5 Top Tips for Smooth Payroll Management

1. Maintain accurate employee records

Keeping accurate and up-to-date personal data for employees while working for you, regardless of how many you employ, is paramount to preventing legal issues. Your payroll team must keep track of employees’ records no matter how cumbersome it gets because it is one of their most essential duties.

Please note that employee information can change at any time, affecting your payroll. Nevertheless, it is best to process and reconcile these changes as soon as they happen and document them appropriately to avoid mix-ups and pile-ups. You may also need an automated payroll system to help you minimise human error and the administrative burdens of updating employees’ data.

2. Regularly review payroll processes

It is not uncommon for everyday processes within businesses to get stale. If it isn’t broken, don’t fix it, right? Well, not taking the time to review your payroll processes may be doing more harm than good.

Continually reviewing your business’ payroll processes helps you to ensure payroll is not only productive and running smoothly, but remaining compliant. So, you can please your employees and the law.

3. Maintain compliance with payroll regulations

There is more to payroll than paying employees as and when due. Your payroll department is also in charge of taxes, National Insurance, and tax accounting, which are regulated by the law. Likewise, your payroll team has to ensure that your business stays up-to-date and complies with UK’s payroll legislation, such as the National Living Wage and General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), among others.

Staying compliant is crucial for your business because you can incur penalties if you do not do your payroll correctly and comply with payroll legislation. So, whether you are hiring or not or have 10 or 1000 employees, you must stay compliant in the UK to avoid any problems, especially paying HMRC.

4. Organise payroll training sessions for HR staff

It is a custom for small businesses not to have a separate payroll department that saddles the HR department with payroll processing and management responsibilities. If this is the case with your business, you must organise payroll training sessions for your HR staff.

Organising payroll training sessions for your HR staff will help them deeper understand payroll legislation and policies and communicate better with other employees regarding their payslips. Payroll training sessions will also help improve working relationships, boost employee morale and overall mood in the workplace, and improve your business’ payroll management process.

5. Outsource your payroll

In-house payroll processing can become overwhelming, especially for a growing business, and this can even lead to staffing issues. This is why many businesses opt for payroll outsourcing to accurately deliver employee pay slips and help to maintain high employee retention.

Outsourcing payroll enables you to ensure your employees are paid accurately and on-time, and often works out significantly cheaper than hiring a full-time employee, reducing risk, cost and time.

The payroll process comprises of various tasks that can easily fall by the wayside, and having an established and streamlined payroll process is never as challenging as many small business owners think. Ensuring smooth payroll management will improve employee satisfaction, increase productivity, and prepare your business for future challenges.

However, it is important to acknowledge that payroll processes can become a headache if improperly managed. To avoid this, it can help to give your payroll management responsibilities to outsourced payroll providers like Pay Check. Get in touch today to get a quote for a cost-effective partnership to help you add value to your business.