Keeping Payroll Compliant in a Complex World: How Alsco Uniforms Uses Continuous WFM Testing

For payroll and workforce management teams, complexity is often the rule rather than the exception. Multi-state operations, union agreements, shifting labor laws, acquisitions, and system changes can all introduce risk into payroll processes that employees depend on every week.

That is especially true at Alsco Uniforms, a North American uniform and linen rental company with more than 10,000 employees across 80 locations in the United States and Canada. With weekly payroll, operations in 40 states, 80 union agreements, and a workforce where more than 60% of employees do not speak English as their first language, payroll accuracy is not just an operational priority. It is foundational to employee trust.

In a recent TestAssure webinar, we spoke with Paul Dansie, who leads North America payroll and HRIS operations at Alsco Uniforms, and J’Nette Bonner, a finance, accounting, payroll, and WFM system configuration leader on the Alsco Uniforms payroll team. Their conversation explored why manual testing became unsustainable, how Alsco Uniforms uses automated regression testing, and why continuous testing has become a core part of the company’s payroll compliance strategy.

Watch the webinar or read the transcript below.

“It’s the most complex payroll environment I’ve seen in my career.”

TestAssure: For those who are unfamiliar with Alsco Uniforms, can you describe the scale and complexity of your workforce?

Paul Dansie: Alsco employs just over 10,000 employees, and we have significant payroll complexity. It’s the most complex I’ve seen in my career.

We have 80 locations across North America: 72 in the U.S. and eight in Canada. We process weekly payroll for our hourly employees, and we operate in 40 states. We also comply with 80 different unions, which is super complex.

One unique thing about our workforce is that over 60% of our employees do not speak English as their first language. So making sure payroll is accurate, clear, and understandable is especially important to maintaining employee trust.

TestAssure: J’Nette, as it relates to workforce management and payroll, what are some of the unique challenges that come with operating in that environment?

J’Nette Bonner: A complex payroll environment presents challenges because of the need for near-perfect accuracy and strict regulatory compliance.

The Alsco Uniforms payroll team has a saying: a 1% error rate is unacceptable. Inaccurate or late pay caused by undetected errors destroys employees’ trust and morale.

"A 1% error rate is unacceptable. Inaccurate or late pay caused by undetected errors destroys employees’ trust and morale." 

-J'Nette Bonner, WFM Analyst, Alsco Uniforms

The limits of manual payroll testing

TestAssure: Given all of that changing complexity, what did your testing process look like previously?

J’Nette: Prior to TestAssure, testing was manually conducted in a test environment and on spreadsheets. Team members would create scenarios on a timecard to see whether the simulation result triggered as expected.

We have more than 40 states, and some states require regulatory daily overtime. So we tested daily overtime after eight hours, daily overtime after 10 hours, double time, triple time after 12 hours, and more. We had to ensure that weekly overtime calculations did not pyramid on top of other premium pay types like overtime, Saturday zones, or holiday worked pay.

We tried our best to test combinations for specific roles, but manual testing is time-consuming and requires rigorous human oversight. With all the interactions within a payroll environment, it is impossible to manually test every situation that could occur.

TestAssure: Paul, what risks or challenges did you experience with that process?

Paul: The challenge was that manual testing took a lot of time. We all have other jobs beyond testing payroll complexities. There could be changes made that were not tested thoroughly, or not tested at all, and ultimately that would lead to payroll errors.

“We needed an automated testing system.”

TestAssure: Was there a specific moment or realization that made you think you needed a better way to validate rules and configurations?

Paul: We use UKG, and when I started with the company, we were using Ultimate Time and Attendance. As we looked at our growth goals, we knew we did not want to be the bottleneck when the company wanted to grow. We have a history of doing a lot of acquisitions and growing the business.

So we started looking for a new workforce management product. But with the complexities of our business and ever-changing labor laws, we were vulnerable to litigation, which can be expensive and adversely affect the bottom line.

Our C-suite said, “We’ve got to reduce this exposure, Paul. How are you going to do this?” Actually, I think the words they used were “eliminate the exposure.”

You can do your best, but it is only as good as the data you get. Even with an army of people, it would be hard to make sure you are 100% accurate. That is when I knew we needed an automated testing system that would help us.

"You can do your best, but it is only as good as the data you get. Even with an army of people, it would be hard to make sure you are 100% accurate. That is when I knew we needed an automated testing system that would help us."

-Paul Dansie, Director of HRIS and Payroll, Alsco Uniforms

TestAssure: What initially attracted you to TestAssure when you were evaluating solutions?

Paul: I needed something that could handle a complex pay environment like ours. In Canada, hourly employees are paid biweekly and the pay period starts on Sunday. In the U.S., the pay period starts on Monday and we pay weekly. I needed something that could handle that complexity and give us visibility into payroll accuracy and potential risks, while reducing the amount of time spent manually testing configurations.

