Outsourced Payroll Services UK

UK payroll is one of the most rules-heavy compliance areas an employer touches every month. Each pay run has to calculate income tax under the current PAYE codes, employee and employer National Insurance at bands that changed most recently in April, pension contributions at the auto-enrolment minimums or your enhanced scheme, and any statutory payments (SSP, SMP, SPP) triggered that period.

Our outsourced payroll service takes ownership of the whole cycle. Each period we collect the changes (starters, leavers, hours, bonuses, expenses), run gross-to-net calculations in HMRC-recognised software, submit the Full Payment Submission (FPS) and Employer Payment Summary (EPS) to HMRC ahead of payday, produce compliant payslips, and tell you exactly what to pay HMRC and the pension provider by the due date.

You get a single account manager, a fixed monthly fee based on headcount, and an SLA on payslip delivery, HMRC filing and query response. Founders and finance leads stop being on the hook for payroll accuracy the moment we take over.

Since 2013 every UK employer has been required to report payroll to HMRC on or before each payday under Real Time Information (RTI). The Full Payment Submission (FPS) reports what you paid each employee and the tax and NIC deducted; the Employer Payment Summary (EPS) reports adjustments like statutory-payment recoveries, the Employment Allowance claim, and periods with no employees paid.

Late RTI submissions trigger penalties from HMRC and, more damagingly, throw off employees' Universal Credit and Tax Credits calculations — which almost always ends up on the employer's desk to fix. We schedule filings to submit at least one working day before each payday, so a technical glitch never becomes a compliance breach.

Every RTI submission is reconciled to your gross payroll cost and to the PAYE payable balance in your accounting system, so year-end reconciliation to HMRC's own records is a formality rather than an emergency.

UK employers must enrol eligible employees into a qualifying workplace pension and contribute at least 3% of qualifying earnings (with the employee contributing 5%). Failure to comply carries fixed and daily penalties from The Pensions Regulator, plus employee back-payments that can run to five figures per person.

We set up the pension scheme with a reputable provider (NEST, The People's Pension or Smart Pension for most SMEs; workplace-specific schemes where you already have one), integrate contribution processing with the payroll software, and handle joiner/leaver notifications each pay run.

Every three years you must re-enrol employees who previously opted out. We track re-enrolment dates automatically and manage the process — including the Declaration of Compliance with The Pensions Regulator — so nothing lapses.

SSP, SMP, SPP, ShPP and the newer Neonatal Care Leave Pay each have their own eligibility rules and recovery mechanisms. Employers can often recover a portion of statutory payments through the EPS — but only if the calculation and evidence are right. We manage eligibility assessment, calculation, payroll processing and the recovery claim as a single workflow.

For expenses and benefits in kind — company cars, private medical insurance, subsidised loans, gym memberships — we prepare the annual P11D returns and the P11D(b) Class 1A NIC computation, and where a formal payrolling-of-benefits arrangement is in place we run it through the monthly payroll instead.

For businesses moving from an EOR / PEO provider (Deel, Remote, Oyster) to a fully-owned UK payroll, we handle the transition — historic pay records, cumulative tax positions, pension continuation and P45 issuance — so the change is invisible to employees.

UK tax year runs to 5 April. Final FPS for the year is followed by the year-end EPS and P60 issuance to every employee still employed at year-end — statutory deadline is 31 May. Any P11D benefits-in-kind reporting is due by 6 July, with Class 1A NIC payable by 22 July.

We run a full year-end reconciliation that ties the sum of the year's FPS submissions to your gross payroll cost in the accounts, and to HMRC's own PAYE Business Tax Account balance. Any drift is investigated and resolved before the P60s go out — not discovered by an employee whose numbers don't match their bank statements.

For clients with more complex arrangements — international assignees, modified PAYE, Short-Term Business Visitors, EMI or unapproved option exercises — we run these through the same monthly rhythm and produce the additional reporting HMRC expects. The goal is a payroll function that stands up cleanly to an HMRC compliance check without needing an emergency clean-up.