Bi-weekly vs. Monthly

It is possible to pay the employees bi-weekly (kinsena) instead of monthly. Before you decide to opt for bi-weekly, look at the pros and cons.


Cons

1) Instead of 12 times a year, you have to do the payroll administration 26 times a year. This includes: entering overtime and other mutations, processing salaries, checking, printing or e-mailing slips and doing the bank transfers.

2) Tax and premiums must be declared monthly. As a result, you have some months with 2 bi-weekly and some months with 3 by-weekly to pay.

3) Some years have 53 weeks. In those years you have to do an extra run to pay half a bi-weekly at the end of the year.

4) It is not always clear when week 1 starts exactly. Sometimes that can be in December of the previous year. There are also those that believe the start a week is on Sunday, instead of the official international standard which is on Monday (NEN 2772 / ISO 8601). Week 1 always includes January 4th.

5) Employees have payment obligations, such as rent, water and electricity, subscriptions, etc. that have to be done monthly.

6) Management doesn't like to be paid bi-weekly you so also need to setup a additional administration for monthly employees and each month manually add the tax and premiums of the 2 payrolls.

Pros

There exists no good reason for using bi-weekly, other then "that's what we always did".

Conclusion

Bi-weekly salary payments is as outdated as fax machines and bank checks and has no place in a modern payroll administration. Monthly salary payment is always best for the employees. An alternative is 2x per month for all employees, including management.