Hi,

We are thinking of outsourcing any payroll services our clients may require as this is something we do not want to do.

Has anyone had experience of outsourcing payroll? can recommend a payroll provider? and what type of costs to expect?

Thanks in advance for your help.

Hi Nadia 

Do they need to be local to you? I'm based in Yorkshire but happy to do the payroll on your behalf or direct to the clients. If you want to contact me with full details I would be happy to provide you with a quote.

It's difficult to provide an estimate without knowing what's involved.

We use Rollpay as our outsourced payroll provider.

They send all the pay information from an email address so it looks like it comes from us "payroll@stewartaccounting.co.uk".

They also have a dedicated local phone number so clients can phone them as though they are phoning us with their payroll queries.

They charge £2.50 + VAT per payslip plus £30 + VAT monthly charge for acting as virtual payroll provider.

They also deal with all auto enrolment set up and obligations.  They charge one off fee of £500 + VAT but we have already set up a few ourselves which seems quite straight forward so might just carry on doing this and charge the clients ourselves then pass the details to Rollpay so they can make the monthly submissions.

We are not payroll experts so dont want to deal with payroll or autoenrolment.

Busy enough with accounts, tax, bookkeeping, VAT and proactively helping clients grow their business. 

Shamus wrote:

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Didn't know that you liked Payroll John. Are you a workplace pensions whizz as well?

Got nothing for you anytime soon but if you get five mins sometime (no hurry) if you want to PM me your rates and requirements for outsourced payroll I'll keep it on file for when I do need someone to handle client payrolls.

is this perhaps the birth of the Ledger inc. Payroll Bureau?

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I do payroll too!  

Cheshire wrote:

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Shamus wrote:

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Didn't know that you liked Payroll John. Are you a workplace pensions whizz as well?

Got nothing for you anytime soon but if you get five mins sometime (no hurry) if you want to PM me your rates and requirements for outsourced payroll I'll keep it on file for when I do need someone to handle client payrolls.

is this perhaps the birth of the Ledger inc. Payroll Bureau?

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I do payroll too!  

 

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Got you earmarked for other things Joanne... Ooh er, that came out all wrong...  Not even using your services yet and I'm half way to a sexual harrassment case! lol. Actually, I'm figuring that you're my go to person for bookkeeping for clients who do a lot of import / export work.

Lol, you all thought that this was just a lil old forum didn't you... Nope, it's an extended job interview .

rachel_mclean wrote:

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I've just seen this after posting about payroll

John do you deal with all the auto-enrolment 'stuff'?

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 At this rate you'll be a Plc by the end of the evening John

MarkS wrote:

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We use Rollpay as our outsourced payroll provider.

They send all the pay information from an email address so it looks like it comes from us "payroll@stewartaccounting.co.uk".

How do they do that Mark?  Do you provide them with that particular address which is then forwarded to them?

They charge £2.50 + VAT per payslip plus £30 + VAT monthly charge for acting as virtual payroll provider.

They also deal with all auto enrolment set up and obligations.  They charge one off fee of £500 + VAT but we have already set up a few ourselves which seems quite straight forward so might just carry on doing this and charge the clients ourselves then pass the details to Rollpay so they can make the monthly submissions.

Is that included in the £2.50?  That seems cheap as I have gleaned that ae more or less doubles the workload.  I will be charging £150 for setting up ae but have yet to decide prices for the monthly payrolls including ae

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If I decide I've had enough of dealing with the payroll I know where to come John!

I'm impressed with your website by the way, it looks really good and nice and clear without all the clutter. I feel a need to refresh mine now

Shamus wrote:

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Didn't know that you liked Payroll John. Are you a workplace pensions whizz as well?

Got nothing for you anytime soon but if you get five mins sometime (no hurry) if you want to PM me your rates and requirements for outsourced payroll I'll keep it on file for when I do need someone to handle client payrolls.

is this perhaps the birth of the Ledger inc. Payroll Bureau?

