Should You Pay or Not?
Paying for a payroll service is in some way an assurance of quality and reliability, but mistakes can still be made and the level of service you receive might not be what you expect. Remember that payment is always the case when outsourcing payroll to a professional service or payroll bureau, but quality and reliability is not always guaranteed. However, if you decide to keep payroll in-house, the responsibility for proper payroll management will rest on your shoulders, as will the consequences if you make mistakes, fail to keep up, or fail to implement changes to tax and statutory pay.
Given that there are many good options to manage payroll for free if the business has a small enough number of employees, and given the fact you might not get what you expect when you pay for an outsourced service, it is a very good idea to seriously consider the free options available to you.
Free Payroll Options
HMRC provides free PAYE software for basic payroll functions for companies with up to 9 employees. This software is designed to manage pay for your employees and make all major PAYE deductions such as income tax and national insurance, and report the required information to HMRC online. It can also handle changes to the tax code which occur at the start of and during the tax year and produce the end of year annual returns. However, non-PAYE deductions are not supported, and you cannot use it to create payslips.
If you are less confident about managing payroll yourself, free software might be a better option than using the HMRC system. This is because with free software, many of the difficult payroll procedures are simplified with clear and easy to use interfaces, and many of the trickier aspects of tax are taken care of automatically. So you can keep on top of your payroll obligations and learn along the way.
There are a number of leading UK payroll software solutions available for free if your business has only a small number of employees – some solutions are based fully online, while other providers offer downloadable software. These solutions offer you the same number of features and the same functionality as paid software, and with complete support, documentation and tutorials provided for free, you can quickly get in the know and become effective with payroll.
Do you operate a business with 3 employees or less? Get RTI payroll software completely free of charge that is fully compatible with the upcoming RTI update.
