a-happy-businessman-meeting-with-a-group-of-doctors-and-shaking-hands-with-one-of-them-in-the-office-scaled

From the schedule to payroll: How Aider Polska and Grafik Optymalny streamline the time tracking process

Payroll doesn’t start with the payroll list. It begins much earlier—with how a company plans its work, tracks hours, and submits data for processing. Aider Polska and Grafik Optymalny combine expertise in two key areas: work time management and HR and payroll services. As a result, the data generated during the work planning and tracking stages can feed into the payroll calculation process.

Key Information

Grafik Optymalny and Aider Polska combine two elements of a single process: work time management and professional HR and payroll services.
Grafik Optymalny enables the management and optimization of data generated during the planning and tracking of work time —from schedules and availability, through the recording of clock-ins and clock-outs, to the tracking of hours worked, overtime, and vacation time.
Aider Polska uses this data in the HR and payroll process, ensuring accurate payroll calculations and the employer’s subsequent tax and social security filings.
The key benefit lies at the intersection of both processes: less manual data entry and reconciliation of work time data, and thus a lower risk of payroll errors.
This model is particularly important for organizations with complex working time structures: those with shift systems, multiple locations, a large number of employees, seasonal fluctuations, or extensive overtime calculation rules.

business-woman-financial-pages-charts-and-a-laptop-on-a-table

Payroll starts with accurately tracked work hours

Before a payroll specialist prepares the payroll report, they must answer a number of questions: how many hours an employee worked, on which days, whether there was overtime, whether they worked night shifts, what absences should be taken into account, and whether the actual working time matches the scheduled work schedule.

In a simple model, you can try to manage this using spreadsheets, emails, or a few independent systems. The problem arises when a company has several hundred employees, multiple locations, shift work, or highly variable schedules. In such cases , the quality of working time data becomes one of the key factors for accurate calculations.

And this is precisely where the expertise of Aider Polska and Grafik Optymalny comes into play.

Two processes that should work together

Grafik Optymalny is a tool for planning and tracking work hours. Among other things, the system allows you to create schedules compliant with the Labor Code, take employee availability into account, manage vacation and leave requests, record work time, and maintain work time records. It also offers automatic overtime calculation and reporting of work time and cost data.

Aider Polska operates at the next stage of the process. The HR and payroll team uses employment and working time data to prepare payrolls, calculate compensation, settle social security contributions and taxes, and prepare the required reports and declarations.

In practice, this means combining two worlds: operational work-time management and expert payroll processing.

This is not about replacing the work of specialists with automation. The goal is for Aider Polska’s specialists to receive well-organized data that allows them to focus on their role—accurate and compliant payroll processing.

“The more complex an organization is, the more important the quality of time-tracking data becomes. A well-designed process should minimize manual data entry and the need to reconcile the same information repeatedly. Thanks to our partnership with Grafik Optymalny, we can streamline the phase preceding payroll processing, allowing our specialists to focus on ensuring accurate payroll calculations.”
– Kinga Miszyn, Senior Manager, Aider Polska

Where is the partnership between Grafik Optymalny and Aider Polska most significant?

- A schedule is the starting point for organizing work hours. For companies operating on a shift basis, its preparation may take into account, among other things, employee availability, staffing requirements, various work schedules, and regulatory restrictions.
  
  Grafik Optymalny automates part of this process and manages, among other things, rest periods, days off, and work limits. The system also automatically alerts users to potential overtime.
  
  For payroll, this has a very significant implication: work hours are recorded and organized in a single environment. They do not need to be reconstructed based on multiple files and messages.
- A schedule alone is not enough, which is why the next step is to track and record actual working hours. Grafik Optymalny allows you to record clock-in and clock-out times and automatically calculate working hours and overtime. Data can also be exported and integrated with HR systems, payroll systems, and external RCP systems.
  
  It is this stage that has a direct impact on payroll calculations. Based on properly prepared data, Aider Polska can include in the payroll, among other things, working hours, overtime, and other components resulting from the organization of work.
  
  The less manual data transfer between systems, the lower the risk that information will be altered, omitted, or transmitted late along the way.
- Grafik Optymalny allows you to monitor overtime and support its processing, including compensation with time off. Aider Polska, however, is responsible for correctly converting the data into payroll—in accordance with applicable regulations and the organization’s compensation policies.
  
  This is an important distinction: the system helps organize and calculate the data, but the responsibility for the substantive payroll processing remains with the HR and payroll specialists.
- Vacation scheduled in the work schedule and vacation processed on the payroll are two parts of the same process.
  
  Grafik Optymalny supports the planning and electronic workflow of leave requests, as well as time tracking. At Aider Polska, this data can be used for day-to-day HR and payroll operations.
  