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 Not an ae whizz by any stretch of the imagination Shaun but have done all the reading up and attended a seminar a few months ago.  I love payroll more than bookkeeping, and  I'm happy to take on other small payrolls (1) on a white label basis.  Over the weekend I will sort some prices out.

(1) I did look at becoming a payroll bureau a couple of years ago but the cost of offering a BACS service is just too high.  It was around 5k just to get set up and there were ongoing charges running into thousands. Maybe one day I will become Leger PLC lol.

Joanne, thank you for your recommendation, it's appreciated.

Shamus wrote:

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Cheshire wrote:

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Shamus wrote:

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Didn't know that you liked Payroll John. Are you a workplace pensions whizz as well?

Got nothing for you anytime soon but if you get five mins sometime (no hurry) if you want to PM me your rates and requirements for outsourced payroll I'll keep it on file for when I do need someone to handle client payrolls.

is this perhaps the birth of the Ledger inc. Payroll Bureau?

---

I do payroll too!  

 

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Got you earmarked for other things Joanne... Ooh er, that came out all wrong...  Not even using your services yet and I'm half way to a sexual harrassment case! lol. Actually, I'm figuring that you're my go to person for bookkeeping for clients who do a lot of import / export work.

Lol, you all thought that this was just a lil old forum didn't you... Nope, it's an extended job interview .

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  Sounds like 'The Apprentice'.  

Thanks Rachel 

One of my round tuit jobs is to revamp the website. I did it about 3 years ago for my old 111 Bookkeeping business then just altered all the text to read Leger.  I haven't even got my logo on it!

I'm glad you like the fact it's not cluttered with a clean appearance, as that was the intention.

Leger wrote:

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 Not an ae whizz by any stretch of the imagination Shaun but have done all the reading up and attended a seminar a few months ago.  

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 I thought you had done quite a few AE clients.think we have just been chatting about ae for so long I had it my head that you had been up and running with it for ages. 

I checked my clients, and the earliest registration was May next year, so no-one to practice on  

I'm planning on making a start in October with the pre-planning and getting the clients ready.  Think I've done all the reading up far too early tbh and will have to  go through it all again before I make a proper start.  

I quite like payroll, in fact its the main part of mu job & why I originally joined this forum (my colleague handles most of the book keeping & I concentrate on payroll & CIS.)

If you had asked me a month ago I would have said that I DETEST auto enrolment, but actually its not too bad now its all set up though it does pay to do a lot of reading and not rely on what so called experts tell you (the company IFA didn't seem to know the difference between a percentage of the whole payroll and a percentage of all jobholders enrolled in the scheme when it came to determining the level of contributions percentages)

We brought our staging date forward, there was already a company pension but it was non compliant.  The main problem I incurred was those employees who knew they were going to opt out but the window of opportunity before the first deduction when they could do so for the weekly paid staff was 3 hours (it was OK for the monthly paid)  I know they could have any contribution refunded but that would have been so much hassle to do.

'They send all the pay information from an email address so it looks like it comes from us "payroll@stewartaccounting.co.uk".'

How do they do that Mark?  Do you provide them with that particular address which is then forwarded to them?

I can't see an answer from Mark, so I'll step in with possibilities.

It may be that Mark has provided them with that email address as a forward (so any mail sent to it goes to a particular address of their own - and could also have copies coming to an address of his own), or he could have set them up with a POP3 or IMAP mailbox with that address, which their own email client logs into to fetch email.

However, it's also possible that the email address doesn't go to them at all, and they've simply set their email client up to use the address. Mark could then receive all email sent to that address, and manually forward things to them as and when it is appropriate.

The point being that the email address that an email comes "from" is merely a piece of text in a particular format, and it's easy to change - and easy, therefore, to "lie". (For common uses of this approach, see spam).

