Success Story · Food Manufacturing Payroll

Heritage Foods Corporation: Preventing $3.1M in Payroll Leakage

From payroll chaos to compliance confidence across seven facilities, four UFCW unions, and 2,500+ seasonal workers.

Headline Result

$3.1M

in preventable payroll errors identified and stopped in a 6-month pilot, with 99.8% first-run payroll accuracy.

80% reduction in manual reconciliation hours

The Problem

Heritage Foods Corporation is a vertically integrated food manufacturer operating seven processing facilities across Wisconsin, Minnesota, and Iowa. The company processes and packages frozen vegetables, prepared meals, and specialty proteins, employing 800 permanent staff and up to 2,500 seasonal workers during peak production.

Key Challenge Areas

Multi-facility complexity: 7 facilities, 3 states, 4 different UFCW local agreements with competing wage rules and compliance requirements.
$3.1M in annual leakage: duplicate payments, incorrect union rates, misclassified workers, all discovered after paychecks printed.
Regulatory exposure: Department of Labor audits flagged shift differential errors, incomplete time tracking documentation, and union compliance gaps.

The Impact

Finance teams spent 450+ hours per payroll cycle investigating variances across seven disconnected systems.
8 union grievances per quarter, escalating to arbitration over inconsistent CBA application.
Post-payroll detection only, with errors discovered after financial damage was done.

The real cost: not just the $3.1M in errors, but the compliance risk, lost management visibility, and operational burden of reactive problem-solving.

Quick Stats

Payroll Leakage Prevented

$3.1M

in 6-month pilot

Manual Reconciliation

80%

reduction in manual effort

Union Grievances

87%

drop, from 8 to 1 per quarter

DOL Audit Findings

across all facilities

First-Run Accuracy

99.8%

first-run payroll accuracy

How Payroll RCA Transformed Heritage Foods

Payroll RCA delivered a four-layer protection system designed specifically for complex, multi-facility, union-heavy payroll environments.

Layer 1: Pre-Payroll Prevention

Stop errors before they hit the wire.

Instead of discovering problems after payroll runs, Payroll RCA validates all data in Oracle HCM before processing:

Flagged 6,247 duplicate time entries across all facilities, preventing $287K in duplicate payments.
Caught 412 union rate code mismatches before wage calculations were finalized.
Identified 156 worker classification errors, including H-2B visa workers incorrectly coded as domestic employees.

Result: zero payroll corrections needed after submission and 100% first-run accuracy on first full deployment.

Layer 2: Root Cause Analysis with Facility Intelligence

Understand why errors occur, not just what went wrong.

Payroll RCA diagnoses problems with granular, facility-specific intelligence:

Discovered a systemic issue where Facility 5's transition to a new UFCW local (Local 789) was not reflected in Oracle HCM configuration. The system was still using old Local 471 shift differential rates of 1.50 dollars per hour instead of the new 2.50 dollars per hour, affecting 47 employees for 21 days and causing 12.4K dollars in wage compliance violations.
Fixed seniority calculation errors where eight employees were incorrectly denied overtime slots due to facility transfer coding gaps, identified as a master data issue, not a payroll calculation error.
Identified batch costing issues where 412K dollars in labor costs were misallocated across facilities because seasonal worker facility assignments were not syncing with batch cost codes.

Result: facility managers understand root causes, permanent fixes are implemented to prevent recurrence, and compliance violations are resolved before grievances escalate.

Layer 3: Cost Center Alignment and Union Compliance

Ensure accurate costing and CBA compliance across all facilities.

Continuous monitoring of four UFCW agreements eliminated compliance gaps and grievances:

Verified shift differential application for all 2,500+ workers, confirming correct shift differential rates for their UFCW local and identifying inconsistencies between Facility 1 (Local 471) and Facility 5 (Local 789), corrected before the next payroll cycle.
Corrected seniority-based overtime eligibility, restoring eight employees to proper overtime eligibility after identifying facility transfer gaps in HR master data.
Resolved batch-based labor costing by implementing automated batch code assignment so seasonal workers' time is allocated correctly to product batches, customer orders, and government contracts, enabling accurate product costing and customer invoicing.

Result: 100% CBA compliance verified automatically, accurate batch costing, and customer invoicing no longer delayed for labor cost reconciliation.

Layer 4: Continuous Assurance and Audit-Ready Documentation

Stay compliant automatically every payroll cycle.

Every pay period generates complete, audit-ready documentation:

Continuous union compliance monitoring where all four UFCW agreements are verified automatically every pay period and any violation is flagged immediately and escalated to the Compliance Officer.
Department of Labor audit success, where two Heritage Foods facilities provided complete, timestamped payroll records with calculation methodology and CBA rule citations, resulting in zero findings across both audits.
Grievance elimination through transparent, documented compliance that reduced union disputes from eight per quarter to one per quarter, with no arbitration cases active, down from two to three annually.

Result: audit-ready compliance automatically, zero regulatory findings, and stronger labor relations.

Measurable Results Across All Facilities

Financial Impact

Outcome	Detail
Payroll leakage prevented	$3.1M over a 6-month pilot, annualized to $6.2M.
Duplicate payment prevention	$287K saved by catching 6,247 duplicate entries pre-payroll.
Union rate correction	$156K recovered from correcting 412 rate code mismatches.
Batch costing accuracy	$412K in labor cost allocation corrected.
Cost avoidance in manual work	$180K annually by reducing manual work from 450 hours per cycle to 90 hours per cycle.

