Deciphering Philippine Payroll & Staff Payments with Judah Hirsch of Salarium
About Salarium
Derek Gallimore interviews Judah Hirsch, CEO and founder of Salarium. A FinTech handling Philippine payroll, the company aims to be the go-to solution for businesses by offering cutting-edge technology at an affordable price.
The Philippine payroll is one of the most complex in the world. A single error in payroll processing can cause a lot of issues with employees. In this episode, Derek and Judah will go through the complex process of Philippine payroll. the staffing pay structure, and how businesses can avoid errors with the help of Salarium.
The complexity of Philippine payroll
Salarium is a SaaS company that provides payroll systems for businesses of all sizes. According to Founder and CEO Judah Hirsch, “payroll, in general, is a very difficult topic, [but] Philippines payroll is uniquely difficult.” He said many organizations ranked the Philippines as one of the hardest countries to file taxes in the world.
For a little bit of background, Judah came to the Philippines in 2005 as a General Manager of a contact center. This is where he got the experience of managing a team of about 1,500 employees – and the payroll complexities that go with it.
How complex are the Philippine payroll systems?
In the episode, Judah noted the Philippine payroll system’s various complexities:
- The country’s tax and labor codes “have not been rewritten in a very long time,” which means that the existing labor code of the Philippines is “from 1978, 1979.”
- The Philippines is very bureaucratic and “a lot of policies have not been updated.”
- “There are 32 different hourly rates, and about 32 different tax types that [an employee] can have.”
- The Labor Department “is opaque” on the correct way to compute the different types of pay.
These are some of the reasons why Judah founded Salarium. However, the Salarium CEO said, “One of the things that make building payroll software in the Philippines challenging is that some of the government agencies are not crystal clear about what is the correct way to compute certain remittances and deductions.”
Fixing payroll inefficiencies
Judah knows the complexities, pain, and difficulties of the payroll system. While there are a lot of inefficiencies, he said that he “understand[s] the opportunity for solving this pain. With Salarium, Judah stated that there’s always a need to improve and constantly update.
He added, “Certainly one of the challenges is that you always need to keep updating [the software]. I mean, we’re constantly trying to add new features, new functions, just make [to] the software better and better for our clients.”
About Salarium and payday loans
The firm is also not a stranger to the commonality of Payday loans. According to Judah, Salarium also has a fully functioning payday loan platform that has issued around 30,000 loans on the platform since its inception. Employees can open their app anytime before their payday, and gain access to loans “within two or three clicks.” From there, they can withdraw their loaned amount from the nearest ATM.
Salarium’s payday loan feature can lend a maximum of P3000 (approximately USD 75).
To learn more about Salarium, feel free to visit their website at https://www.salarium.com/
References:
Facebook: Salarium
Independent