TestAssure stood out because it offered automated testing, the ability to quickly identify issues, track results, and gain confidence in the system configuration.

Building thousands of test cases across timekeeping and accruals

TestAssure: After Alsco Uniforms decided to use TestAssure to validate WFM rules and configurations, what did the implementation process look like?

J’Nette: In the first couple of waves of our workforce management implementation, we had a pilot and wave one, and we did not have TestAssure then. We thought we tested accurately and caught things, but after implementation, there were issues.

Branches are already hesitant to change, and when you have issues, you lose credibility. We needed a better way to ensure that wave two migration to production did not have those same issues.

Alsco Uniforms teamed up with TestAssure to build test cases to fully test the functionality of the WFM timekeeping and accrual configurations. Overall, the U.S. and Canada have a combined total of 5,324 timekeeping test cases and 3,812 accrual test cases.

We could never have managed that manually. Wave two was successful.

Why payroll risk does not stop after implementation

TestAssure: A lot of organizations focus on testing around implementations, but you have kept TestAssure as part of your ongoing payroll compliance strategy. Why?

Paul: Payroll risk does not stop after implementation. The risk is always there.

Somebody could make a system change or uncheck a box that could have drastic results on payroll. Compliance and our environment are constantly changing: CBA changes, labor law changes, software releases. All of those things add complexity.

TestAssure helps us catch issues before they impact paychecks. It gives us real-time compliance visibility and documentation we can use for audits. We can see how different payrolls or things have changed over time and when they changed.

It also gives our C-suite reporting so they can feel confident in what we have. I would never stop having TestAssure. We test all of our rules all the time. We are probably on steroids with our testing.

"Payroll risk does not stop after implementation. The risk is always there."

-Paul Dansie, Director of HRIS and Payroll, Alsco Uniforms

Confidence when payroll questions arise

TestAssure: What does continuous testing do for your confidence in your configurations and payroll?

Paul: It helps me sleep at night. Every week, when I get the dashboard report showing how many tests ran, any warnings, or issues we need to look at, it makes me feel good that we are able to identify those issues and resolve them quickly.

J’Nette: Continuous testing gives my team confidence that the Alsco Uniforms payroll configuration is sound.

During an actual payroll, branches may submit something they believe is wrong. One of the things that has been really good for us is being able to ask, “Is everyone in the group affected, or is it just one employee?” I know the configuration is correct because we tested it. Therefore, we can push back and investigate what else might be wrong at the employee level. That confidence has helped us relax.

Regression testing as a safety net

TestAssure: How has automated regression testing changed your testing process, and what made it a better option than continuing to do what you had always done?

J’Nette: Regression testing stores past testing results. It tests every week and allows for rapid regeneration of tests to ensure configuration changes have not broken existing functionality.

You may change a button and not realize it has a ripple effect that changes something you never intended. Regression testing can tell you, “It passed last week. Now it failed. What happened?”

Payroll systems are highly interconnected. A minor configuration change in one area can inadvertently break an unrelated core function. Regression testing is a safety net that catches those ripple effects.

Sometimes I am surprised by the test cases that fail. Sometimes it is just a date because of a calendar when you are running an accrual. Sometimes it is not that the system functionality crashed, but that you need to update the test case.

But it gives us great relief to see that the test cases are still being created and run every week. I am not doing it. The TestAssure system is doing it.

The rules that matter most

TestAssure: Are there any scenarios or rules that are most important for you to test right now, given different business practices and potential policy changes?

J’Nette: All payrolls and accruals are important. But if I had to pick the ones that rank highest, regulatory and federal payrolls are a must. You cannot fail on those.

You cannot be exposed to state and federal regulations because you failed to meet the standard of payroll compliance. You risk claims and other issues, and then you lose employee satisfaction.

Union accruals are also tricky. You have to make sure you are compliant with the union CBA, that employees’ accruals are reacting the way they are expected to, and that special-day pay is accurate. If somebody comes in on a Sunday and it is double time, you have to ensure the configuration is sound so the employee is paid according to their CBA and state or federal regulations.

Working with the TestAssure services team

TestAssure: What is it like to work with the TestAssure services team?

J’Nette: My TestAssure team is amazing. While we were building test cases, I wanted to know that a test case was triggering the way I expected it to. I do not just take a blank answer.

Sometimes you are trying to test for weekly overtime, and you have to realize that weekly overtime may appear to have triggered, but in reality what triggered was a Saturday zone or a fifth-consecutive-day zone. It may look like you got overtime after 40 hours, but you really triggered a different zone.

