Case study: Fire authority corrects payroll

A fire authority with more than 200 employees that provides fire suppression, emergency medical, and other services to about 45,000 people.

The situation

The authority went through a recent collective bargaining agreement (CBA) negotiation with the local union, making it necessary to calculate retroactive wages owed to union employees.

It didn’t have the resources to complete this calculation within the required timeframe and needed help with this task and with recalculating payroll to correct errors for the new CBA period and going back to 2021.

To comply with the CBA, the authority needed accurate payroll for all union employees from 2021 to present, and to calculate wages owed to employees. As there were known payroll errors, the authority needed clarity for amount of the errors and whether employees had been overpaid or underpaid.

The solution and results

Advisors studied the fire authority’s payroll processes and collaborated on a review of existing policies, procedures, and the CBA. They then developed calculation templates within Excel to map out how payroll should be calculated.

Using source data from the authority, such as employee listings and payroll data, advisors applied the calculation templates to payroll for union and non-union employees from 2021 through 2025, providing calculations for each employee.

After recalculating payroll, the advisors suggested a thorough review of the authority’s payroll internal controls to help address prior payroll issues and prevent them from happening again.

The hard data helped management make decisions regarding under- and overpayments, repay employees what they were owed, and restore trust.