Stone & Wood

Company overview

Stone & Wood are an independent Australian craft brewery based in the Northern Rivers. Inspired by the community-minded people of Byron Bay, Stone & Wood take a conscious approach to business and plan to grow sustainably. With around 120 permanent and 30 casual employees across the country, Stone & Wood have been using KeyPay since the beginning of 2018.

We had a chat with Karli Newell – who is part of the Brewlife team and looks after everything people related, from HR to payroll – about her experience with KeyPay so far.

How do you use KeyPay?

We use it for payroll, leave requests and employee information filing. All permanent staff are salaried and we also use rostering for the tasting team. Our casual employees use WorkZone to enter their timesheets, and our salaried staff can jump on if they need to apply for leave and things like that.

Prior to using KeyPay, what was your payroll process like?

We were previously using an accounting platform which served us well when we had fewer employees, but as we have grown we needed something with different functionality. As my role expanded, I also needed a system that reduced my manual processing or intervention in the payroll process.

Why did KeyPay appeal to you?

We had a demo of KeyPay and it was pretty straightforward. I really liked its reporting, and that you could filter differently in the pay run areas. The fact that people can go in and change their own details like bank account and address was great – you couldn’t do that in our previous platform. It gives employees a bit more ownership of their information. KeyPay was also a good price point for us.

What’s your favourite feature?

Our casual employees previously used manual paper timesheets that I would then have to enter in every week. I also had to go to each manager and make sure they were approved on a weekly basis. With KeyPay, employees can go on and enter in their own hours and add notes about what tasks they were doing, and our team leaders can access the system to approve those hours without any input from me. It has saved a lot of time and paperwork.

What other advantages has KeyPay brought?

Being able to go into a pay run and filter by an allowance or deduction – say I have to enter in 10 deductions for a pay run and a pay run might have 120 people in it: once I’ve entered those deductions for those employees, I can go to my filter option and double check they’re all there. It’s really handy. The reporting is quick and easy to use – as a HR team being able to call up reports and data so quickly has made a real difference.

What does your team say about KeyPay?

Our team leaders all have line of sight of their employees with regards to timesheets and leave in a user friendly system that they find easy to use.

Can you measure any improvements in productivity or time savings?

KeyPay has saved me personally about 5 hours a week on entering timesheets, chasing people up etc. Our tasting room leader has found the scheduling saves him a lot of time in chasing people to work out their availability before drawing up his rota too.

What do you love most about KeyPay?

Honestly – the support. KeyPay are very quick to respond and they understand my queries when explaining over email.