Operational Excellence

Metric	Before	After	Improvement
Payroll accuracy	Post-payroll detection only.	99.8% first-run accuracy.	Proactive payroll control.
Manual reconciliation	450 hours per cycle.	90 hours per cycle.	80% reduction in manual effort.
Processing speed	5 to 7 business days.	2 to 3 business days.	60% faster processing.
Audit readiness	Manual compilation required.	Automatic generation.	Zero findings in audits.
Configuration consistency	Facility-level configuration drift.	100% compliance verified.	Enterprise-wide control.

Compliance and Labor Relations

Metric	Before	After	Improvement
Union grievances per quarter	8	1	87% reduction.
Arbitration cases annually	2 to 3 active cases.	0 active cases.	Arbitration eliminated.
DOL audit findings	Multiple violations.	Zero findings.	Clean audits.
CBA compliance	Inconsistent across facilities.	100% verified automatically.	Enterprise control.
Union steward disputes	Frequent disputes.	Resolved proactively.	Stronger relationships.

Strategic Impact

Batch costing accuracy: product costing is now accurate within less than 0.1 percent, customer invoicing is no longer delayed for labor reconciliation, and government contract audits are clean on first submission.

Management visibility: corporate finance has real-time visibility into payroll operations across all seven facilities, enabling data-driven decisions on production costs, pricing, and staffing.

Compliance confidence: senior leadership can confidently represent payroll accuracy and union compliance to the board, regulators, and customers.

Facility-by-Facility Outcome Summary

Facility 1 in Wisconsin under Local 471 standardized shift differential application and achieved zero grievances.
Facility 2 in Iowa corrected government contract labor costing by 156K dollars and had audits approved on first submission.
Facility 3 in Minnesota under Local 789 standardized seasonal worker classification with no miscodings.
Facility 4 in Wisconsin under Local 471 aligned batch costing with the production system and expedited invoicing.
Facility 5 in Minnesota under Local 789 implemented the CBA transition from Local 471 to Local 789 cleanly, correcting 47 employees proactively before grievances.
Facility 6 in Iowa verified H-2B visa worker documentation with zero compliance issues.
Facility 7 in Minnesota, a non-union facility, resolved integration issues with contractor payroll and achieved data consistency.

Client Testimonial

Before Payroll RCA, we were managing payroll across seven separate systems. Corporate had no visibility into facility-level compliance, and each location was managing its own variances. Finding a systemic issue where all four UFCW facilities had the same problem would take weeks. Now, the system shows us immediately what is happening across all locations, whether it is systemic or facility-specific, and what we need to fix. That is transformational for an enterprise like ours. The union stewards have even noticed, and they trust our payroll now because it is consistent and auditable across all facilities.

Michael Torres, VP of Finance, Heritage Foods Corporation

Why Payroll RCA Stands Alone in Food Manufacturing

Traditional detection tools

Detect errors after payroll runs, which is too late.
Flag variances without explaining why they occur.
Offer no union compliance checking.
Provide no multi-facility intelligence.
Require manual audit documentation.

Payroll RCA

Prevents errors before payroll runs.
Explains root causes with facility-specific context.
Continuously monitors union agreements.
Identifies systemic versus facility-specific issues.
Generates automatic, audit-ready compliance documentation.

Head-to-Head Competitor Comparison

Capability	Payslip	Mercans	Paycor	Payroll RCA
Pre-payroll prevention	No	No	No	Yes
Root cause analysis	No	No	No	Yes
Union compliance monitoring	No	No	No	Yes
Multi-facility coordination	No	No	No	Yes
Systemic issue identification	No	No	No	Yes
Batch-based costing	No	No	No	Yes
Automatic audit documentation	No	No	No	Yes

Result: Payroll RCA is the only solution designed for complex, multi-facility, union-heavy food manufacturing operations.

Why Heritage Foods Chose Payroll RCA

Enterprise complexity with seven facilities, four unions, and three states that required intelligent, multi-location root cause analysis.
Compliance risk from Department of Labor audits and union grievances that demanded proactive prevention and audit-ready documentation.
Financial impact where $3.1M in annual leakage made prevention a return on investment priority.
Operational burden with 450+ hours of manual reconciliation per cycle that was unsustainable.

Implementation Overview

Deployment timeline: 5 to 6 weeks.

Phase 1, weeks 1 and 2: configuration and Oracle HCM integration for all seven facilities.
Phase 2, weeks 3 and 4: pilot payroll with validation and testing.
Phase 3, week 5: full production deployment with monitoring.
Phase 4, week 6: optimization and training for facility teams.

Investment: typical return on investment is achieved in the first payroll cycle with $3.1M in prevented leakage.

Learn More: Food Industry Resources

Watch the video

Discover how Payroll RCA transforms food manufacturing payroll operations.

Watch video

Read the blog

Managing HR data and payroll complexity in large-scale seasonal manufacturing.

Watch video

Ready to Prevent Your Payroll Leakage?

Heritage Foods used Payroll RCA to prevent $3.1M in payroll leakage, cut manual reconciliation by 80%, eliminate audit findings, and dramatically reduce union grievances. You can achieve the same level of control, compliance, and confidence across your facilities.

Schedule a live demo to see Payroll RCA in action with your real payroll scenarios.
Bring finance, operations, and compliance leaders together around a single source of payroll truth.

Schedule a live demo