Pittsburgh's new $1.7 million payroll system stumbles in debut

Pittsburgh’s new $1.7 million employee payroll system was touted as cutting edge for its electronic timekeeping capabilities, but city workers were wishing for the old manual system after the new one went awry during its debut at the beginning of the year.

Union leaders said members complained of being shorted, not being paid and that money was ending up in wrong accounts.

In at least one case, a former employee received a paycheck, they said.

“There’s a bunch of problems with the payroll system where money didn’t go where it was supposed to go,” said Robert Swartzwelder, president of Fraternal Order of Police Fort Pitt Lodge 1, representing nearly one-third of the city’s 3,500 member workforce. “Police officers have the ability to earmark certain funds out of their pay into direct deposits such as retirement accounts and the credit union. Those monies were deducted from the officers’ checks, but never made it yet to where they were intended to go.”

Janet Manuel, who heads the city human resources and civil service department, confirmed the Ceridian Dayforce system experienced glitches during its first run Jan. 3. She said the department was working to resolve all problems reported by employees and promised the new system would work better in the future.

She said the city is saving money with the new system.

“This was our first time distributing paychecks on the new system,” she said. “As with any new implementation of any new process or system, nothing is 100% accurate. Yes, there were some unfortunate glitches, but we were able to still address those issues that we were notified of that impacted our respective employees.”

The city since 2016 had calculated earnings and issued paychecks in house through its JD Edwards software system coupled with an older version of Ceridian. Ceridian software tracked employee time and attendance and sent it to JD Edwards for processing. City Controller Michael Lamb’s office printed employee paychecks.

Lamb said he was not consulted about the move to a new system, and he initially opposed it. He argued that it was cheaper to continue producing payroll in-house and that the city should have run the old and new systems in parallel during the first few payroll runs to work out bugs.

“If you look at what we were paying Ceridian before and you figure out the city man hours that went into keeping it in-house, I don’t believe it’s cheaper than when we were doing it in-house,” he said. “Clearly what we’re paying Ceridian now is less than what we were paying in the past. There’s savings from the old Ceridian, and it’s a much better system than the old Ceridian system, but there’s no savings.”

Tim McNulty, spokesman for Mayor Bill Peduto, declined comment.

Lamb said the city previously paid Ceridian about $800,000 annually for the software. The new $1.7 million contract is spread out over five years. The city is paying the company $500,000 in the first year and $305,000 in each of the following years.

Manuel said Ceridian notified her in 2017 that it was discontinuing the software. The city, she said, sought proposals from vendors for a new system and chose Ceridian because it fit Pittsburgh’s needs.

In addition to tracking time and attendance, the system will permit employees to punch in, schedule time off, choose medical benefits and receive training sessions electronically, among other things. Manuel said the city is now using Ceridian for time and attendance and would roll out the other options in the future.

The new system will eliminate the need for timekeepers to track payroll manually, she said. She added that the city has no plans to eliminate timekeeping positions because those employees will be needed to review department payrolls to ensure accuracy.

“We as a city had no other choice but to start looking for other payroll systems,” she said. “Initially, we are rolling out the payroll piece of it, and then we have the ability to add on additional modules to the system, such as a benefits module and a learning management system module and really make it kind of a one-source human resource information system.”