[Company name]
CAS3701 Assignment
11 2024 - DUE 13
September 2024
QUESTIONS WITH DETAILED ANSWERS
,CAS3701 Assignment 11 2024 - DUE 13 September 2024
QUESTION 1
1. BACKGROUND LearnCo. Limited (LearnCo.) is a top training provider that offers
skills development training solutions to businesses and government institutions in South
Africa. The company is based in Gauteng, South Africa and has a 30 June 2024 year-
end. LearnCo. offers a wide variety of courses in health and safety, leadership and
managerial skills, occupational health and even on emerging technologies like machine
learning, robotics, coding and artificial intelligence. The company conducts the training
at the client’s workplace premises. LearnCo. employs 250 facilitators permanently. The
facilitators come from a diverse range of fields in line with the courses offered by the
company. The facilitators spend majority of their time travelling to clients throughout the
country and consequently, LearnCo. incurs a high amount of expenditure related to
travel claims. You have recently been appointed as the Financial Manager (FM) of
LearnCo. The Chief Financial Officer (CFO) is orientating you about the company and
its payroll system. The payroll system is outlined below.
2. PAYROLL SYSTEM LearnCo. uses a payroll software called Revolve X. Revolve X is
highly advanced and is powered by artificial intelligence (AI). Revolve X automates the
majority of routine payroll-related transactions. These include screening CVs submitted
online, shortlisting candidates, performing monthly reconciliations, filing electronic
reports, computing the monthly payroll expense, and validating and processing input
data for the payroll. Any valid employee of LearnCo. has login access. LearnCo. has a
limited Human Resource (HR) unit in place. The HR unit currently consists of the HR
manager and two payroll clerks. The HR manager is currently responsible for
conducting interviews, completing the recruitment process and retirements. The CFO
, explained that other than the screening of CVs and shortlisting of candidates against
pre-determined criteria, Revolve X also assists the HR manager by providing pre-
populated templates for employee contracts. The payroll clerks are responsible for
capturing approved rates for travel claims, medical aid, provident fund and other
applicable expenditures. Revolve X also houses the employee database. As the FM,
you will approve and sign off the employee contracts on behalf of the company, ensure
that applicable rates are up to date and that the schedules produced by the system are
correct prior to authorisation for payment.
2.1 Dismissals and resignations Dismissals and resignations occur seldomly at
LearnCo. The HR manager is currently overloaded with his duties, so management
decided to move the handling of dismissals and resignations solely to the CFO. You
were busy reviewing the payroll and noted details of two employees, with employee
numbers 452901 and 370213, who were dismissed in September 2023 and December
2023, respectively, but were still included in the payroll. Fortunately, no payments have
been made to the employees since their dismissals. When you followed up on this
matter with the CFO, he indicated to you that he has a practice of removing such
employees from the payroll at the company’s year-end.
2.2 Employee expense Employees are paid salaries on the last working day of the
month. LearnCo. has no set salary structure for its employees. Employees can secure a
higher pay-rate upon their appointment and during their performance reviews based on
performance, experience and negotiation skills. Revolve X retrieves input data for the
payroll payment from the employee database (which contains a list of employees, their
annual approved salary and benefits) and PAYE, medical aid and provident fund tables.
Revolve X is programmed to use AI to ensure that only the latest tax rates for
individuals, rates for UIF and medical tax credits are used. Revolve X also automates
the generation of payslips which are e-mailed to employees. Two days before the pay