Payroll service

[ravfingcoder]

I want to develop a payroll application, but we aren't so sure how to integrate our ASP.NET app with the bank. Database on hosted on our own server. Database 'employee' table resmeble this: employeeID salary employee_payroll_account_num ... other things... We want to automate this process. How can we hook up our system with the bank so money can be debted from our company account and transferred to employee account automatically? Can we find relevant information from bank's website directly? Do we need to setup a merchant account, similar to credit card processing? Payment gateway? But this is not credit card processing. It's transfer from one bank account to another. What if company's bank is different from employee's bank?

[Nathan Ridley]

Wow... that's a sticky mess you have gotten yourselves in. First of all, toying with people's accounts with code is not something to be taken lightly. If you are developing software which interacts with bank accounts, you're going to have to work closely with the bank. Have you contacted the powers that be at the banks in question and asked for advice? Do you have coders who have any experience writing ecommerce/banking software? I haven't personally done anything related to banking software, but you might be able to organise something with the banks where you automatically request an interbank transfer from your company's account to an employees account, but again, I find it highly unlikely that you won't have to work closely with the bank to accomplish this. I would suggest calling the bank that your company has an account with and working from there. NATHAN RIDLEY Web Application Developer generalgherkin@yahoo.com

[devvvy]

A company I worked for do this offline. Serialize all payment request into XML file. I think it's then put on a CD - can't be more secured than that. norm

[Sage]

I have to agree with Nathan here. This is not something you want to be taking lightly. I did a project with a bank 2 years ago where we wanted to notify them when we had funds that needed to go to the fedwire and it is and always will be a hassle dealing with a bank. For many reasons not limited to , if your software screws up, where does that money come form, go to and how do you know. no bank in there right mind is going to let you programatically move money around. The XML file situation is different and sounds more like the approach we took were as, the bank logged onto our website, printed documents reflecting the information needed for a trasnfer, then they went and did the trasnfer, then returned to our site and input fedWire tracking numbers for each individual trasnfer they did. so in the end, it is a totally disconnected process and when things go wrong, it is easy to figure out where the problem was (and there have not been any problems either) Anyway, instead of ranting, here is a suggestion. Get payChex .. they offer APIs and other transport means for you to get the needed info to a company that can and will deposit money in the proper accounts. There are other payroll companies out there to choose from, but they are one of the larger and more stable (as well as integrated). While building your own payroll system is a great idea, dont reinvent the wheels that work and have already been rolling for some time.