Choose a great payroll provider
If you’re currently running your payroll in-house but have decided to outsource, or you’re thinking of changing your payroll administrator, how can you identify a good payroll provider? Payroll is too important to chop and change too often, and of course you want to move to something better than you’ve already got!
There are some key areas you can consider before making your move, over and above just the cost. Receiving a good service is top of most people’s wish list, but how do you define a good service, or even a great service?
A good payroll bureau will have experienced staff, who you can speak to at any time of the day with your queries. They should have sufficient knowledge to be able to answer your questions about statutory pay issues, notice and holiday pay, tax and national insurance issues. A great payroll bureau will be proactive in keeping you informed about important changes, such as how to payroll benefits in kind and reminding you about national living wage changes if you pay staff minimum wages, and they will have extensive knowledge about workplace pensions.
A good payroll bureau will input the wage information you give them correctly, but a great payroll bureau will look at what’s in front of them and question it if looks odd or unexpected, because you don’t always get things right. A great payroll bureau will turn your payroll around the same day if they can.
A good payroll bureau will provide you with their standard suite of payroll reports and they will offer you e-Payslips, which are payslips that your staff can access online. A great payroll bureau will be able to produce bespoke reports in whatever format you want them in, including reports to your company year-end for your accountant.
Technology comes into its own if you have a larger or more complicated payroll. A good payroll bureau will ask you to send in a wage collection spreadsheet each month and will input the figures manually. A great payroll bureau will vet the complex data each month and when they’re happy with it they’ll covert it into an import file that can be directly uploaded onto their software, reducing the risk of manual input.
All payroll bureaus should be aware of Data Protection issues and must ensure that payroll reports sent to you are securely password protected.
I’m proud to say that the Auto-Enrolment Bureau is a great payroll provider, and our aim in life is to make payroll easy for you, so please do get in touch if you’d like to make a change for the better!
