Southland Supply Group streamlines onboarding and payroll with Employment Hero

A group of civil retail businesses with shared services 

Pratap Subramanian manages finance and systems for a group of civil retail companies under the Southland Supply Group umbrella: Southland Supply Group and Design. The structure includes three registered entities using Employment Hero: Adaptive Trust, Granger Baker and Lawson Traders. 

“We’ve got three entities. Adaptive Trust is our primary entity, which operates two businesses under its umbrella: Southland Supply Group and Design. Lawson Traders is our furniture distribution business, and Granger Baker is our shared services business.” 

Across these businesses, they employ around 75 people. With employees working across different trading arms and services, it was clear they needed a system that could bring HR and payroll together in one place. 

Before Employment Hero: time-consuming, manual and hard to access 

Before moving to Employment Hero, documents were stored on shared drives and were only accessible to one person at a time. Pratap explained how frustrating and inefficient the setup had become. 

“Prior to Employment Hero, everything employment-related was stored on shared drives. It was all manual. Only one person could access the documents and make changes, which made it hard to keep up and caused delays.”

Their payroll system, Wage Easy, was also outdated and slow. Pratap was looking for a better way to manage HR and payroll across multiple entities. 

Online onboarding transformed how they bring new employees into the business 

Employment Hero made an immediate difference with simplified onboarding. 

“The onboarding feature was a massive help straight away. We could send out all documents including contracts, policies, training materials, and they could sign them digitally. It didn’t matter where they were located. That was a big time saver.” 

He also noted that having everything stored in one place was a huge improvement. 

“Now, everything is centralised and easy to access. That’s been really valuable, especially with how spread out our staff are.” 

From legacy software to payroll that works 

The biggest shift came when they moved away from their previous payroll system. 

“Our previous payroll system, Wage Easy, was very clunky and wasn’t scalable for our needs. With Employment Hero, we’re spending maybe three or four hours a fortnight to process payroll across all businesses.” 

What used to be a drawn-out, manual process is now largely automated. 

“All the defaults are set up, the automation works and leave applications are straightforward. The system just works.” 

Pratap also shared how reporting has become a key part of their operations. 

“We use the reporting feature all the time to see gross to net, payroll tax, workers’ compensation and wage reconciliations. They’re accurate, they’re useful and they save us a lot of time.” 

More time for finance, fewer interruptions from staff

One of the unexpected benefits? The amount of time it freed up for Pratap. 

“Now I can actually focus on finance work instead of spending hours on payroll. The reporting also gives us better visibility. For example, we can forecast weekly cash flow based on wage data. That wasn’t even possible before.” 

Employees are also benefiting from better visibility thanks to the Employment Hero Work app.

“Most of our staff use the app to lodge leave. Before, they used to come up to us and ask how much leave they had. Now they can just look it up themselves. The leave balance is also on their payslip, which people love. It’s just clearer for everyone.” 

More time for strategy, not admin 

With HR and payroll processes now automated and streamlined, Pratap has reclaimed valuable time, time he’s using to focus on strategic finance and reporting tasks that previously fell to the bottom of the list. 

“It freed me up to focus on actual finance work, such as reporting, forecasting and improving our financial systems. I’m not tied down by payroll anymore,” he said. 

The verdict: Employment Hero makes work easier and better

Pratap summed it up simply: 

“It’s the ease of use that makes it valuable. You can set up and run payroll quickly. You’ve got transparency and visibility. It just works.” 

Ready to see how Employment Hero could work for your business?