Funk Drinks Co. boosts payroll confidence and cuts processing time by over 60% with Deputy Payroll.

Funk Drinks Co. is a dynamic Australian beverage company, rooted in farming values and founded by two country brothers. Since opening in 2012, the business has expanded from making cold-pressed juices to crafting sodas, ciders and a unique full “paddock-to-pint” beer, using wheat and barley grown on one of the founders farms. 

The business operates across two distinct areas, a hospitality venue (restaurant and bar) as well as their wholesale production facility (juicing, brewing and bottling). 

With a team of around 35 employees, Mari Bornelli (General Manager) oversees the entire operation, with key responsibilities including finance, rostering, HR management and payroll.

For Bornelli, whose background is in law and marketing, her love of spreadsheets and organisation saw rostering, payroll and HR management fall underneath her remit at Funk Drinks Co. Her biggest challenges in payroll stemmed from the complexity of managing a diverse workforce under two separate, distinct Modern Awards: The Hospitality Award and the Food and Beverage Manufacturing Award.

“The biggest struggle I had was being able to make sure that everyone was being paid the right rates and penalties and everything else, in alignment with where they were working each day.”

Compliance risk and manual overheads

In the previous system, paying staff correctly was a largely manual effort, leading to low confidence in compliance. The risk was tangible, as Bornelli notes a historical pay error that resulted in a back payment to one employee due to incorrect award interpretation based on age. 

“My level of confidence was pretty low, I’d say I would be sitting at about 50% since most of the adjustments had to be done manually.”

Time consuming process

The manual cross-checking and processing for payroll also consumed a significant amount of time, with Bornelli sharing it would take around 2-3 hours per pay cycle to work through manual checks and adjustments. 

Poor manager and employee experience

Before transitioning to Deputy, Funk Drinks Co. was using separate platforms for HR, timesheets and payroll. The external payroll app particularly was clunky and not user-friendly for their team.

“The payroll platform and the HR platform were two separate things. So onboarding people and managing the staffing was one side. And then the payroll and timesheets and rosters were all on a different platform, making it a clunky and disjointed experience for the team and for us.”

For her team of mostly frontline workers, ease of use is something that is really important to ensure efficiency, and it’s something they were just not seeing with their previous solution.

“Most of the team are not at a computer, they’re on the floor and on the move, so they needed an app that was very user friendly, easy to clock in and out, and have timesheets signed off, and that was something we found really difficult with our previous platform.”

Having previously used Deputy for scheduling, Bornelli was convinced to move to the complete experience that could offer Payroll, HR and scheduling in one place. With new ways to flexibly manage pay rates delivered through Pay Rate Builder, the decision was a no-brainer.

Automating complex awards, and boosting confidence

Deputy’s integrated solution, using the Pay By Area functionality has ensured that wherever her team is rostered to, the correct award will automatically be applied. This automation alone has removed a lot of the compliance headache for Bornelli.

“Deputy has simplified the complex, while keeping the accuracy”

The result being a dramatic increase in confidence with each pay run, with Bornelli now feeling she is at an 80-90% level of confidence regarding regulatory compliance with Fair Work. 

Time saving and user friendly

The end-to-end workflow, from timesheet approval to submitting the final pay file, is now reduced down to just 45 minutes from an estimated 2-3 hours, saving Bornelli valuable time she can now dedicate to more strategic priorities. 

“It’s just having all of the information you need so easily accessible for a team member just in one place… the payroll feature is so easy to use, and the ease of use of the platform in general, it saves a lot of time.”

A seamless, unified platform

By having rostering, timesheets, HR and payroll in one central platform, the employee experience has significantly improved. Team members can easily manage their details, view timesheets and access pay slips directly from the Deputy app. 

“The best feedback I’ve heard from the team is not having any feedback. If no one’s contacting me, then we know for a fact there are no issues.” 

The unified platform has streamlined the entire lifecycle, from recruiting to payment.

“Having HR, it’s so simple to take them from recruiting, to application, and then I press a button and onboard them and they’re ready to be scheduled, and for payroll.. it’s a total time saver.”

By adopting Deputy Payroll and consolidating their workforce management, Funk Drinks successfully transitioned from a fragmented system riddled with compliance risk and manual effort to a unified, user-friendly platform.

As GM, Mari Bornelli now confidently manages employees under two distinct modern awards, cutting payroll processing time by over 60% and mitigating significant financial risk. The integrated solution simplifies complexity, ensuring accuracy and providing a seamless pay experience for all 30-35 team members.