Thanks Nadia, and thanks for the re-assurance Debbie 

Hi Vince

I think all 3 options have their difficulties though.  Option 1 means you can't reply "from" that email address unless rollpay have some clever programming that will allow them to choose the sent from address depending which employer they're dealing with.

Option2,  means that you will have a vast array of Pop or imap adresses in your email client.  It's all too easy to send it from the wrong address, as I know from experience.

Option 3 I hadn't considered, but is labour intensive.

One of the things I was looking at last night was using a generic email address (say admin@payroll.dept  I know that isn't a real domain but you get the drift) which hides the fact that it's a white label offering.  It was bookkeepers.network that gave me that idea. I was looking through a few and I hadn't realised there were so many domain extensions.

"Option 1 means you can't reply "from" that email address unless rollpay have some clever programming that will allow them to choose the sent from address depending which employer they're dealing with."

Unless we are misunderstanding one another, yes you (or they) can - (without wishing to denigrate the abilities of those who write decent email clients), it's actually quite basic.

The important point is to use an email client that supports multiple [email addresses / mailboxes / users] (depending on the parlance in use), and automagically replies "from" the address any given email has been sent "to" if that address is set up in the system.

The harder part is sending new emails (i.e. not replies) from the correct address - because if your email client sees a particular address as the default one then... well, the magic word is default: If client-1's address is the default one, a new email relating to client-2 will get client-1's send address unless you spot it.

There are a couple of ways around that - one, for example, is to set up a default address that will always be used for that account that the email client will refuse to send email from, thus forcing you to select [the right] one.

I use this technique for client email. No forwards involved from clients, but I have a single POP3 mailbox set up for client emails using a specific domain. Each client gets a unique email address at that domain, which is itself set up and recognised by my email client, Thunderbird. That program filters the incoming emails, so each client has an individual inbox (and archives, sent folders, etc). When I reply to any given client's email, my reply uses that client-specific email address, because that's the address their email came to.

For new emails I am sending out, the default address is <NO EMAIL: DO NOT SEND> - i.e. not a valid email address. If I don't change it and click send, I will get an error. I have to choose a specific client address from the drop down on the From: line before sending.

"Option2,  means that you will have a vast array of Pop or imap adresses in your email client.  It's all too easy to send it from the wrong address, as I know from experience."

Again, with a decent email client, this shouldn't be a problem. For part of the reasons why, see above. Bottom line, it's all about understanding how your email client works and setting it up correctly - where "setting it up" might include getting rid of it and installing a better one. :)

"Option 3 I hadn't considered, but is labour intensive."

Yes, but it does mean you have better control over who gets to see what.

FWIW, I use a mixture of all three in different contexts - and more.

Thanks Vince for a very informative reply.  I like the idea of having do not send as the default, and will implement that on my present system, as I have a client email address on there and twice I have mistakenly used that address when sending an email. There was no harm done as only I have access to it but it's not something I want to repeat.  It also overcomes the problem I envisaged with option 2, which would be my preferred option.

Just out of curiosity, how does this work with forwarding?  If mail is forwarded from payroll@vince.co.uk to payroll@leger.co.uk how would I be able to send an email from payroll@vince.co.uk when the mailbox is the leger one.  I think you've partially explained with regards to replying to an email as that will automatically use the vince email, but if you were sending a fresh email I'm assuming you'd have to do something different?

I'm using Thunderbird 

Leger wrote:

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MarkS wrote:

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We use Rollpay as our outsourced payroll provider.

They send all the pay information from an email address so it looks like it comes from us "payroll@stewartaccounting.co.uk".

How do they do that Mark?  Do you provide them with that particular address which is then forwarded to them? They set up the email address so when they send to clients it looks like it is coming from us.

They charge £2.50 + VAT per payslip plus £30 + VAT monthly charge for acting as virtual payroll provider.