  For the organization, this means reducing the number of instances where the same information must be entered multiple times—by the employee, the manager, HR, and payroll.

What’s changing for the HR and Payroll Department?

Above all, the quality of the process leading up to payroll calculation is changing. In the traditional model, time-tracking data can be fed into payroll from many sources: spreadsheets, emails, HR systems, managers’ reports, or other tools. Each additional source creates another opportunity for discrepancies.

In a model based on a structured process, data is recorded closer to the source, verified at an earlier stage, and then forwarded to the HR and payroll team.

Payroll, therefore, does not have to be the point at which a company first discovers what happened during the work period.

Why is this particularly important in large organizations?

The larger and more dispersed an organization is, the harder it is to manage work time manually. This is especially true for companies:

operating in multiple locations,
with a large number of employees,
that operate on a shift or multi-shift basis,
operating in retail, hospitality, manufacturing, or services,
with seasonal staffing patterns,
using various work schedule systems,
that track a large amount of overtime,
with a complex organizational structure.

These organizations are the natural fit for a solution that combines work schedule management with professional payroll.

Optymalny Schedule is primarily aimed at medium and large companies, particularly in the retail, manufacturing, HoReCa, and service sectors.

team-company-and-manager-in-a-scaled-meeting

What does the organization gain?

- Data related to work schedules, vacation, and working hours are organized within a single process, and some administrative tasks are automated.
- Managers can plan staffing, respond to changes, and access up-to-date information about work hours.
- The Aider Polska team can focus on the substantive processing of payroll data instead of spending a significant amount of time manually organizing information.
- Work time data can also be used for cost reporting and analysis—Optimal Schedule offers, among other features, the ability to export data to Excel and Power BI.

Technology does not replace experts. A well-designed process allows them to work more effectively

This is a key principle of the partnership between Aider Polska and Grafik Optymalny.

Grafik Optymalny specializes in work time management: schedule planning, time tracking and recording, vacation, overtime, and reporting. The system can integrate with external HR and payroll systems, including Enova365, Comarch ERP Optima, Symfonia, and SAP.

Aider Polska, on the other hand, brings the expertise of its HR and payroll team, which is responsible for ensuring that data is correctly translated into the payroll process—from updating data and calculating compensation to payrolls, tax filings, and reporting.

One party is responsible for the quality of time-tracking data. The other is responsible for its correct processing. Only by combining these two areas of expertise can a cohesive process be built.

About Our Partners

Aider Polska is a company specializing in accounting, HR, and payroll outsourcing. The team consists of nearly 400 specialists working in Warsaw, Łódź, and Katowice. The company serves both Polish enterprises and organizations with foreign capital, and also offers services in English.

Grafik Optymalny is a specialized system for planning and tracking work time, developed with medium and large organizations in mind. It includes, among other features, work schedules, vacation and leave requests, work time tracking and recording, remote work management, and reporting. The system supports organizations in sectors such as retail, manufacturing, HoReCa, and services.

FAQ

- No. Grafik Optymalny focuses on scheduling and tracking work hours, while the HR and payroll system handles other aspects of the process. GO enables integration with external HR and payroll systems, allowing data to be transferred between them.
- A team of HR and payroll specialists at Aider Polska is responsible for the day-to-day management of payroll. Grafik Optymalny provides data for work schedule planning and time tracking, which Aider Polska then uses in the payroll calculation process.
- Yes. Grafik Optymalny was designed, among other things, for organizations that use shift systems—whether basic, balanced, or team-based. The system also supports the management of rest periods, days off, and work limits.
- No, but the greatest benefits are seen in situations where work schedule management is complex—for example, when there are a large number of employees, multiple locations, shift work, or a high volume of HR-related tasks.
- Yes. Grafik Optymalny supports integration with, among others, HR and payroll systems such as Enova365, Comarch ERP Optima, Symfonia, and SAP, as well as RCP systems, sales systems, and BI-class reporting tools.
- On the contrary. Automation helps reduce manual tasks and streamline data flow, but interpreting regulations, verifying the accuracy of payroll calculations, handling exceptions, and ensuring that HR and payroll obligations are properly fulfilled still require expert knowledge.

From the schedule to payroll—one seamless process

A well-functioning payroll system doesn’t start with creating a payroll. It begins the moment a company schedules work, an employee reports for a shift, logs their work hours, takes time off, or works overtime.

If the information from these stages is scattered, the payroll team must first collect and organize it.

If the information is properly organized at the source, the HR and payroll team can focus on what truly requires their expertise—accurately processing employee pay and ensuring the process complies with regulations.

This is precisely the value of the partnership between Aider Polska and Grafik Optymalny.

Want to find out how to streamline your organization’s time tracking and payroll management processes? Let’s talk.