We all acknowledge that the cheque is slowly leaving the payments platform

Please do not assume that using your Banking Software is going to be the best way to send your payments and don’t automatically UPGRADE your current Bacs software because your supplier has told you to.

Technology has helped reduce the cost of sending payments, but far too many companies are using the wrong platform to execute these payments.

The priority for payroll and finance teams across the UK must be to have a secure, reliable and cost effective payments platform to execute their payroll, expenses, purchase ledger and Direct Debits.

This platform is known as Bacs, and is the preferred platform for the delivery of electronic payments. Over the past few years we have seen the Banking platforms offering more and more functionality, and some of them have the ability to offer bulk payment delivery. The issue with using Bank software is you are then tied to your Bank and they charge around 35p per item!.

Most companies that I speak to want to be Bank Agnostic – this means they don’t want to be tied too closely to their Bank. This allows them to be more dynamic when looking at new Banking partners.

Due to the internet the way we communicate to each other is changing, and so are the options on how to connect to Bacs.

Take a look at Employer Services’ completely software-free option, justBacs.

If you have been asked to upgrade your Bacs software or want to move away from your Banking platform to execute electronic payments, contact the team at Employer Services for more information

Thanks for reading

Matt

The move will be a speeding up of progress towards the coalition’s promised £10,000 income tax-free personal allowance. The £10,000 threshold is expected to be reached in April 2014 – a year earlier than planned.

The Chancellor also confirmed the new tax statement,  similar to a bank statement, that will break down what our money is being spent on will be introduced. I wonder how much that will cost to produce and really what value it will have. For example, it may say you’ve contributed£4k towards welfare out of your income tax, and you may howl about the great unwashed drawing unemployment benefits. But consider also that will include payments for the elderly and sick in our communities who we unreservedly should be caring for as a compassionate society.

The 50p tax rate has been scrapped, with the top rate of tax reduced to 45p from April 2013 for those earning more than £150k a year. “The 50p tax rate damages the UK’s competitiveness,” said the Chancellor.

Bad news for drivers though as there will be no change to the planned 3p increase in fuel duty from August. This will be a growing issue for small businesses, and will affect the cost of almost everything. A freeze for hauliers on road tax, but a rise by the rate of inflation for the rest of us.

George Osborne also said he wants a competitive business tax to be introduced. From next month Britain will have a corporation tax rate of just 24% – by 2014 it will be 22% – “the biggest reduction of business rates tax in a generation.” The Chancellor called it “an advertisement for jobs in Britain.”

Do we feel less squeezed? I’m not so sure.

About 18 months ago I turned to a friend and boldly told him that the world is changing and that companies need to prepare themselves for some huge changes in the way we conduct business in the coming years.

I pointed to my smart phone and told him that I could download games, applications and software to my phone for FREE, and in most major towns or cities a WiFi hotspot is nearly always available.

With software being readily available from Apple’s iStore, or Androids Market Place and with many well designed apps being free or only a few pounds how long will it be until the corporate world is presented with fantastic business applications that will help us run our businesses more efficiently and allow us to be more effective without the need for buying onsite and expensive software?

Well that time is already here

There are many (UK based) innovative and forward thinking businesses that have been working extremely hard developing their ‘cloud’ based technologies to enable and empower your business to work smarter for less spend.

Everywhere I look there are numerous applications available ranging from cloud based Payroll Applications, feature rich Client Relationship Management (CRM) systems and Bacs payment services (justBACS) all accessible without the need for onsite software.

Don’t let these opportunities pass by, having access to award winning, innovative, secure and reliable software that sits in the cloud is the way forward for today’s businesses. Why spend thousands of pounds on payroll software, CRM or Bacs software when you can have them for  a few pounds per month?

thanks for reading

Matt

Matthew Tully is Senior Payments Consultant at Employer Services Ltd, he has spent the past 15 years working in the world of corporate payment systems advising companies on how they can reduce their operational spend on both their payroll and purchase ledger payments

Email subject line: Late payroll

‘Dear Colleague, the management team hope you are looking forward to the weekend, thanks for all the hard work this week, we managed to exceed our target.

