Employee Bank Details Onboarding: A Safer Alternative to Email and Spreadsheets

Collecting a new employee's bank details should be one of the simplest parts of onboarding. Yet many businesses still rely on emails, forms and spreadsheets to collect sensitive payroll information.

The employee sends their sort code and account number to HR. Someone copies the information into a spreadsheet. Someone else transfers it into the payroll system.

Every additional step creates administration — and another opportunity for human error or fraud.

Let employees enter their own information

Paylist gives businesses a secure way to collect employee payment details directly from employees.

Employees are invited to enter their own bank details into Paylist. Their information is validated and encrypted, rather than being passed around through ordinary email or stored in spreadsheets — and unlike supplier profiles, employee profiles never touch the searchable database.

Employees are responsible for maintaining their own information, meaning that a future change of bank account does not require an email to HR followed by another manual update.

Particularly useful for Xero Payroll

Paylist's Xero integration goes further than its accounting integrations for suppliers.

Employees are invited through Paylist and their details can be pushed into Xero Payroll. Subsequent changes can also be synchronised automatically and instantly following verification.

That creates a much simpler workflow:

Employee → Paylist → Xero Payroll

rather than:

Employee → email → HR → spreadsheet → payroll administrator → Xero Payroll

Why is integration safer?

Integration reduces the number of times sensitive information needs to be copied or re-keyed.

There is no need for an HR administrator to manually transpose a sort code from an email into payroll. Taking out steps in the process takes away risks with it.

There is also less need to maintain separate spreadsheets containing employee bank information.

Paylist stores bank details using per-row encryption keys, while accounting connections use the relevant software provider's official OAuth authorisation process. This means Paylist never sees the user's Xero password when connecting to Xero.

Faster onboarding

For businesses taking on several employees at once, the time saving can quickly add up.

Employees can be invited individually or in bulk, enter their own information and have their details prepared for the payroll workflow.

Instead of HR becoming the data-entry department, the employee becomes the source of their own information.

Fewer errors

Bank details are particularly vulnerable to transcription errors because a single incorrect digit can result in a payment being rejected or sent to the wrong account. Removing manual re-keying helps reduce that risk.

A better employee experience

There is also a less obvious benefit. Employees expect modern businesses to handle their personal information professionally.

Asking someone to email their bank details to a general HR inbox feels very different from giving them a secure process in which they enter and maintain their own information.

Paylist turns employee bank-detail collection from an administrative chore into a secure, automated onboarding process.