31st August 2016
If you run a business, you know that every month you have to stop doing the fun stuff that you’re passionate about and do the payroll. Unless you love payroll (and run a payroll business like we do), odds are you didn’t start your business in order to manage payroll. But, it’s a necessary evil that keeps the wheels turning and your employees happy.
PAYE fines, missing expenses receipts, tedious data entry… the list goes on. So we’ve brought together our list of the most frustrating things about doing your in-house payroll.
1 – PAYE fines
Last year, the government earned over £700 million in fines thanks to PAYE and payroll errors. Whether due to lateness or mathematical mistakes, getting a fine from the government has a serious impact on business.
2 – When the one person who actually knows how to do the payroll is ill
Learning how to properly manage and process a pay run is complex and time consuming. Small businesses often only have one person to do the payroll, in addition to other HR duties. When that vital person is off sick at a crucial moment, paying staff becomes very challenging.
3 – Data Entry
Anyone who’s had a temporary office job knows this pain. Not only is data entry tedious and unrewarding, little mistakes can lead to big problems. One mistake when inputting an employee’s bank details can lead to you accidentally paying someone else.
4 – Keeping up with the changes
New legislation and compliance directives come down all the time, more so during the government’s budget announcements. Keeping up with the changes and ensuring compliance can turn into an entire project all of its own. For a recent example, consider auto-enrolment and the challenges businesses face in meeting their auto-enrolment deadlines.
5 – Expenses and overtime
Payroll fraud costs businesses millions of pounds a year and nowhere is it more found than in expenses and overtime. “Garnishing” expenses and claiming more hours than one has worked is something that r might be considered by even the most loyal employees. Gathering the evidence in support of and checking expenses and overtime is a long and frustrating task.
6 – Security
Keeping private employee data on your own servers provides risks and headaches of its own. Not only does this data need to be stored somewhere (which costs money), you also have to protect it. Many businesses this year have made the national papers because of security breaches and no organisation is safe from hackers.
7 – Payroll is never uniform
Every month there is something that has changed from last month’s pay run. The mercurial nature of payroll means that a “set and forget” policy just won’t work. Payroll always needs a personal touch to ensure accuracy.
Take the sting out of payroll by outsourcing all these little annoyances to professionals. With your payroll safe in the hands of a third party you trust, you can get back to the business of, well, running your business.