Unfortunately due to an unforeseen technical issue, we regret to inform you that the payroll file was delayed in being sent for processing, which will result in your pay not arriving into your Bank Account until Monday maybe Tuesday next week.

There is little we can do and are obviously very sorry that this has happened, but it is very much outside of our control.

We look forward to seeing you all on Monday, we have just been told we have secured our largest order which needs shipping by Thursday next week. Plenty of extra hours for us all’

Managing the risk

So what are the ‘unforeseen’ technical issues that could cause such a Payroll Nightmare?

Lack of access to the building – this is by far the biggest concern of any business, not being able to access the systems means no-one will be paid on time. Lack of access can be caused by severe weather, blocked road or building fire.

Lost or broken smart card – Smart Cards do get lost and they do break, your smart card is made of the same plastic that everyone else’s is, so don’t think it wont happen to you

Internet failure – look out of the window, are any of the surrounding roads being dug up, this is a cause for concern.

Lack of correct personnel. How many smart card holders to you have in the building, how many back ups?

Just forgetting to send the file – this is more common than you may think. In the busy and repetitive world we live it, we can sometimes just forget to send the file. How often have you left your wallet or handbag at home, or even the laptop!. We are HUMAN and we do make mistakes!

Why not spend 40 minutes with me to help you understand the risks that you are open to with regards to sending your payroll and important payments? contact me matthew.tully@employerservices.co.uk

thanks for reading

Matt

There are 5 main components of a successful Bacs process.

Finance Software

this can be either payroll or accounts payable software. How stable is it, where is it located, can you access it from home or a remote office?

Bacs Software

either installed on a stand alone PC in the corner of the room, or on a server somewhere. Most Bacs software cannot be accessed from home, there are rules that prevent this happening, so don’t assume it will just work.

Smart Card

a small plastic card with a security CHIP – normally kept in the top drawer by your desk, or in the smart card reader itself. These cards are easily broken or lost, they also have an expiry date on them.

Office Environment

Workmen digging the road up, or severe weather. Either way the biggest risk to a company is lack of access to the building. If you can’t access the building, you can’t access your smart card and you can’t access the Bacs software.

Staff

Sickness, lateness or not being able to get into office can all contribute to a file not being sent to Bacs. Last years bad weather contributed to many late files, there was no huge fire that burned the building down, there was no huge terror attach that prevented access, it was the snow.

Eliminate all the above risk by moving over the justBACS and emergencyPAYMENTS service, not only will you save money, you will also access the service from home in the event of bad weather or lack of access to the office.

Naturally as a visitor to the building I looked at my host and asked if this was a test – he shook his head and we began the evacuation process from the third floor.

While we were walking down the stairs, I turned to him and gently asked him what was his plan if he couldn’t get back into the office (payroll was due to be sent within the next day or so), he confidently told me that they had a back up office they could go to in the event of situations such as this.

They had spent several tens of thousands of pounds on a ‘hot’ site that key and core workers could go to in the event of restricted access to the main building.

Money well spent you may think? Not really as no-one had thought to take their Bacs smart card with them. Without this there could be no way to create Bacs payment files, authorise their Bacs payments and submit them!

In the words of Homer Simpson – Doh!

If you have a disaster recovery plan get someone to look at it, and then test it, have a dry run.

How can Employer Services help your company’s plans? Click here to take a look or contact  matthew.tully@employerservices.co.uk

What’s RTI? It stands for Real Time Information and will be the new way to submit data about your employees to the tax office.  The HMRC is asking all employers to clean their payroll data in preparation for the change.

