Whether you are a small accounting firm just starting on your journey or a large practice handling millions of pounds’ worth of business, payroll is a function that remains a top priority, irrespective of size or domain.
Not only does correct payroll processing matter hugely when it comes to drawing up an income statement, but also it keeps employees happy when they are paid on time. Accounting firms often get requests from their clients to handle payroll for them.
At first glance, it might seem like a simple, straightforward process. How tough can it be to calculate your client employees’ hours and prepare their pay? Trust us – in reality, there is a lot more to payroll.
From calculating taxes and implementing wage policies to remitting to HMRC, the process is far from simple. In fact, things can escalate quite quickly and get complicated if not handled with dedication and finesse. Payroll clearly demands accuracy each time, every time – after all, no one appreciates even the tiniest error in their payslip.
Clearly, you are stalling your accounting firm’s growth if your practice staff spends more time managing payroll than offering advisory services such as tax planning and forecasting. That is why it makes sense for you to outsource payroll processing to specialised third-party vendors like Stellaripe.
Here are seven ways in which payroll outsourcing can help you:
1. Streamline your accounting firm
If you offer specialised services to your clients in niche areas such as forensic accounting or environmental accounting, then payroll management is not always the most profitable type of project to take up. Imagine your practice staff spending hours calculating weekly wages!
Therefore, by diverting your clients’ payroll management requests to third-party providers like us, your accounting firm is free to take up tasks that are more profitable and in line with your areas of expertise, thus letting you grow further.
2. Drive additional revenues
When your accountants are caught up with processing payroll, they lose out on work time that could be allocated to other, more critical tasks. By outsourcing payroll, you free up your accountants to spend more time interacting with clients, solving their problems and reaching out to new clients for potential business.
If you aren’t already offering payroll services, this could become a new revenue stream. All of these are money-making activities that your accounting firm can benefit from while an external team manages payroll for you.
3. Leave payroll and admin compliance worries
Payroll involves compliance norms of its own that can be tricky to keep up with for an accounting firm without specialised expertise, which could lead to legal hassles later.
Expert payroll accountants at Stellaripe, for example, are fully versed in all compliance-related matters and can also answer any questions that your clients may have about payroll and admin compliance.
We can also save you a ton of hassle as we manage HMRC, auto-enrolment pension and other statutory regulations. Further, we can also talk to HMRC and pension authorities on your behalf. It thus makes sense to outsource payroll to an external provider and free yourself from potential non-compliance liability.
4. Get it done by the experts
Payroll processing is a time-consuming task of its own that requires a high degree of expertise and accuracy to process the data correctly and identify any errors, even when multiple software solutions are being used.
Third-party providers are experts at precisely these things and are accustomed to handling hundreds if not thousands, of client payslips every month.
By entrusting the payroll function to us, accounting firms can rest assured that their clients’ payrolls will come back error-free and on time, every time.
5. Make payroll profitable
When you outsource your payroll function, you end up saving hugely in terms of time and money. Your accountants can now focus on the specialised work for which they are best trained rather than spending hours poring over large volumes of information and cross-checking all of it for errors.
Moreover, you don’t need to either procure payroll processing software for your in-house systems (which is an extra cost) or spend time training your accountants to use them. For example, the Stellaripe team already has all the necessary software in place to handle the payroll of accounting firms expertly and efficiently.
6. Simple pricing
Most of the third-party providers (like Stellaripe) that offer payroll services set a pricing model which takes into consideration: Total number of employees, pay type and pay frequency. Alternatively, some even offer a dedicated payroll staff to fully manage the payroll function including every type of correspondence and query resolution.
By contrast, keeping an in-house accountant to take care of payroll is a far more expensive undertaking that calls for salary, benefits, training costs and office infrastructure. The accounting firms that we work with find outsourcing to make far more financial sense when they are billed for the exact amount of work done by our expert accountants.
7. Enhanced data security
Client information is highly confidential, and third-party payroll providers keep that in mind when accounting firms outsource their payroll work. For example, we at Stellaripe make use of GDPR-compliant tools to manage client data, including password-protected payslips, employer reports, encrypted emails, and so on. These ensure that each client’s data is secure from start to finish, no matter how complex or voluminous the data may be.
Over to you
Payroll outsourcing is increasingly becoming the norm for accounting firms of all sizes so that the task can be done efficiently and promptly. Be sure to do your research and have a thorough conversation with the providers you shortlist so that you can choose the best one for the task and potentially work with them on a long-term basis.
Alternatively, you can ring us at 020 3475 3537 for a free consultation around how Stellaripe can keep all your payroll woes at bay. We take care of your payroll processing, auto enrolment, CIS, client liaison, HMRC correspondence and reporting – all under the same roof. You can also drop your contact details here for us to call you. Speak soon!
