Why would employees in the accounting department not be allowed to access the payroll module?

The payroll department’s primary function is to ensure that everyone is paid correctly and in a timely manner, based on hours worked, hourly rates of pay (or salary).

  HR Payroll   Apr 22, 2024   0   42  Add to Reading List

The main reasons would be 1) confidentiality and 2) the fact that access is not necessary, in most cases, for accountants to do their job.

In larger companies, there is usually a payroll “department,” which is separate and apart from the accounting department.

The payroll department’s primary function is to ensure that everyone is paid correctly and in a timely manner, based on hours worked, hourly rates of pay (or salary). Their systems are typically tied into the company’s HR systems, which also contains information pertinent to employees. In a way, they act as an accounts payable department, except their “vendors” are strictly employees.

With respect to payroll, the accounting department’s primary responsibility is to journalize (i.e. record) payroll and related expenses. In order for them to do this, the details (by employee) are not necessary. Employees are usually connected to a department of some kind (i.e. IT, advertising, legal, etc.) and payroll information is generally summarized by an interface which bridges the payroll system to the general ledger.

The bottom line is the virtually all companies do not want sensitive information such as “who makes what” floating around. The less people that know, the better.