We recently asked customers and industry professionals to nominate the payroll heroes they know, as part of National Payroll Week. We were glad to discover Kelli Krcma, Payroll Manager at Community Living Alliance, and the work she does. After reading what her colleagues had to say, we're glad to feature her as a payroll hero.
Community Living Alliance (CLA) is a community-based nonprofit that provides services and community resources for people with disabilities and chronic illnesses, and for older adults. Kelli processes payroll for about 300 of its employees, most of whom work off-site in clients' homes. Here's a look at her day, in her own words.
Honestly, I sort of fell into payroll. In 2016, I started a new role as Deputy Clerk for the City of Stoughton, WI, and that role was responsible for payroll. I was trained on it and found I really enjoyed it. Two years later, I went looking for a career in payroll and found my current role as payroll manager at CLA.
I often joke that most of my job is babysitting! Each morning, I review our electronic timekeeping system for missing clock-ins and clock-outs, and to make sure PTO is used appropriately. I also review reports to see whether employees missed entering their time at all, or went over the authorized amount of time we can bill under the client's plan. That means communicating with a lot of different team members, including billing, nursing, and care coordinators.
Greenshades handles our new hire workflow and our payroll processing. Since we implemented the new hiring workflow in Greenshades HR, new hire entry has been streamlined, and it's so much easier to assign paycodes, change pay rates, and make other employee updates. See how Greenshades HR handles employee onboarding.
Greenshades has streamlined our payroll process as well. The Payroll Wizard in Greenshades Payroll works like a dream! It's so slick to run through the payroll steps, move within the process to review or update deductions and benefits, and the reports generated at the end are very useful. It has simplified processing payroll.
Our main location is in Wisconsin, but our short-term student employees use their home addresses for tax purposes, so we end up handling taxes for multiple states.
For me, knowing how to handle multi-state taxes is the most complicated part. I really appreciate our dedicated Greenshades tax representative, who is knowledgeable and responsive. Learn more about automated payroll taxes.
Pay attention to details, have double checks in place, and always use a calculator, even for simple math.
Kelli's nomination didn't come from one person. Several of her colleagues shared what makes her a payroll hero, and the same themes showed up in every note.
Accuracy is the baseline. One colleague said Kelli "consistently delivers accurate, timely, and compliant payroll" in the complex home healthcare environment. Daily, weekly, and monthly audits help protect the organization from payroll errors, regulatory risk, and costly compliance issues.
She moves fast when something's off. As another colleague put it: "If an error is discovered, she immediately sets aside what she's doing to investigate and resolve it, often before most people even know there was an issue."
Her reach goes beyond payroll. Colleagues described someone who explains things patiently, answers questions from employees, and quickly pulls together whatever information HR asks for. "Her reach far exceeds payroll," one wrote.
She remembers who's on the other end. One colleague called her a "dedicated one-person payroll team" who "sees beyond the numbers" and understands there are people on the other end of her work. She also brings some joy and camaraderie to the team.
Or, as one colleague summed it up: "She is simply the best, a great coworker and accurate, timely payroll technician!"
Thank you, Kelli, for the work you do and for sharing a look at it with us.