Why You Don’t Need an Accountant to Run Payroll

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If your business operates in the UK and has a staff headcount of any size, you need to establish a compliant payroll solution. Where you employ a workforce, even as a small business, the basic payroll tasks will involve setting up tax deductions, PAYE, and National Insurance (NI) contributions.

If you rule out outsourcing payroll or using a bureau, but you have employees to pay (who have wages and benefits to calculate), you may be wondering whether you even need an accountant. But this will present new challenges – is it both legal and practical to achieve payroll without an accountant?

Can You Do Payroll Without an Accountant?

Yes, it is entirely possible to set up and run payroll yourself. To perform payroll tasks without the guidance of an accountant, you will need to set up HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC) recognised payroll software.

Running payroll without an accountant, first and foremost, you will need to learn the basics of payroll. Payroll software platforms will more often guide you through the process to minimise the risks of being non-compliant and the stress of running it yourself. Software platforms do this by automating tasks such as simplifying wage calculations.

Finding Payroll Software

One of the top considerations for businesses setting up payroll for the first by themselves is researching and ultimately deciding upon a practical payroll software. For many, the highest priority is understanding how software can support your business, ideally offering a cost-effective, intuitive platform to perform and optimise how easily and compliantly you run routine payroll tasks.

But before you run payroll for the first time, it is worth investing time to find and set up the right payroll software for your business. Finding payroll software is the first step in doing it yourself; the solution your business uses needs to handle everyday tasks confidently, such as:

• calculating pay for every employee (including deductions)
• reporting relevant and timely payroll information to HMRC
• figuring out statutory benefits (statutory sick pay, or SSP, for example)

HMRC tests and reviews payroll software to ensure that it can report PAYE information in real time (known as RTI). If it receives recognition, it will mean that your payroll software is HMRC-recognised and RTI compliant.

Everything You Need to Know About Running Payroll Without an Accountant

When running payroll software, many business owners will review and compare the features of each platform. There are many DIY payroll solutions on the market in the UK, but the services are not all built the same. What typically sets payroll software apart from other solutions is how competitive, innovative, and feature-rich the platform is.

Consider the features that would be most useful to your business. When running payroll without an accountant, you will need software capable of performing certain critical functions, including:

• payslips distribution
• pension calculations
• benefit calculations

Did you know that whilst many businesses worry about losing control, with payroll software, you will have even more power to process payroll in a way that benefits your business? Using a feature-rich platform, you can run payroll software in a way that feels more personal to your business.

Choosing to calculate your payroll manually without an accountant or software will mean higher time commitments on your business’ internal team, increased costs, and a greater risk of inaccuracies and non-compliance. Yet using payroll software, the time and costs associated with performing tasks generally are reduced. For example, after completing the initial setup involving employee details, you can finalise payruns automatically. In the Staffology platform, our software will even email out payslips to employees and file the Full Payment Submission (FPS) with HMRC.  

Features That Can Help You Run Your Payroll

Payroll Automation

When you are not working with an accountant, the first anxieties most business owners will likely experience are concerns regarding the difficulty of operating a DIY payroll solution. Payroll automation features can help businesses overcome the more complex payroll tasks and calculations, and software can introduce efficiencies across all areas.

Automation features, including the Staffology intuitive auto-pilot mode, empowers managers to automate and finalise a payrun, ensuring employees receive payslips without the risks of postal delays. Also, a Full Payment Submission (FPS) is filed with HMRC every time an employee gets paid.

Distributing Payslips

Each time you pay an employee, they receive a payslip containing financial information, including pension contributions and deductions (such as tax and NI contributions). Traditionally, paper payslips could risk potentially sensitive, if not timely, financial information getting compromised or delayed in the post.  

Payroll software was built for modern businesses with payslip distribution electronic and emailed, more conveniently, via employee inboxes. Features such as the Staffology’s Payslip Distribution put the manager in control of payslips, how they email them, and the sender’s address. This process dramatically reduces the time it takes to notify employees you have paid them.

Distributing Funds

When you are concluding a payrun, and before finalising the process, you will need to make certain payments. Whilst you could download a BACS file and plug it into your bank, there is an option to automate the distribution of funds.

With Staffology payroll software, your payroll will integrate with various recognised payment providers, and this will enable fund distribution to the following:

• HMRC
• Your chosen pension provider
• All employees

Application Integrations

Third-party integrations will enable your payroll to plug into the other services that help to keep your business productive and efficient. When you plugin or integrate your payroll to other services, it means that in a few clicks, you can synchronise payroll to the other applications you use. Staffology payroll software, for example, can benefit users by connecting regular wage deductions like tax to the likes of third-party accounting software.

Generally, payroll software can communicate with other applications through intuitive technologies. Staffology, for example, uses a powerful payroll API to perform integrations to other services, including HR, accounting, payments, or time and attendance software. Even if run by different providers, this enables your products to work together all in one place.

Payroll software can even unlock cost savings by maximising how much you can perform through a single interface. The comprehensive Staffology API, for example, lets you integrate and automate your payroll to maximise business benefits, but without the need for costly resources or an internal developer to perform the work.

As you are not currently working with an accountant, you can easily plug our payroll into your chosen accounting software so that entries communicate between applications. You can even automate journal postings after the end of every payrun.

Get Setup on Payroll Without an Accountant

When you set up payroll using Staffology payroll software, you can not only take advantage of innovative features that streamline how easily your employees get paid, but you can overcome costly manual processes and risks.

As a small business or sole trader, we understand you need tools to build a payroll that suits you. That is where Staffology excels; it puts payroll back at the centre of a business without the increased costs and time to get things running smoothly.

Try our software today, or you can explore even more features.  

Duane Jackson, June 1st, 2022

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