They also deal with all auto enrolment set up and obligations.  They charge one off fee of £500 + VAT but we have already set up a few ourselves which seems quite straight forward so might just carry on doing this and charge the clients ourselves then pass the details to Rollpay so they can make the monthly submissions.

Is that included in the £2.50?  That seems cheap as I have gleaned that ae more or less doubles the workload.  I will be charging £150 for setting up ae but have yet to decide prices for the monthly payrolls including ae £500 + VAT one off charge to set up AE scheme.  No additional charge to run the payroll after AE is set up, all included in the standard £2.50 charge per payslip

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VinceH wrote:

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'They send all the pay information from an email address so it looks like it comes from us "payroll@stewartaccounting.co.uk".'

How do they do that Mark?  Do you provide them with that particular address which is then forwarded to them?

I can't see an answer from Mark, so I'll step in with possibilities.

It may be that Mark has provided them with that email address as a forward (so any mail sent to it goes to a particular address of their own - and could also have copies coming to an address of his own), or he could have set them up with a POP3 or IMAP mailbox with that address, which their own email client logs into to fetch email.

However, it's also possible that the email address doesn't go to them at all, and they've simply set their email client up to use the address. Mark could then receive all email sent to that address, and manually forward things to them as and when it is appropriate.

The point being that the email address that an email comes "from" is merely a piece of text in a particular format, and it's easy to change - and easy, therefore, to "lie". (For common uses of this approach, see spam).

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 They set up the email address.  When sending out payroll details to clients it comes from payroll@stewartaccounting.co.uk.  If client replies back with any queries it goes straight back to them to deal with.  So we dont get involved in any of the dealings at all.

Mark, domains and email don't work like that - if they did, anyone could have an address at stewartaccounting.co.uk, just as they could have an address at one of my domains, or the domain for this forum, or at gov.uk or any other domain that exists.

The only place the payroll outfit could "set up the email address" is in their own software. That would allow them to send email from it, but not receive email at it.

You (or someone acting on your instructions*) must have either set up a mailbox they could access, or a forward to another address of their choosing.

* With most hosting, you get a control panel that provides functions to allow this sort of thing. If you don't personally look after this, perhaps you have an IT person that does. Alternatively, some smaller hosts tend to do all this sort of thing acting on instructions from the customer, so perhaps you told the hosting company to do it. Another possibility is that you have a third party company looking after your web design and they sorted the hosting for you, so they did this - but at the end of the day, they wouldn't - shouldn't - have done it without some instruction from you.

VinceH wrote:

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In Thunderbird parlance, you're adding an "identity" to that email account.

Right click on the account in the panel on the left and go to "Settings" and down near the bottom right of the window that appears, above the "OK" and "Cancel" buttons is one marked "Manage Identities". Click that and you'll see another dialogue listing the "Identities for ", and you can add new ones.

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 Thanks Vince.  I set up the do not send as default email this afternoon, which is fine if I'm not already on an email address but say I've sent an email from admin@leger and I want to send an email from admin@client and press write, the email in the to: box will say admin@leger and vice versa the other way round, so I still have to drop the box down to display the other email addresses.  Looking at the support page that's how it's meant to work.

I've just tried it with mine, and it does what I expected:

I sent an email to one of my millions of private addresses - the default sender address that came up was the NO EMAIL one, so I changed it to 'client 1'. I then repeated the process, and the default sender address that came up was again the NO EMAIL one, rather than the 'client 1' address.

So I must have it set up differently to you - but my instructions last night were memory based!

Hmm... My first thought was that I have it set as the address shown in the account settings (as per the attached screen grab) but setting it as the default in the identities window puts it there, so it must be there in yours as well.

