The reasons to outsource your payroll processes are the same reasons to outsource most business processes. Outsourcing allows you to make the best use of time and resources, incur cost savings, and ensure accuracy and compliance. But when you delve into the specifics of a particular service, such as UK Payroll, the devil is in the details.
Compared to tax laws and regulations in the U.S., the U.K. have a more simplified system. But that’s not to say it’s an easy one. HMRC, PAYE, RTI, FPS and EPS requirements demand a system of record that can be easily tracked, maintained and updated, and support related correspondences. This can be a daunting task when put in the hands of even the most skilled payroll professionals.
How can you be sure that an automated process will be able to accurately perform such intricate tasks? A few things come into play here. Your UK Payroll provider should offer all these things. Because if you only have part of a solution, you’re still left with part of a problem.
Trustworthy, Traceable, and Transparent Technology
First, your payroll outsourcing service provider needs to use technology that’s built to perform these processes accurately and efficiently. It should also accommodate changes as they occur and should offer advanced and immediate visibility to updates when they happen. This level of transparency becomes especially important in terms of governance, providing a single solution with unobstructed visibility to audit and govern transactions made by employees, managers, and administrators, as well as any transactions tasked to the service provider on the customer’s behalf. Checklists, event structures and process maps should live within the application, and should be reconfigurable to align with changing business needs.
Expertise in Both Application and Legislation
An automated solution implies a certain level of self-sufficiency. The truth is that an application built to perform exceptionally, adapt to changes and provide insightful reporting and auditing capabilities will not entirely run itself.
It’s expected that your U.K. payroll outsourcing provider should be an expert in the application they’re supporting. But having a thorough understanding of U.K. payroll legislation complexities is equally essential. When HMRC changes occur, for example, you want to know your service provider will offer the support necessary to keep your business in compliance. The most efficient and effective way to achieve this is by choosing a provider that uses its technical and regulatory expertise to deliver services and updates within the same application where these processes and updates occur. This knowledge needs to be coupled with an expertise of the application you’re using to perform payroll activities.
Pure, Customer-Centric Service
What may be of utmost importance is knowing the individuals tasked with the management and processing of payroll for your organization. Though this is often the most elusive aspect of payroll outsourcing.
Payroll analysts come and go, at times before a customer has even had the opportunity to learn his or her name, let alone the ability to pick up the phone and ask a question making any sort of account-level or individual client familiarity little more than wishful thinking. However, there are services out there who make customer-centric service something beyond a priority, and elevate it to a core value by making employees valued team members themselves.
Employees who are certified experts in their technological and functional fields, empowered in their places of employment to be advocates for their customers not only do wonders for payroll processing, they do wonders for customer satisfaction.
A payroll service provider offering comprehensively managed payroll can provide companies with a single, consolidated system that combines technical expertise with a deep understanding of the U.K. payroll system.
When you choose a U.K. payroll provider with these qualities in mind, you’re not just offloading a set of tasks to a third party. You’re choosing a partner that will help your business adapt and grow as payroll legislation continues evolving.
