Making sure your employees get paid on time and every time is one of the most important things you can do. It helps with staff morale and productivity, but many small business owners don’t have the resources or expertise to run payroll in-house effectively. Outsourcing payroll to a professional payroll provider will give you the freedom to focus on your core business.
Here are eight good reasons to outsource payroll: –
1. Hassle-free
Payroll has become complex with its ever-evolving legislation. It’s not a matter of just clicking a few buttons and hoping for the best, even when you use specialist payroll software, you need to understand the mechanics of payroll and it’s elements to be sure the output is accurate. Pay information must now be submitted to HMRC before or on every payday, known as Real Time Information (RTI), and if you don’t report on time you can incur a late filing penalty. Employers also now need to set up and administer workplace pension schemes on an ongoing basis, which adds further pressure on a payroll department. A payroll company will take the hassle out of paying your staff and running a pension scheme, deal with HMRC and The Pensions Regulator (TPR) so that you don’t have to and keep on top of ever-changing legislation.
2. Cost-effective
If you currently run your own payroll in-house, if you outsource payroll, it will enable you to focus on your core business. When you run your own payroll the costs are two-fold. As well as having to pay for your own time, or for somebody to do the job for you, there are hidden costs such as payslip stationery and printing and software.
3. Saves time
It might be a cliché, but the saying ‘time is money’ is overused for a reason. Outsourcing frees you and your staff from the administrative burden of running a payroll. All you need to do each pay period is to tell us details of hours, holidays, sickness and anything else that affects pay and we do the rest.
4. Access to the latest technology
Payroll technology is complex because it needs to keep up with ever-changing payroll legislation. As a payroll bureau, we have access to the latest technology and set up your payroll on the software best suited to your needs. We also absorb the cost of lost hours spent dealing with software issues… and believe you me, there are many!
5. Expertise
Did you know that there are more than 160 pieces of legislation that affect payroll and pensions? Well, there are and every change makes a difference to the way payroll and pensions are processed. Keeping on top of the legislation is a challenge for even the most competent payroll account manager but it’s part of our job.
6. Reliability
If you outsource your payroll you won’t need to worry about your key payroll staff taking holiday, being off sick or leaving the company. Neither will you have to worry about a technology breakdown, loss of internet connection, fire, flood or anything else that hinder paying your staff on time. A good payroll provider will have a disaster recovery plan for almost any eventuality, that means if necessary they can be up and running and processing at the very least the most critical of payrolls within hours to ensure their client employees are paid on time.
7. Pensions
Payroll has become an essential part of the setup and administration process of workplace pensions – also known as auto-enrolment. Payroll professionals have quickly become the experts in workplace pensions and can offer guidance on pension choice, apply for pensions on your behalf and carry out administrative processes associated with a workplace pension scheme, such as completing a declaration of compliance and all the other tasks that make sure your business is compliant.
8. Avoid penalties
If you don’t report payroll information on time you can be fined. How much you pay depends on how many people you employ and how late you are filing your data. HMRC will also penalise businesses for careless or deliberate errors.
Fines for missing workplace pension deadlines can be steep. They start at £400 and then escalate to between £50 a day for businesses with 1-4 employees to £500 a day for employers with 5-49 members of staff. So it’s crucial that you comply with pensions legislation.
Find out more about our outsourcing payroll services UK and workplace pension services.
