Payroll Companies – What to Look For in a Payroll Company

There are many payroll companies offering outsourced payroll services, and there are many companies looking for a payroll company to manage their payroll for them. But with so many payroll service companies to choose from, it is important to have some clear guidance about what to look for to ensure that your business gets the payroll service and outsourcing benefits it needs. Here we outline the top 5 characteristics of good payroll companies.

Payroll Companies – What to Look For in a Payroll Company

Reliability

On a day to day level, what you need most from a payroll company is to get your people paid on time. You need to know that the company you choose is big enough to be able to guarantee the resources required to carry out data entry and processing week in, week out, without a hitch.

To ensure reliability, only consider payroll companies which are well established and already have a good track record of delivery. Established payroll service companies will already have people in place, and good processes for expanding their workforce as needed. Perhaps your best indication of reliability is to look at references from other companies already using their service.

Bond Payroll Services is a well established company with experience dating back to the 70’s. We have many large, medium and small companies already on our books, benefiting from the reliable service we provide. Here are just a couple of comments by our customers:

“The decision for Avery Healthcare to move its payroll function to Bond Payroll was predominantly made for cost savings, and their promise to be flexible to our needs. They have certainly delivered on both counts and I would be more than happy to recommend them to any Company that is considering outsourcing their Payroll Service’” Mark O’Brien, Group Finance Manager, Avery Care Homes

"Bond Pay Bureau has been providing fully managed payroll for Change UK Recruitment Ltd for the past year and has provided an excellent service, the staff are always happy to help and very flexible, which is refreshing. Having such a comprehensive understanding of the recruitment industry means that they understand the problems we face and are happy to help us overcome them. I would recommend Bond Pay Bureau to any business, its one less thing to worry about." Jim O'Brien, Director

Accuracy, Security and Compliance

After reliability, the next most important characteristic to look for is a payroll company’s ability to process your payroll accurately, securely and in accordance with all relevant pay and tax legislation. This, more than anything else, is what will give you the peace of mind that you are looking for.

To deliver accuracy, security and compliance, payroll service companies need to satisfy several requirements:

Firstly, your payroll company should be HMRC approved – to ensure that you do not run the risk of incurring penalties from HMRC due to inaccurate payments or late submissions.

Secondly, your choice of company should be BACS registered – to ensure they have the processes and procedures in place to ensure accuracy of payments.

Thirdly, your provider’s software needs to be fully compliant with the latest legislation, and they need to have sufficient expertise to draw on to ensure ongoing compliance.

Fourthly, your chosen payroll company needs to have proper processes and procedures in place to deal with sensitive employee and company data securely.

Bond Payroll Services is fully HMRC approved and BACS registered. Our Payrite software is kept continually up to date with all changes to payroll legislation. And we have a large team of professional payroll consultants, the majority of whom are qualified at least to IPP diploma level.

In terms of day to day accuracy, we take a pro-active approach to correcting any errors within your payroll. In addition, we hold the ISO 27001:2005 Information Security compliance for data security and ISO 9001:2008 Quality Management System accreditation.

All this means that you can be assured that everything that needs to happen to run your payroll accurately, securely and legally is being taken care of as standard.

Flexibility and Adaptability

Ideally, you want to choose a payroll company who can adapt to your needs as your company grows and evolves over the years. Changing how your payroll is managed – either outsourcing it in the first place, or changing to a different provider – isn’t something you want to do very frequently. So even if your payroll needs right now are fairly straightforward, it’s important to choose a provider who can easily accommodate you if you grow quickly, diversify or suddenly require a more complex pay system for any reason. You need a company which not only provides this flexibility at a technical level, but will also address it contractually from the start.

At Bond Payroll Services we provide a flexible contract designed to accommodate your changing requirements, providing more or less functionality and resources as required.  From the outset, all services are fully tailored to suit you. They are then adapted over time in response to changing circumstances. This means that you can be assured that the decision you take today will also be the right decision in 10 years time.

Partnership and Service

One reason that some companies persist with an in-house payroll is that they want to be sure that the people running this critical function are fully aligned with the interests of their business. They want the people running the payroll to understand the business and how it runs sufficiently to be able to respond to changes quickly and appropriately. They, quite understandably, question whether a third party supplier can provide this level of understanding and responsiveness.

It is essential, therefore, that the payroll company you select has designed its service with these concerns in mind.

At Bond Payroll Services we pride ourselves on our ability to create and grow long-lasting partnerships with all our clients. While we are a third party supplier, we aim to behave like another department of your company. We do this in highly practical ways.

Firstly, we spend time at the outset of the relationship capturing your requirements and understanding your business, as part of the system set up stage. Secondly, we provide you with a dedicated payroll manager – a single point of contact who is responsible for dealing with all enquiries and issues, and who is available by phone or email at any time.

UK Based

Check that your choice of payroll company is UK based, including your direct point of contact and the actual processing team carrying out the day to day work.

Although this may seem like a fairly trivial point, it can have big consequences for the long term success of your outsourcing arrangement. The potential for language issues is well known of course. But it’s also important to consider whether your processing team will be available to communicate with you during UK business hours. Time differences can result in delayed communication and reduced responsiveness. You also want to avoid using a company whose main management team is in the UK but who have themselves outsourced the processing work offshore. This type of arrangement means that communications become that much harder to maintain. It also means there is less control and certainty regarding the quality of training and expertise of the offshore personnel.

Bond Payroll Services are an entirely UK based payroll company and there is no offshore processing. Your dedicated Payroll Manager will be a direct employee of Bond Payroll Services and physically located in the UK, ensuring availability at all times.

For more information and a review of your business payroll please contact us.