So how will the changes affect you?  Instead of sending the PAYE information in annually after the end of the tax year, all employers will have to submit the payroll data online every time the payroll is run. This will allow HMRC to understand who is being paid what amounts, and what PAYE is due, on a real-time basis.  That will particularly help them to identify people with  The details of employees’ pay will be passed to the Department for Work & Pensions, to allow the amount of Universal Credits (which are replacing Tax Credits from October 2013) paid to workers to be adjusted on a monthly basis.

RTI will be compulsory for all employers and pension providers by October 2013. The submissions will be made electronically. As a client of Employer Services, we are already making sure you’ll be compliant.

However, before payroll data can be accepted under the RTI system it must be ‘clean’. That means having an accurate date of birth, full official name (not just initials or nick-name) and correct National Insurance number, for each and every employee. If the data for one of your employees does not agree to that on the Tax Office computer, the submission of the payroll data under RTI may fail, and you may get fined. On a larger payroll, this may take some time so involve your HR team and start checking data now, perhaps with payslip messages or a letter that goes out with this year’s P60s.

The Employer Services Team were honoured to both present an award and to be nominated as finalists. Over 300 of the UK’s payroll elite attended the evening at the Hilton London Bridge last night. Chris Fitzgerald, MD at Payroll World magazine, advocates that payroll is a profession that should be championed and the awards highlight the achievements of an often undervalued function. Without payrollers, the UK’s workforce wouldn’t be paid. Payroll is a critical service. 

Our host for the evening was comedian Dominic Holland who seemed quite mystified by the payroll industry. He asked “so, we get paid one day in the month….what do you do for the other 28 days?” If only he knew!

We were thrilled to sponsor an award, Payroll Rising Star. The judges were looking for an outstanding individual with service and achievements beyond that expected of someone with less than 3 years in the business.  Stuart Hall, MD at Employer Services, presented the award to Evi Garoufi, from Searcys. Our warmest congratulations to you Evi.

The adrenalin was running high as our category, Innovation, was announced. One of three finalists, the competition was tough, but yes WE WON! That’s another gong to add to our growing collection and another exceptional endorsement that our easy online payroll service esPAY is the next step in the evolution of payroll. We proved significant benefits in payroll service provision and significant financial & process improvements.

No acceptance speeches on the night, but we would like to thank all the employees at Employer Services, our clients, Payroll World readers and judges and all our supporters for making this an amazing year.

Presents from our team at Employer Services

A BIG thank you to everyone who made a contribution to this year’s Operation Christmas Child. This year the payroll services teams at esl packed 34 boxes with goodies so well done to everyone who either provided a shoe box, wrapped a shoebox, filled it, or who made a monetary contribution.

The presents include toys, sweets, sports equipment, pens, pencils and colouring books for children in age groups from 2years to 14years old. Practical things like flannels, soap and toothpaste are welcome additions too.

34 boys and girls are going to be very, very happy this year!

Join us in supporting this wonderful charity – there’s still time to donate a shoebox. You can even do it online! Click here for their website for more details. Happy Christmas!

Stuart Hall, guest speaker at Payroll Forum

Stuart, who has recently developed and launched a pioneering online payroll service aimed at small businesses, is delighted at the accolade.

“It’s very satisfying for my work at esl to be recognised in this way. The company has recently won both regional and national awards for innovation as a result of our new online service, and we feel we’re changing the way small businesses do their payroll.

“This year has been very exciting for esl, with the launch of our new service, esPAY, which I believe will ‘take the pain out of payroll’. I think small businesses have had a rough deal with payroll provision for years, and I wanted to make what can be a complicated process easy to use and very affordable.

“But we’re not going to stop here. Next we’re going to look at other essential business payments and come up with a user-friendly, online service that will be affordable and convenient to use.  Being in business means always going forward, always providing a top-notch service and always putting your customers first.”

Based in Brentwood, esl employ over 40 staff, specialising in providing outsourced and hosted payroll solutions to local and national employers. For further information, visit www.employerservices.co.uk