We are talking the same set up, I take it? A single account that uses multiple addresses? I note you mentioned different domains, which leads me to suspect you have more than one account set up in Thunderbird - again, see my screen grab; the top half (account name blanked) is a client-provided mailbox* and this particular set up doesn't affect that. It only works when the folder I'm 'in' is in the 'Clients' hierarchy: If I'm in that top hierarchy, that client's address is used (or rather are used - I have two addresses vince@ and accounts@)

To expand further: "Clients" is a mailbox I have set up on my domain, and each client has a unique email address assigned to them, which go to that mailbox:

client-name-1@softrockclientsdomain

client-name-2@softrockclientsdomain

client-name-3@softrockclientsdomain

etc

Each client's mail is filtered into their own set of folders (inbox, sent, etc - with some additional folders and filtering as necessary for each client).

The default address for that mailbox/account in Thunderbird is NO EMAIL : DO NOT SEND - so if I am 'in' any folder in the 'clients' hierarchy, if I send a new email (not a reply) that's the default address that comes up; I cannot accidentally send from that, I have to manually select the right client.

* Just to confuse matters... I say they provide me with two email addresses/one mailbox, but their email is hosted with me to start with. So I provide them with the mailbox and addresses they provide me.

Hi Vince

Sorry, I didn't explain myself very well.  I'm referring to option 2, where you would have (say) 10 different client addresses, using the client domain, as per my screenshot.  I've just realised that I could condense the leger email addresses into one mailbox and use identities as you do.

I'm assuming, on my present set up I couldn't default to do not send if I was already on a clients email, although brainwave, I could create two identities on each mailbox, with one being do not send? That would then pompt me to check I was on the right email.

Yes - the 'do not send' email address only works on a single account with multiple identities (at least in Thunderbird - I can't say for other software). Setting a 'do not send' default identity on each separate account should be a solution - though it might be a bit clumsy:

A quick check here shows that the identities/email addresses for all accounts are shown in the drop down, so if you are 'in' the wrong hierarchy you can still set the identity/address for another - but you'll see the 'do not send' identity listed for each one, so if you have seven accounts, you'll see seven of those, each listed above the 'real' addresses for each respective account.

Whether consolidating the accounts into one mailbox is practical depends on your requirements. I see you blanked out a couple of domain names - presumably client-provided email, like the one I blanked. If you use an out of office reply on those when you're on holiday, for example, it's better to keep them separate.

I do this for both the Soft Rock clients domain, and the blanked-out client's own domain - but it's important to do this separately:

Email that comes to <client name>@<Soft Rock client domain> gets an out of office from no-reply@<Soft Rock client domain>

Email that comes to <my address>@<client's own domain> gets an out of office from that address.

If I merged the email, any that comes to <my address>@<client's own domain> would get an out of office from no-reply@<Soft Rock client domain> - and that's not good.

Yes, having a few do not sends on the dropdown would be a tad confusing, so I don't think that's practical.  The blanked out emails are client ones, although one is more or less defunct that I just keep an eye on

Many thanks for your advice Vince, it's very much appreciated.

I have also found that Rollpay are the cheapest so far, however the cost to set up auto enrollment is quite high. Is this something the clients do themselves or we can do to keep costs down?

Hi Nadia

It is something that the employer can do, but they will need to familiarise themselves with the process. All the information needed is on the pension regulators website.

I will be charging £150 myself, as you have to factor in the time required to undertake the various duties.  I think that fee level justifies the work involved without stinging the client.

NA_AA wrote:

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I have also found that Rollpay are the cheapest so far, however the cost to set up auto enrollment is quite high. Is this something the clients do themselves or we can do to keep costs down?

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 I can't see any reviews for them. one way or another. 

Mind you you would get a more personalised service from John.

Cheshire wrote:

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NA_AA wrote:

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I have also found that Rollpay are the cheapest so far, however the cost to set up auto enrollment is quite high. Is this something the clients do themselves or we can do to keep costs down?

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 I can't see any reviews for them. one way or another. 

Mind you you would get a more personalised service from John.

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 Why thank you kind Miss  

 Feel free to contact me if you want a quote Nadia.

Hi Nadia,

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Thanks