to actual spending in personal service budgets
• Audits and records compensated absence data submitted by departments on the weekly payroll
• Produces reports detailing sick and vacation time usage broken down by department and employee
• Prepares and maintains policies and procedures related to payroll
• Participates in collective bargaining information gathering
• Monitors and documents departmental compliance with payroll procedures in accordance with departmental, collective bargaining federal, state and local rules and regulations
• Preparation and reconciliation of all quarterly and annual federal and state reports. Reconciles and distributes year-end W2/1099 forms for both City and School
• Maintains all Local, Federal, and State required documents related to payroll
• Conducts a continuing study of all payroll related policies, programs, and legal issues to keep top management informed of new developments and suggestions for improvement

The physical demands described here are representative of those that must be met by an employee to successfully perform the essential functions of this job. Reasonable accommodations may be made to enable individuals with disabilities to perform the position’s essential functions.

Few physical demands are required to perform the work. Work effort principally involves sitting to perform work tasks, with intermittent periods of stooping, walking, and standing.  May also be some occasional lifting of objects such as office equipment and computer paper (up to 30 lbs).

Duties are largely mental rather than physical, but the job may occasionally require minimal motor skills for activities such as moving objects, operating a telephone, personal computer and/or most other office equipment including word processing, filing and sorting of papers.

Visual demands require constantly reading documents for general understanding and analytical purposes.

• 4 weeks annual vacation for non-union positions. Union positions vary by contract. Please note, police officers are members of the SPEA union. Public Health Nurses are part of Union A (SMEA).
• Medical insurance through the Group Insurance Commission (GIC) - 80% of premium costs paid by City
• Dental coverage low and high plans through Cigna
• Vision care through Vision Service Plan (VSP)
• Long term disability through Sun Life
• Group and voluntary life insurance through Boston Mutual
• Health Care and Dependent Care flexible spending through Benefit Strategies
• Deferred compensation plans through a choice of three vendors
• Free, confidential services through the Employee Assistance Program (EAP) provided by E4Health
• Annual cancer screening & wellness release
• Somerville Retirement Pension System
• Tuition reimbursement
• MBTA pass program
• FREE Blue Bikes membership
• Eligible employer for the Public Service Loan Forgiveness Program (PSLF)