Dealership HR, payroll and accounting integration guide

What to check before you decide

Next, the earnings. Sales commissions, flat-rate technician hours, F&I splits, draws and bonuses come from the DMS.

Check how they are imported, how often, and how corrections are handled. Test with last month's real pay plans and compare results to the dollar.

Check deductions and compliance. Overtime rules differ by state, and hourly technicians and advisors must be paid correctly. Ask how the system applies them, and how it handles tips, spiffs and manufacturer incentives paid to employees.

Look at the posting. Payroll entries should post to the right accounts and departments in the ledger, without a manual export. Look at how each rooftop and each legal entity is separated.

Consider access. Pay information is sensitive.

Find out who can see and change what, and how every change is logged. Separate the person who enters pay from the person who approves it.

Reconcile every cycle for the first quarter. Compare payroll registers with the ledger and with the DMS commission reports.

Ask who calculates and files payroll taxes, and who answers a pay error on payday. Keep the data export in your contract.

Hold a quarterly access review in which payroll, accounting and the dealer principal confirm that every person who can change pay, commissions or ledger postings still needs that access, and that departed employees are gone from all three systems, since payroll is a common target for both error and fraud.