The TestAssure team had to get creative. We have daily overtime, premium pay zones, and weekly overtime. It is hard to get weekly overtime to trigger on its own when you have other premium zones coming into play. But the TestAssure team stuck with us and created test cases so I knew it really was testing weekly overtime.

The same goes for accruals. We have a lot of unions, and some of the accruals are tricky: how vacation is calculated, when employees get it, when they do not, when holiday credit comes in, and how long they have to be working in order to get it.

We have a great working relationship between my team and the TestAssure team. I am not easy to please. I am one of those “show me” people. I trust and verify all the time. You have to prove it.

Supporting policy changes, acquisitions, and growth

TestAssure: From a strategic perspective, how does automated testing change how your team approaches business policy changes or acquisitions?

Paul: It allows us to be more proactive and confident before we make a change. We can set up the system and configurations ahead of time, test them, validate them, and make sure everything is good before go-live.

That is even more important with acquisitions. With new employees, you only get a couple of chances to get it right and keep them. Paying them right from the beginning matters, and testing ensures that we are doing that.

TestAssure is so configurable. It exceeds our thought process as far as what you can do with it, how you can set up tests, and what you can test. Having different pay periods start at different times was a huge thing for us, and TestAssure was able to accommodate that.

TestAssure: J’Nette, from a day-to-day operational perspective, what benefits have you seen since implementing automated testing?

J’Nette: One of the benefits I have seen through regression testing is efficiency through automation. As Paul said, testing is not our only job. Automation gives us efficiency and business structure, and it allows the team to focus on other tasks that add value.

Payroll leaders managing complex, high-volume workforce management systems should be integrating technology to automate compliance and enhance payroll accuracy.

A more proactive approach to compliance and governance

TestAssure: Has this changed how your team approaches overall payroll compliance and governance?

Paul: We are more proactive and more structured in our testing process. We test every change before we move it into production, and we log and track the changes.

That gives us visibility over time and helps preserve institutional knowledge. J’Nette knows so much of this information. If she is on vacation and we have to make a change, we can go back and see what is there and what happened in the past.

Advice for teams still relying on manual testing

TestAssure: What advice do you have for a WFM or payroll team still relying on manual testing? Are there risks they should be thinking about?

J’Nette: Run!

Manual payroll configuration testing is high risk because it relies on human memory and effort, which can lead to compliance failures, union grievances, and severe employee dissatisfaction. As organizations grow, a manual process becomes unsustainable.

Spreadsheets can have broken or incorrect formulas. When you apply complex pay structures to a spreadsheet or macro, and you are crossing commissions and overtime and other combinations, it can create compounding errors. Even that is not failsafe.

Complex rules such as shift differentials, retroactive pay, and special zone periods that trigger only after a certain number of hours worked can be missed if you are doing it manually. You just cannot accomplish it. It is unsustainable.

TestAssure: For teams in a similarly complex environment, what advice would you give to WFM or payroll leaders managing those systems?

J’Nette: Implement automated testing to simulate payroll scenarios and identify configuration errors. Use automated testing to validate pay results against complex rules and prioritize proactive testing.

Do not just test for changes. If you have TestAssure, create real-world scenarios on a daily or weekly basis to make sure your payroll configuration holds to compliance and regulations and triggers as expected.

Paul: Mine is very similar. Move beyond one-time implementation testing.

We consider the cost for TestAssure part of the cost of having our WFM system. Continuous automated testing ensures that you are compliant and reduces the risk of exposure to legal issues, ultimately saving money.

"We consider the cost for TestAssure part of the cost of having our WFM system. Continuous automated testing ensures that you are compliant and reduces the risk of exposure to legal issues, ultimately saving money."

-Paul Dansie, Director of HRIS and Payroll, Alsco Uniforms

Final thoughts

TestAssure: Any final thoughts you would like to share?

Paul: TestAssure is great. I highly recommend it. If I were told I had to cut budget and TestAssure was part of it, it would be hard for me to do.

J’Nette: I ditto Paul’s response. I have become a fan of TestAssure. I am convinced that your team can test complex rules or accruals. Your results are the results of your actual configuration. They will either pass or fail.

Conclusion

For Alsco Uniforms, payroll testing is no longer a one-time implementation activity or a manual exercise dependent on spreadsheets and institutional memory. It is a continuous compliance practice built into the way the team manages workforce management complexity.

By using TestAssure to automate regression testing, validate complex payroll and accrual rules, and document changes over time, Alsco Uniforms has gained greater confidence in its configurations, faster visibility into potential issues, and a stronger foundation for growth, acquisitions, and ongoing compliance.

In a payroll environment where a 1% error rate is unacceptable, continuous testing helps the team protect employee trust before errors ever reach a paycheck.

Are you in a complex organization ready to explore continuous compliance? Fill out the form below to request a demo with our team today.