Paying your employees has become more and more complex. Legislation is always being updated. Employees, or their relatives, are much more informed - or act as though they know more than you do. There is more information available for employees to work out whether they are being paid correctly and HMRC will follow up with the employer if they believe an employee has raised a valid question.
Doing payroll yourself may not be cost effective if you don't know what you don't know. There are so many things to consider for each payroll you process. For example:
- Are all payments taxable?
- Should the employee be in an auto enrolment pension scheme?
- Do I need a pension scheme?
- Can I pay the apprentice rate?
- Are the deductions I am making from pay lawful?
- Have I calculated their starting/leaving pay correctly?
- How much holiday are they entitled to?
- How do I calculate the holiday pay they are due when they leave?
You may believe it is more cost effective to do it yourself but spending time doing payroll, keeping up with changes in legislation and buying a software licence each year (and learning how to use it initially)all have a cost implication - your time is not free.
How much easier it is to send your payroll information to a reputable payroll provider who will process it and send back the information you need and provide your employees with their payslips. It is as straightforward as that.
But, of course, from our point of view, payroll is not straightforward. Almost every payroll we process has starters and leavers during the year, pay rises, bonuses, opting in and opting out of pension schemes. Some have apprentices and we need to ensure they are paid correctly, Some will have employees who need to move to a different pay rate when it is their birthday to ensure they are being paid at least the minimum wage. There are tax code changes, taxable and non-taxable payments and deductions for a variety of situations.
As a provider of payroll services for numerous businesses across different industries we are asked lots of different questions. Often we need to ask the questions to ensure the employer understands any implications to them of something they have requested.
If you DIY payroll you have no-one to ask so you have to spend time working it out for yourself. The end result will only as good as the knowledge you have and the information you have put into the software. Software can only do what you have told it to and if you don't know what the answer should be you won't know if it is right or wrong.
Our knowledge and experience means we know what to expect as the end result and if it is not what we expected we can review it to understand why the software hasn't produced the right answer and correct it.
Our payroll services take away the worry of whether you are doing it right and the cost implication of doing it yourself and getting it wrong. We use payroll software which provides employee documents to them online on pay day and you have access to your employees' payroll information online too. You can use our payroll software to record your employees' holiday and provide them with their HR documents.
But the most important aspect of our payroll service is that we are responsive. We are available to you if you have questions, we can calculate the cost of pay rises to your business and we will ensure that each employee's payroll we process is correct based on the information you provide us with. And if we need more information to process the payroll we will get in touch with you.
A growing business will have employees and employees need to be paid correctly and on time. We have been providing payroll services for 19 years and have experience of providing payroll for businesses with just one employee up to 50 employees.
For your peace of mind contact us whether you are taking on your first employee, whether you have had enough Doing-it-Yourself, or whether you want to change from your current provider for more efficiency. We are friendly and approachable and you can find out how we can help you.
