RTI Payroll Providers

About this time of year one has to make a decision about what provider to use for one's payroll. Now that payrolls have to be Real Time Information compliant, finding one that is easy to use is important.

I started off with HMRC's Basic PAYE Tools software: It's easy to download, costs nothing and you can have as many employers on it as you like. I misunderstood a warning notice about Annual Earnings, I though this meant you would only have to run the payroll once a year, but I soon discovered that EPS's - Employer Payment Schedule - were required when no PAYE is due.

However when I did file year end returns, I discovered BPT  not to be very user friendly. I particulary disliked its focus on individual entries. There are no payslips, no Monthly Summary and you have to print off year end P60's individually.

12 Pay is another free payroll software that I used for my larger clients. I discovered that 'free' meant for the first 4 months. After that, no payslips. Which was OK for me, as I still use a spreadsheet that I've refined over the years to produce payslips. It's a bit of a drag having to enter data twice, but I've not seen any other payslip that's as good as mine. I even show Accrued Holidays on it!

Overall 12 Pay is very good. You enter hours and basic salary for each employee on a Month tab, click on the Payslips report and if the payslips look right, file the FPS to HMRC. The Year End proeedure was fairly straight forward, except I couldn't find any P60's to print. The Help Manual said this was on the Employer's form. I had no idea what this meant.  On one of my client's payroll's, a reminder had popped up to print P60's, but nothing appeared on my other clients.

I then discovered you must update the software before going through the year end procedure. This applies to all payroll software. In HMRC's BPT I had a 'P60 form not yet available' message, which popped up at the end of March. It disappeared when I updated the software, though that task wasn't easy. It looked like the software had been updated, but I then discovered there was another way of updating which worked better.  I did this with 12 Pay, but no pop up message appeared until AFTER I'd printed off all the P60's, which in 12 Pay can be done in one operation.

Finally I figured out that 'employer form' meant the employer tab.  And there was a link to the P60's. My one criticism of 12 Pay is that when Help Manuals are written by experts, they forget what it's like for the first time user and don't explain things as clearly as they could.  

I'm now trying out Payroo, another free payroll provider. They make their money by placing adverts on their pages, so it should stay free, unlike 12 Pay. And from what I've seen, it looks like it can cope with fairly demanding payrolls. I also like that it's done via one's Internet Browser, which should let me enlarge any text I find hard to read.

I was a bit put off by their tutorial video though, which sounded like a robot.  Also the terms said I must read all their training manuals and keep myself updated  - or else!. Is Payroo run by Nazis?

I would be very happy to take on any extra payroll clients should anyone require it.

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