Launch Your Team's Payroll Project
Today marks the real start of your group project. Each team takes ownership of its own payroll scenario, dataset, and business challenge. Your workbook must match the Lesson 07 rehearsal structure exactly.
Each team has been assigned a unique business scenario with specific constraints and challenges. Your job is to build a payroll system that solves your scenario's problems while following the exact structure practiced in Lesson 07.
Team Scenario Assignment
- Group 1: Harbor Market (grocery) — Seasonal hiring surge
- Group 2: TechStart Solutions — Remote team payroll
- Group 3: Riverside Café — Tipped employee focus
- Group 4: Metro Delivery — Gig worker classification
- Group 5: Westside Auto — Mixed hourly/salaried
- Group 6: GreenLeaf Nursery — Agricultural/seasonal
- Calculate accurate gross → net pay for your scenario's employee types
- Apply appropriate tax tables and compute withholdings
- Reconcile payroll with bank to spot timing issues
- Forecast cash needs for your business's payroll cycles
- XLOOKUP for employee data and tax tables
- IF logic for deductions and overtime
- SUMIFS and conditional formatting
- Data validation for clean inputs
Download only your assigned file. Each dataset matches your team's scenario.
Important: Use ONLY your assigned file. Teams must work with their own dataset throughout Lessons 08–10.
Complete these items by end of class:
- Workbook opened and named:
PayrollProject-Group[X]-LastNames.xlsx - All required sheets created matching Lesson 07 structure
- Your group dataset imported into the Employee sheet
- Problem statement written (1–2 sentences on the business problem)
- One early direction statement (preliminary recommendation or hypothesis)
Keep sheet names and order identical to Lesson 07. This allows comparison across teams and ensures consistent grading.
Your team's kickoff should demonstrate:
- Clear problem statement: What specific payroll challenge does your scenario face?
- Appropriate data usage: Employee types, pay rates, and constraints match your scenario
- Early direction: A preliminary hypothesis about what the data will show
- Clean workbook setup: Sheet structure matches Lesson 07 exactly
- Correctly named workbook file
- All 8 sheets created with proper names
- Group dataset imported to Employees sheet
- Problem statement (1–2 sentences)
- Early direction statement (preliminary recommendation)
- Technical Accuracy — 50%: Formulas, validations, structure
- Strategic Rationale — 20%: Business alignment
- Communication — 15%: Clear documentation
- Time Management — 10%: Pacing and completion
- Q&A Readiness — 5%: Understanding of your scenario