What’s Involved in Payroll Processing?
- Gathering weekly/monthly pay data for all personnel
- Calculating pay, tax, NI and other additions and deductions
- Creating payslips and distributing them to staff
- Adding new employees and removing leavers from the payroll
- Creating relevant documents such as P45’s, P60’s and others
- Creating accurate reports for accounting purposes
- Arranging payments into personnel bank accounts
- Arranging PAYE payments to HMRC
- Making alterations to employee data such as tax codes, bank details etc
- Submitting figures to HMRC
- Keeping up to date with changes in pay and tax regulations
- Dealing with enquiries from personnel
As well as being time consuming, this also requires significant levels of knowledge and expertise to be maintained in-house.
Costs can also be significant. As well as paying for suitably qualified staff to manage the in house operation for you and perhaps additional administration staff to perform data entry, there are usually also additional costs involved in buying or licensing specialist payroll software, which needs to be regularly maintained and updated.
What Happens When Processing Goes Wrong
While the effort and cost involved in processing your company’s payroll are significant, they are as nothing to the costs involved in failing to do so.
If personnel are paid late, this can cause a great deal of disgruntlement within the workforce, not to mention actual financial distress to those concerned. Persistent problems which are not handled correctly can lead to a breakdown of trust and seriously impact working relations and productivity.
If personnel are paid too little or too much, a great deal of time will be spent in correcting the error and communicating with affected staff.
If HMRC do not receive the correct PAYE deductions, this can result in the business owner being fined. There can also be penalties for making payments to HMRC too late. Avoid this by downloading our tax calendar to stay on top of deadlines.
At best, these types of issues are a distraction from running and growing your business. At worst, they can seriously damage it.
Why it Pays to Outsource Your Processing
Outsourcing your payroll means you can save many of the costs and headaches of running an in-house operation.
The potential for monetary cost savings is huge – especially if you are currently employing dedicated staff and paying licenses for specialist software. Using We can greatly reduce and simplify the cost structure of running your payroll. With our fully managed service you pay an upfront set up fee, which depends on the size and complexity of the operation. Thereafter you pay only a fixed charge per employee, or per payslip charge. This makes budgeting extremely easy.
But saving money is not the only benefit to outsourcing. For many companies the primary benefit is peace of mind, knowing that staff are being paid accurately and on time and that all legal requirements are being fully met. IRIS FMP are BACS registered and fully HMRC approved and our software is kept completely up to date with all changes to pay legislation. In addition, our processing services in the UK – both bureau and managed – include all year end processing and submission to HMRC.
Some companies may initially worry about losing visibility and control over the payroll function. With us you retain as much control and visibility as you require. With our fully managed service you send through data to us to be entered into the system – so you retain complete control over what data is entered. We provide a full range of reports and can arrange for bespoke reports as needed.
If you want more control you can use our bureau service instead. With our bureau service your staff have direct access to our system via a computer link (we train your staff how to use the system as part of the set up stage). They can then enter data directly into the system each week/month as required. They can also run instant reports from the system at any time. With either service you also have access to a dedicated payroll manager who is on hand to deal with any queries as they arise, so you will always know what is going on, and can get any issues dealt with promptly.
Why Choose IRIS FMP?
While there are other outsourced processing services in the UK, we believe that the functionality and service we provide is exceptional.
Firstly, we do far more than simply give you access to our processing software. We aim to create a long-lasting partnership with you based on a thorough understanding of your company’s needs, in order to create a system which is truly tailored to your company. We take great care throughout the implementation stages to ensure that everything runs smoothly and that everyone involved is kept fully informed of progress.
Secondly, the service we provide is not a ‘one size fits all’ solution. It is fully customisable and flexible, so that it can respond to the changing needs of your business over time.
Thirdly, we provide not just processing facilities, but access to professional expertise any time you need it. We have a large team of professionals, most of whom are IPP qualified, with, between them, over 80 years of experience across a wide range of industries. You have access to this expertise at any time, simply by calling your dedicated payroll manager.
