31 Oct Outsourced Payroll Solutions – What Are the Benefits?
The latest UK employment figures (to August 2023) show that vacancies and employment fell while there was an increase in real pay, despite high inflation. In these challenging times recruiters must find new ways to improve the bottom line. One effective way of making sure that you maximise your ROI while increasing efficiency is to outsource your payroll solutions. Here we look at the benefits that an umbrella partner can offer you.
Why outsource?
Times are tough for many recruitment agencies at the moment. Everyone’s working harder for seemingly diminishing returns and recruiters face stiff competition for contractors’ and end-clients’ business. However, there is a way to optimise your spend, as well as freeing yourself up to concentrate on finding vital new business – by outsourcing your payroll function to a compliant and experienced umbrella company.
When you outsource your payroll functions to an umbrella company, you’ll benefit from:
Staying compliant – errors in processing Income Tax or National Insurance can be costly, both for you and your contractors. HMRC will not hesitate to hand out fines and penalties to recruitment agencies that have not complied with their rules and regulations, whether they were aware of the mistakes or not, so staying compliant is vital. When you partner with us we’ll handle all the complex calculations and make the appropriate payments to HMRC, maintaining records and keeping up-to-date with any changes in legislation that may affect you, including Auto-enrolment for workplace pensions, Real Time Information reporting, and we’ll deal with contractors’ payslips too.
Reducing risk – processing payroll data can be a risky business. Cyber attacks and hacking can put your contractors’ confidential details into the hands of organised criminals, and the aftermath can be frustrating, time-consuming and can also land you with a fine. Partnering with an umbrella company reduces these risks, thanks to high-security encryption techniques and procedures and it also means that you’ll be GDPR-compliant too, avoiding fines of between £500k and £17m.
Cutting administration – we run an entirely paperless system so it’s easier for you and better for the environment. Our registration system is simple and speedy so you can refer your contractors in a matter of minutes, either over the phone or online. We’ll keep both you and them updated as to the status of their registration and once it’s complete we’ll send you and them all the information that you need for your records.
When your contractor submits their timesheet to you all you have to do is send us the remittance schedule for the correct amount, we’ll then invoice you, remind you to transfer the funds to us and we’ll then pay the contractor the correct amount, minus their statutory payment obligations.
At the end of every quarter, we’ll prepare an Employment Intermediary Report so you can keep your records up-to-date.
And for extra peace of mind we’ll also put together a tailored Key Information Document for each contractor so that they know exactly what their terms of employment are, how much they’ll get paid and when, which, thanks to our automated and streamlined invoicing process, could be the same day they are registered.
Running a recruitment business should be fulfilling and rewarding, not onerous and costly. So if you’d like to know more about how you can save time and money, and stay fully compliant, while putting your contractors first, you can call us on 0203 603 1290, email us at hello@i4services.uk, or fill in the contact form here to refer them directly.