- Cost. Calculate how much your payroll is currently costing you and compare this to the cost of outsourcing. Remember to include items such as salary, training, IT, support, sickness and holiday cover, professional services questions. You’ll probably be surprised by the result. We offer special terms for charities payroll.
- Productivity. Managing your payroll is a time-consuming activity. Removing the burden means you can focus your people on your core activities.
- Accuracy. Payroll mistakes can be painful and costly and have demoralising impact on your employees. Payroll services providers are far less likely to make a serious error than your in-house staff.
- Reliability. If you are processing payroll in house your service is only as reliable as the people doing the work. Outsourcing your Charity payroll increases reliability and you don’t need to worry that the speed or quality of your payroll service will vary with employee changes, sickness or holidays.
- Speed. Payroll service providers are quicker, more efficient and have capacity to handle extra tasks and increases in employee numbers.
- Expertise. Charity payroll providers will have well trained staff familiar with all of the complexities of payroll matters. You could try to achieve the same level of understanding internally, but it would take a considerable investment in time and effort.
- Accountability. If there are errors it’s the payroll service provider’s responsibility to fix things. They will remedy situations to your satisfaction quickly.
- Risk. The management and minimisation of risk is usually very high on any Charity objectives. In addition to reducing the risks already identified above, outsourcing introduces segregation of duties into your Charity. No one person is responsible for the whole of the payroll function.
- Security. Do you have the time and are you capable of close supervision of the payroll to spot time errors or even fraud? Payroll services firms have technologies that can spot and alert clients to various types of payroll fraud, such as payment manipulation and ghost workers.
- Worry. There’s a lot to be said for the peace of mind that outsourcing payroll services can bring to a Charity. No headaches or hassles. You’re left to focus raising funds and delivering benefits to the community.
- Technology and innovation. A charity payroll service provider may have greater access to the best technology for delivering payroll services.
- Flexibility and clarity on cost. Pricing is linked to the number of payslips produced and will automatically change in line with your employee numbers.
Charity Payroll
Charity Payroll Experts and Specialists
There are specific complexities surrounding charities that only experienced payroll service providers can effectively manage.
By using a specialist charity payroll service provider you can have peace of mind that your outsourced payroll is being managed effectively and professionally, minimising risk and maximising value leaving your employees able to focus on its primary purpose.
Many charities and other not-for-profit organisations use outsourced charity payroll services to manage their payroll for them. This offers significant benefits in terms of overall cost and time savings. However, charity payroll services present some special challenges compared to a more conventional business. It is important to select a provider who understands these needs and is set up to cater for them.
Working with Charities
We are working with charities, not for profit and voluntary organisations across the UK. We have seen an increasing demand from the charities sector for outsourcing of their payroll, often due to being let down by their existing provider.
The payroll requirements for a charity tend to be rather different to that of a conventional company, usually resulting in a fairly higher than average level of complexity.
Most companies will employ a fairly stable number of staff either part-time or full time, with staff arrivals and departures being relatively infrequent. Charities may have a large pool of staff to call on for short periods at different times of the year. Only a small number of staff might actually receive a payslip in any particular month.
In addition, many charity staff members are volunteers who may only receive expenses payments.
Staff can often be on a short term contract basis. Other staff may be paid on commission only with a zero base wage. There is also a generally high turnover of staff. This results in a fair amount of admin time adding and removing staff to the payroll.
Many charities also need to allocate wages and expenses to specific projects in order to allow costs to be closely tracked. They frequently need to provide payments to non-UK workers, which can create complex taxation issues. They also need to administer complicated salary sacrifice and Give As You Earn schemes.
All these issues mean that managing charity payroll in-house is a significant issue for charities, often requiring a full-time staff member to manage it, or requiring other volunteer staff to spend time managing payroll issues rather than running the charity’s core activities. While many charities attempt to manage payroll themselves using basic payroll software, they may find that the standard software does not allow for these levels of complexity.
Our experience of working with charities and not for profit payrolls means we are familiar with the problems of processing large numbers of smaller employee payments and high staff turnover payrolls that are typical of the charity and not for profit sector.
Charity and not for profit payroll is unusual as it can involve many of these factors:-
- Volunteer workers.
- Temporary contract workers.
- High staff turnover.
- Low paid employees.
- Non UK workers.
- Commission based fundraising.
- Fund specific payroll allocation.
- Trustee expense payments.
Our experience of the charity payroll sector has led us to produce a flexible, all encompassing service at a clear price. Charity payroll clients are charged only for those employees paid within the period, at an agreed rate per payslip.
Why should your charity consider outsourcing its payroll?
We have listed 12 reasons why outsourcing your payroll may benefit your charity or not for profit organisation:-
All services provided are tailored to meet your specific needs and can incorporate additional information. We offer a discount on our normal charges. Please call or e mail to discuss. For details of our standard pricing click here.
To discuss your requirements further, please contact us or call us on 01309 641222.
