A day in the life of…our Payroll and Finance Manager, Sarah Iversen

Welcome to the first of our ‘day in the life’ features as we take a closer look at the roles of our amazing team members.

Sarah Iversen, our Payroll and Finance Manager, works behind the scenes of the business four days per week, ensuring everyone is paid on time, invoices are sent and queries are answered.

It sounds straightforward, doesn’t it? Trust us – it isn’t! Let’s find out more from Sarah…

 

“I absolutely love numbers and there is no room for error in my job.

I don’t have a quiet week and my days are full on, which I like. I’ve worked in finance for almost 40 years and I love being busy.

Mondays are for collating hundreds of staff timesheets and travel expenses for the previous week. Sometimes people forget to submit them, or there are information errors, and travel expenses have to be accompanied by receipts.

I have to wait for that information and it can be quite time consuming, often spilling over into Tuesday.

I rely on our carers to submit accurate information on time to help me to hit the ground running on a Monday morning. By Monday lunchtime I can usually tell how the week is going to go.

Once the information is on the spreadsheet, I transfer the data into a file for our accountant who creates the payslips and sends them back to me.

I then double check all of the information for every single member of staff, cross-checking timesheets to the bookings log to make sure the hours match the shifts which have been completed. Payslips are then emailed to all staff.

I deal with holidays, P45s, sickness and maternity leave, which I also submit to the accountant.

Once payroll is complete, I flip over to invoicing which takes me to the end of Wednesday.

I use a spreadsheet to collate the information for every individual care home, raising invoices for the number of hours of care our staff have provided that week.

I attach the relevant carers’ timesheets to the invoice to evidence the hours and upload the invoices to our Sage software before submitting a summary file to the bank.

This allows us to draw down the money, which means we can then pay our carers on a weekly basis.

Thursday is my query day, which means answering any invoice queries from care homes.

I work with the bank to chase up any outstanding payments to the business and I also respond to payroll queries which come in throughout Wednesday and Thursday.

Everyone knows I zone out, so I can get my head down and concentrate because everything has to be accurate and completed on time.

Ultimately, my job affects the cash flow of the business and, even though I’m in the back office, my role is an essential part of the business.

I love being part of the team because everyone is so lovely and kind. We’re all made to feel appreciated and we all have our strengths.

We’re all part of the same jigsaw and we all have a part to play. If one is missing you can’t complete it.”