New Italian pay system on horizon

By James Brooks, USAG Italy PAOApril 5, 2018

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VICENZA, Italy - A new system to replace the more than 30-year old Italian payroll service responsible for managing pay and benefits of the Italian workforce at United States Army Garrison Italy is on its way.

Studio Centro srl. was awarded a €156,000 contract March 7 to replace the system used by 266th Financial Management Command. The contract is for the current year, with an option for four additional years of service.

"The new system will be most welcomed," said Darryl McCoy, director of the 266th FMC Vicenza Office. "Our current system has experienced some failures that the new system will correct as well as take advantage of software upgrades that will greatly improve efficiency in managing the pay of our Italian workforce."

The aging Italian payroll system responsible for managing the pay account of more than 1,100 Italian employees showed its age last summer. A software glitch caused a backlog in performance awards and benefits for approximately 280 employees. Resolving the problem took several months.

"It took manual intervention in many cases and resolving the backlog was time consuming. The Local National Payroll Section performed beyond expectation, working many evenings and weekends to keep the system running. They are an absolutely wonderful team of professionals and go above and beyond for the finance office and Italian workforce every day. In the end, thanks to the strong team of professionals everyone was paid up to date by February," said McCoy.

Six new host nation employees will join the 266th FMC Vicenza Office this spring.

"The new employees will assist the current team in bringing the new system online and running it parallel with the system we have now in place. This allows us to get the new system up and running and gives us time to train our staff on how it works without any impact to the existing system," said McCoy.

The new employees are expected to begin working with the new system at the beginning of May.

According to McCoy, the 266th hopes to retire the current pay system March 31, 2019, and the new system will begin managing payroll services Jan. 1, 2019.

"There's a lot of work and training to be done before we switch to the new system. We want to do it quickly, but we also need to make sure we get it right," said McCoy.

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