What payroll audit samples actually test

A payroll audit review is not a full re-run of every payslip. In Taiwan mid-size companies, we usually start with a stratified sample: new hires, leavers, overtime-heavy roles, and anyone with special allowances.

For each person in the sample we compare the employment contract rate to the payroll register, then to the bank payment batch. Gaps often appear in rest-day pay or meal allowances that HR approved verbally but never coded into the master file.

Contribution lines deserve their own pass. Labour insurance and health insurance bases should match the declared salary for that month. When they do not, finance may still have posted the correct expense while the remittance form used an older figure — exactly the kind of mismatch a reconciliation engagement is meant to catch.

We close each sample with a short exception note: what differed, which department owns the fix, and whether the issue is one-off or systemic. That note becomes the spine of the findings memo your controller can take into a close meeting.