Payroll Software – The importance of running your payroll professionally
The use of Payroll Software is really considered an essential requirement for businesses these days, regardless of their size, or if they have 1 or 100 employees due to the complexities of Real Time Information (RTI), Pay As You Earn (PAYE) and National Insurance (NI) and many more factors.
Depending on the business, they may have an internal resource who deals with all payroll matters, or externally contract it out a to a professional such as Harvey Telford & Bates Accountants in Shrewsbury.
If a business chooses to manage their own payroll, it is essential that they have a key person who understands how their chosen payroll software works, and keeps up-to-date with notices or changes to the software and the law.
If not it can lead to a costly mistake for the company or employee involved should there be a problem such as a wrong tax code or error in calculating PAYE leading to over/ under payment errors.
This is something that has been highlighted by a case in 2012 (TJ Blanche vs HMRC 2012) where a payroll software error led to an employee of a business facing a tax demand for £3000 unpaid tax.
The demand was contested, and during the case it was found that a pre-existing error with the company’s payroll software had led to the error, something that they had been alerted to, but had not followed up. It was later ruled that they had not met their responsibilities in line with the PAYE 2003 Regulations (ensuring they had taken every reasonable measure that the PAYE was correctly calculated) and the business was liable for the unpaid tax, not the employee.
The 2012 case is just one example of the complexity of payroll management. To avoid this, and the many other potential pitfalls Harvey Telford & Bates provide a completely managed service – including administration of PAYE, NI, Statutory sick pay etc, as well as liaising with HMRC, providing all payslips and statutory forms, in addition to administering pension schemes, incentive schemes and any other payments.
If you would like to know more about Harvey Telford & Bates Payroll Services, why not give us a call and speak to our dedicated Payroll Manager, who will assist with any queries through to managing all elements of your payroll.
