Payroll is unforgiving in a way most compliance work is not. A tax return can be filed a day early or a week early. Payroll happens on the same date every month, whether or not you have had a good month, and the people affected notice immediately when it goes wrong.
What we run
- Monthly or weekly payroll, processed to an agreed cut-off date
- Full Payment Submissions to HMRC under Real Time Information, on or before each pay date
- Employer Payment Summaries where they are needed
- Digital payslips issued to each employee
- Starters, leavers, P45s and P60s
- Statutory sick, maternity, paternity and adoption pay
- Attachment of earnings and student loan deductions
- Year-end reporting, including P11Ds for benefits in kind
Each month you receive the payroll summary for approval before anything is filed, along with the exact figure to pay HMRC and when it is due.
Auto-enrolment pensions
Every UK employer has to enrol eligible staff into a workplace pension and contribute to it. The duties do not stop at set-up: you must assess every employee at every pay period, handle opt-outs within the refund window, re-enrol eligible staff roughly every three years, and complete a declaration of compliance.
The Pensions Regulator can and does issue fixed penalty notices for failures here. We manage the assessments, submissions and correspondence alongside the payroll so the two never fall out of step.
Employer NI is charged at 15% on earnings above the £5,000 secondary threshold. The Employment Allowance of £10,500 offsets it for eligible employers — but it is generally not available to a company whose only employee is a single director. That exclusion catches a lot of one-person companies out.
CIS for construction
If you work in construction, the Construction Industry Scheme adds another layer. Contractors must verify subcontractors with HMRC, deduct the correct rate at source, file a monthly return, and issue payment and deduction statements.
Subcontractors have the mirror-image problem: deductions taken at source that need to be reclaimed properly, which for a limited company means offsetting them against your PAYE liabilities rather than waiting for a refund. We handle both sides.
Directors' payroll
Even a single-director company with no other staff usually needs a payroll scheme, because a small salary is normally the most efficient first slice of income — it uses the personal allowance, and it counts towards your State Pension record. Getting the level right requires balancing income tax, employee NI, employer NI and corporation tax relief at the same time.
Our salary versus dividends calculator shows the effect of different salary levels on what you actually keep.