How EasyPark can take control over payroll throughout the Nordic region

For a large company like EasyPark, payroll administration has been a challenge on many levels – both due to earlier suppliers and the different Nordic offices characterised by different rules. Here, Gertrud Köver, CFO at EasyPark, tells about their cooperation with Accountor and how they helped to streamline payroll administration in the operations.

EasyPark provides Sweden’s and Europe’s most used parking app, and the company is active in more than 13 countries. Accountor’s cooperation with Nordic EasyPark began when the company was seeking a new partner for the handling of their payroll services – after a long period of difficulties with their former supplier.

Payroll – a complicated, but important area that may not go wrong

Many of the problems with the former supplier were due to a high staff turnover, poor structure and knowledge of rules and laws. EasyPark felt that there was never anyone who really took a comprehensive responsibility for them as a customer. In every payroll processing, inaccuracies were discovered because there were new people involved.

“Payroll is an area where everything always must be correct,” emphasises Gertrud Köver, CFO of EasyPark. “It’s very complicated, but also very important for us as an employer that salaries are correct. Otherwise, the company as an employer risks losing the trust of the organisation.”

EasyPark decided to seek a new, Nordic-wide supplier for payroll administration, and the assignment went to Accountor, with whom they had also cooperated before. In parallel, EasyPark also began to centralise the payroll function between the Nordic offices to improve the efficiency of the entire process.

A cooperative partner with a grasp of salaries throughout the Nordic region

Accountor’s assignment began in December 2018 when they went through EasyPark’s needs and basic data, and based on this investigated what help EasyPark needed – with one primary manager for the entire project. Today, Accountor handles all payroll administration for EasyPark in Sweden, Norway, Finland and Denmark. The services include everything from certificates, travel expense claims and statistics for information to authorities and system implementation. Accountor also handles other services that concern, for example, company cars and housing benefits, conditions for international employees, researcher payrolls, etc. and provide advice in various issues.

“Everything has become much more efficient with Accountor. They have advisers in every country who can have a daily dialogue with respective manager here – and they also see themselves and us as cooperative partners, in contrast to our previous supplier,” explains Gertrud Köver.

A first challenge in the project was to put together a comprehensive agreement for the whole of EasyPark as a Nordic corporate group. This meant that the actual contract signing took time. The possibility to report historical expenses is also something that Accountor is still working on to ensure across all offices. It is important for EasyPark that everything is correct according to current rules, laws and guidelines for the respective country. At the same time it is important that they are viewed as one single company – and something that Accountor has strived for from the beginning.

Flexible and effective development of the entire payroll administration

The cooperation is clearly founded on an open desire from both parties to jointly discuss and manage challenges that arise. Accountor’s extensive knowledge, combined with their rapid feedback and desire to build personal relationships, is something EasyPark values highly.

“The continuous dialogue and their proactiveness is something that’s really an advantage,” says Gertrud Köver. “There’s extensive trust in Accountor from our side. Not having to double-check all payroll processing is in itself evidence of that!”

She emphasises that Accountor is very flexible and skilled at adapting to the situation and different conditions between the different countries. They continue to develop the payroll administration in an efficient manner, set up smart functions and have a smooth working process – without things becoming rigid. At the same time, they suggest changes and have the courage to question matters when they feel there are better solutions – exactly the expertise that EasyPark previously lacked.