Implementation of a Payroll Management System for a State Ministry in Plateau State

Payroll administration in Plateau State government ministries is burdened by error-prone manual calculations, delayed salary payments, and inadequate audit capabilities. This study presents the implementation of a payroll management system for a state ministry in Plateau State, North Central Nigeria. The system was developed using Java (Spring Boot) and a MySQL database, with a web-based user interface. It supports staff profiling, salary structure configuration, tax and pension deduction computation, payslip generation, and bank transfer file generation for bulk payment processing. Requirements were gathered through structured interviews with fifteen ministry administrative and finance officers. The system implements the Integrated Payroll and Personnel Information System (IPPIS) data structure, enabling potential federal government data sharing. Functional testing validated salary computations for ten staff grade levels and six pension tiers across 500 test cases, achieving 100 percent computation accuracy. Performance testing with 100 concurrent users showed average response times of 2.4 seconds. A three-month pilot processed payroll for 220 staff with zero computation disputes recorded, compared to an average of 14 disputes per month under the previous manual system. Post-pilot surveys of finance staff rated the system 4.2 out of 5.0 for efficiency improvement. The study recommends state-wide deployment across all Plateau State ministries and alignment of the system with the State Accountant-General's financial management platform.

Keywords: payroll management, government ministry, Plateau State, salary computation, financial administration