COMPANY PROFILE

Tropical Financial Credit Union of South Florida is a not-for-profit, member-owned, and member-operated financial cooperative. Established in 1935, Tropical Financial serves more than 65,000 members and has assets of $725 million.

THE CHALLENGES

Previously, Tropical Financial used a payroll service bureau, a solution that became restrictive and inefficient due to the lack of control, flexibility, and functionality. Payroll processing was extremely tedious and time-consuming. Each pay run required many hours to manually check for or reconcile errors because modifications, such as job changes, terminations, or salary increases, were sometimes not applied properly by the service bureau or not at all.

THE SOLUTION

By switching to UltiPro, Tropical Financial Credit Union has substantially improved the productivity of its employee management operations and streamlined the day-to-day responsibilities of its HR/payroll associates. With UltiPro, the organization’s payroll staff is confident that information is correct because changes are applied as they are made, and as an extra measure to ensure data integrity, the team has the opportunity to audit payroll before it’s completed.

“Since we moved from a payroll service bureau to UltiPro, I can breathe. I don’t have to devote a whole week to payroll, and then worry about checking and double-checking figures,” said Judi Arampatzis, payroll administrator for Tropical Financial Credit Union. “When I hit the button to complete payroll processing, I know I will get what I expect. I complete my work in a fraction of the time because UltiPro can handle our complexities with ease. Plus our efforts are nearly 100% accurate. I’m in charge of payroll now instead of its being in charge of me.”

One of the biggest challenges for HR/payroll professionals in financial services is creating reports to meet a wide variety of purposes. Audits, for example, can require numerous real-time reports that are very specific and intricate. Because of UltiPro’s sophisticated and flexible reporting functionality, the HR staff handles Tropical Financial’s audits more smoothly and efficiently than ever before. Within minutes, the HR team now can create any of the reports needed, such as manpower expenses by department or overtime reports—without requiring a consultant or IT department assistance.

“With UltiPro, I can create reports myself instead of relying on a third party and then hoping I get the data that I need in the time required,” said Arampatzis. “Our auditors often mention that they wish more businesses had our ability to quickly turn around their unique requests.”

Compared to the previous service bureau, another key difference is Ultimate Software’s level of customer support and responsiveness to inquiries. “Ultimate Software’s service is phenomenal. I love being able to submit service requests online, and we usually get a response much more quickly than expected. The customer service team is usually tripping all over themselves to help us,” Arampatzis said. “I’ve been in the payroll industry for more than 40 years. I used a service bureau for most of that time so I was reluctant to change. Now I wish I had switched to UltiPro much sooner.”