Payroll run properly, on time, every time — by a Chartered Management Accountant rather than a processing centre. RTI, auto-enrolment, statutory pay and year end, on a fixed fee agreed before anything starts.
Get a fixed quote →Most bookkeeping can slip a week. Payroll can't. Under Real Time Information, HMRC must be told about pay and deductions on or before the day people are paid — so the deadline is the payday itself, not a tidy date later in the month.
That single fact is why payroll is the first thing to break when a business gets busy, and why late Full Payment Submissions attract penalties that grow with headcount and escalate if it keeps happening.
And unlike a coding error, payroll mistakes are visible to your staff. Someone paid wrong tells everyone.
| Each pay run | What happens |
|---|---|
| Processing | Gross to net, tax codes applied, National Insurance, student loans, attachments of earnings, any salary sacrifice |
| RTI submission | Full Payment Submission to HMRC on or before payday, plus an Employer Payment Summary where needed |
| Auto-enrolment | Every employee assessed against the thresholds, contributions calculated, figures uploaded to the pension provider |
| Payslips | Issued to employees, securely |
| Starters and leavers | New starter declarations, P45s produced and processed |
| Statutory pay | Sick, maternity, paternity, adoption and shared parental pay — calculated and recovered where eligible |
| Reporting | What to pay HMRC and when, and the journal for your accounts |
Plus the annual and periodic items that get forgotten: year-end P60s, the declaration of compliance to The Pensions Regulator, and re-enrolment roughly every three years — which is the one that catches most employers out, because it arrives two years after anyone last thought about pensions.
Payroll here is part of a wider engagement rather than a standalone bureau service, and that's deliberate.
Payroll posts into the ledger. The journal, the PAYE liability on the balance sheet and the accounts have to agree, and they far more reliably do when the person running the payroll is the same person keeping the books. Where payroll sits with a separate bureau, reconciling the two becomes a monthly job somebody has to remember.
If payroll is genuinely all you need, a dedicated bureau is probably a better fit, and I'd say so rather than take the work.
Payroll is normally priced as a small monthly charge plus an amount per payslip, so the cost scales with headcount rather than being a flat fee that punishes small employers.
What moves it: pay frequency, how many starters and leavers you have, whether auto-enrolment assessment is needed, and whether anything unusual runs through — commission, piecework, multiple rates, CIS subcontractors alongside employees.
A fixed fee is quoted before anything starts. The bookkeeping it sits alongside starts at £195 + VAT a month.
Straightforward, and common. Year-to-date figures come across from the previous system or bureau so cumulative tax, NI and pension stay correct. All that's really needed is the year-to-date data and the employee records.
Starting at the beginning of a tax month is tidier, but it isn't essential — and if the current arrangement has stopped working, waiting until April makes it worse rather than better.
I do. Not a processing centre, not an offshore team, and not a junior with a checklist. That matters more in payroll than anywhere else, because the errors are immediate, visible and personal to the people affected.
The software is Sage Payroll or Xero Payroll depending on what you already run — I've used Sage payroll products for a decade, so if you're already on Sage there's nothing to migrate.
Delivered remotely, so location isn't a constraint. Based in Northamptonshire, covering the surrounding counties in person where it helps.
Thirty minutes will establish what you're running, how many payslips, and what it would cost. Fixed fee, quoted before anything starts.
Book a 30-minute call → Or run the free Books Check first