How to ease the payroll burden for clients with one simple system

UK full-time employees are putting in an average of 36.6 hours every week. Knock off a few weeks for holidays and a handful of sick days, and that’s more than 1700 hours every year.

That’s a lot of working hours to manage. A lot of payslips. And let’s not forget – that’s just for one employee.

Despite how many pay runs your clients complete, 91% of businesses admit to making payroll errors every month. The leading cause of those mistakes? A lack of investment in technology.

With so many hours going into the process, simplifying payroll should be a priority for practices that want to help their clients get on top of admin. The right tools can let you do just that.

Say goodbye to complex calculations and costly payroll errors

Managing employee pay and deductions is simple with Xero Payroll – because everything you need is in one place.

You can set rates across all pay types and taxes, meaning the right deductions happen automatically. Xero’s payroll reporting features are compliant with HMRC, so you can submit reports on behalf of clients without needing to leave the platform.

It’s a complete payroll management system that makes it easier to keep on top of employee compensation and forward deductions to HMRC. Even your clients’ employees can get involved – the Xero Me app lets them view payslips, request leave, and submit timesheets themselves.

Xero Payroll reduces the administrative burden on businesses so your clients can focus on what they do best, reassured that their employees and compliance obligations are taken care of.

Flexible payroll for flexible working

We know there’s no single type of employee. Your clients will have full-timers, part-timers and contractors. Some employees will be paying student loans, while others will be nearing pensionable age.

And with the rise of remote working and the four-day week, we’re seeing more people choose flexible and irregular working hours to help them achieve a harmonious work-life balance.

This means payroll software needs to be more flexible than ever. Enter Working Patterns: a feature that lets your clients tailor their payroll settings to reflect the unique situations of their employees contracted hours.

You and your client can create templates for employees with different working patterns one week to the next, set multiple weeks, and more. These patterns can be created within ‘settings’ or the ‘employee record’ itself (so you don’t need to amend their hours every pay run).

Hourly workers can also have minimum contracted hours assigned to them, so no matter how your clients structure pay, they’re supported by Xero Payroll. It’s little things like this that mean you and your clients spend less time on payroll admin.

Accurate pay and entitlement calculations are a key part of payroll, and Working Patterns help you get it right every time. Earnings and leave calculations reflect Working Patterns assigned to employees, reducing the risk of error and time spent fixing mistakes.

Pensions

What about one of the hardest parts of payroll: pensions?

Auto-enrolment is shrouded in complex wording, rules, and thresholds, making the process daunting for businesses. And it becomes even more complicated when you have to migrate clients and their employees from one piece of software to another.

Managing pensions is all about the initial set-up. We’ve simplified the onboarding process by increasing in-product guidance on pensions terminology and introducing an easy-to-follow process that builds your confidence with Xero’s automation. So whether you or your client set up auto-enrolment, you’ll have the knowledge and tools to manage it going forward.

Once set up, you’ll receive a clear summary of how the pension is configured and any next steps required. The extra guidance we’re adding will help you keep clients compliant and get their pension system up and running smoothly.

More help managing payroll tasks with Xero

A business managing one payroll system is tough enough, but for accountants and bookkeepers, the reality is managing multiple client payrolls.

Our latest update to Xero Payroll makes this easier. You don’t need to dip in and out of each Xero organisation to get the necessary information. Instead, you have a clear view of all clients with our new Payroll Manager (currently in beta).

This tool gives you a simple way to view payroll data across your client base. By centralising all client jobs, Payroll Manager will save you time — making it quicker and easier to address and prioritise tasks. You have a consolidated view of client pay runs and can clearly see whose payroll needs attention first.

By bringing everything together in one place, you can enjoy real-time insights on payroll tasks. It takes the stress out of managing workloads and makes it easier for you to crack on with the job. You can access the Payroll Manager beta and all other features discussed in this guide by signing up for the partner programme today.

It’s time to make payroll processes simple, consistent, and effortlessly compliant.