There are a whole host of benefits for businesses in outsourcing the internal function to an agency.
Payroll is no different in that respect. Increased cost efficiency is perhaps the largest benefit of outsourcing your internal payroll operations to a specialist bureau like Qualitas.
When businesses factor in the cumulative cost of in-house salary, software subscriptions, training costs, and printing and distribution costs for related documents like payslips and P45s – compared to having everything handled by a payroll service provider, the results will probably be surprising to most.
The time and resource factor must also be considered when deciding between in-house and outsourced payroll. Managing the payroll function for a business can consume large proportions of man hours, particularly if it is only a part of their overall responsibility – as with many smaller businesses who must merge several roles into one.
Freeing up key employees not only allows for better concentration and focus on other essential tasks, but can also have a large impact on the mental health and capacity of the individual as they no longer have the added stress of payroll on their mind, allowing them to allocate efforts elsewhere like being able to focus on scalable activity for the expansion of the business.
Utilising the services of an outsourced payroll bureau also means you do not have the same interferences like staff holidays or sickness which could have detrimental effects on smaller businesses in particular. A reliable service provider will always have full-time cover across the team which means if one member of staff was to go on holiday, off sick, or even leave the business – there will always be another fully trained agent there to pick up straight where they left off, eliminating any disruption to the payroll run.
Employing payroll-specific staff internally can also come at a large cost when factoring in recruitment fees and training.
Although payroll is a universal sector across the globe, the differences in government legislation, tax and pension regulations, and specific system and internal policies can be as stark as night and day between businesses. A specialist payroll service provider will always be fully up to date with the latest laws, legislation and changes to aspects of the sector such as reporting obligations which means the financial and time investment required to upskill staff, falls on the bureau rather than internally with the client.
There can also be substantial security risks involved in hosting and managing confidential data in-house. The technology deployed by payroll service providers such as Qualitas is fully compliant and regularly updated to ensure maximum safety of the data we hold.
In addition to simply managing the payroll of a company, you also have access to a vast amount of additional specialist services. Our clients benefit from a comprehensive start-to-finish payroll process, holiday scheme management, and absence/sickness reporting. We can also perform payroll investigations (including data quality reviews, health checks, technical queries, and error corrections) and employee benefits reporting (including P11D). We do have a payroll advisory service available to assist in spotting and correctly addressing anything from fraud, waste, and potential legal issues to ensure that the business doesn’t suffer any serious financial implications due to staff errors or wrongdoing.