Fully Managed Payroll – Your Quick Guide

Exploring fully managed payroll and how it’s different to payroll bureau services. This article will help you understand the definition of fully managed payroll, why businesses use it and most importantly, whether it’s right for you and your team.

What is a fully managed payroll?

This usually refers to when an organisation outsources all the payroll responsibilities, including admin and liaising with employees, to its outsourcing payroll hands over all the payroll responsibilities, including admin and liaising with employees over to their existing outsourcing payroll company or a managed payroll specialist.

What’s the difference between managed payroll and payroll bureau services?

Bureau payroll services have often been described as a ‘no frills’ payroll service. These services are ideal for people who want to reduce payroll and remain payroll compliant while having an in-house hand on their payroll. However, these often require bolt on prices for any pricing tasks that out of the ordinary day-to-day and monthly tasks and often require some admin work in-house. What’s more the employer remains the first port of call for employee queries.

Outsourcing payroll usually involves a named contact at the client’s premises collating all the required information and then sending it to the payroll provider for processing. Your staff will enter payroll data directly into the payroll service provider’s chosen data capture method and send over in a time agreed.

Payroll bureau services provides benefits such as cost saving, timesaving, and the comfort of being legislatively compliant in the ever-changing world of payroll processing…

However, managed payroll is increasingly seen as the way forward for larger, more complex payrolls, where the entire payroll is outsourced to a specialist payroll provider that handles all payroll tasks, associated administration and employee enquiries.

What do fully managed payroll services look like?

A managed payroll service might encompass:

A dedicated contact for each client

Bespoke data capture method, aligned to the payroll run type

Direct management of all queries from employees either by telephone or email

Dealing with subsequent amendments and data changes

Management of sick pay and maternity pay and other similar benefits

Explore Talk Staff Fully Managed Payroll

Services that both managed payroll or payroll bureau services tend to cover:

Processing of new joiners and leavers

Production of required HMRC returns / RTI

Production and publication of all payslips

Full pension assessment and contribution calculations

Pension configuration and upload

Production of multiple bespoke reports

Production of P45s and P60s

General payroll advice and support

Managed Payroll Case Study from Talk Staff

What are the benefits of managed payroll?

These offer a number of benefits over payroll bureau services such as:

Employee Queries handled – Payroll queries from staff especially during busy periods can cause unexpected admin and often requires senior members of the team to research complex payroll questions or complete time-consuming tasks outside of their already ever-expanding task list. Creating a payroll partnership whether the managed payroll company handle enquiries gives you peace of mind and keeps your email inbox a bit less cluttered.

Less Payroll admin altogether – Whilst payroll bureau services are a great way to reduce payroll admin there will still be some in-house work required which can leave your finance team doing menial tasks each month. Allowing your managed payroll company to access your payroll system directly means that they can collate the dater for you.

Combining managed payroll and HR services together you can also benefit in other ways such as:

All-inclusive pricing – Many payroll tasks that are completed annually or rarely may be counted as optional extras meaning extra payroll bills that you need to budget for, whereas managed payroll this is often an all-in-one solution.

Payroll reporting – With access to the full payroll picture, managed payroll companies can produce extensive payroll reports to help you make strategic decisions.

Larger complex payrolls simplified – Managed payroll can be an excellent option for companies with a more complex payroll system or companies which are scaling up.

White labelling – These are where you can take their payroll software and documentation but brand this up as your own. This allows you to give your employees extra resources whilst keeping the focus on your own employee brand.

Is managed payroll suitable for small businesses?

Smaller and medium-sized companies are the most likely to use bureau payroll services. In addition, particularly with start-ups, there is a lot of payroll set-up required, and there is likely to be less in-house expertise and extra pressure on existing staff timewise.

You may be pleasantly surprised by how cost effective it could be to outsource everything especially when you factor in the extra time and resources payroll admin is taking up.