The Evolution of Payroll
From traditional bookkeeping to cloud-enabled automation, payroll has come a long way.
7000 BC
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Chiselling hours worked into stone
1890s
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William Le Grand Bundy invents the earliest recorded time card machine
1920s
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Workers submit written time cards in exchange for cash
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Clerks hand write ledgers
1940s
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Mechanical and Electronic Calculators became the choice of many companies for payroll and accounting
1950s
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The Lyons Electronic Office (LEO 1) was the first computer to handle business tasks like payroll
1980s
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The IBM AS/400 became the business computer of choice
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Popularisation of fax machines
1990s
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Microsoft Excel became a common tool for managing payroll
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Employees could email timesheets
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Rise of the small personal computer
2000s
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Magnetic stripe technology for both time and attendance, and security
2016
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An era of payroll automation
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Using cloud computing and digital technologies to reduce administrative effort
The Future
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GPS tracking
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Artificial intelligence including chatbots and machine learning
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The Internet of Things
Do you
remember when?
The evolution of payroll
