When starting out with your own company, as the master of your business you also need to be a jack of all trades, which could perhaps make outsourcing payroll or any other function seem unnecessary.
Whether you’re employing people straight away to carry out some of your day to day business tasks, or if you’re biding your time and building up business before you start recruiting, it’s important to know every aspect of your business and how it all works together, in order for you to effectively manage it.
The Skills Needed To Run A Business
There are many skills needed to run a start-up business, including financial considerations for keeping your company afloat, keeping your employees paid and on side and managing your HMRC reporting.
These will include:
Organisational expertise – including finance, legal and regulatory know how, data protection and people management.
Communication skills – with your customers, suppliers, employees and stakeholders.
Leadership qualities – recognising talent, understanding employee needs and being respected.
Financial savvy – understanding the payroll process, the returns you’ll need to file, as well as getting to grips with profit and loss and management reporting.
IT know how – from the technical requirements of your production process through to word processing, spreadsheets, websites and email.
The Benefits Of Outsourcing Payroll
One role that can be outsourced easily and cost effectively is the management and organisation of your payroll function. Whether you’re paying only yourself, or if you have a team’s worth of wages to work out, the benefits of outsourcing your payroll can make really good business sense.
For any size of organisation, payroll can be complex and it needs expert attention. From tax and National Insurance Contributions (NICs), through to the reporting and returns that are required by law, every employee is unique and will have different payroll needs.
Do you really want to hand over the spreadsheets to another employee?
In a small start-up business, the payroll function may fall to one person to manage. A specialist is ideal, else you would have to be certain that the person is properly qualified for the job. Of course, this will help to ensure there are no costly errors in the payroll itself or the reporting that goes with it, however more often than not your payroll employee will come with their own, relatively expensive wage bill.
How happy would you be to do the payroll tasks AND keep abreast on the law?
The reality is that managing the payroll function has many more facets than ongoing data input. Keeping up to speed with an ever changing legal minefield, carrying out HMRC filing, recording Real Time Information (RTI) and completing end of year reporting can all be very time consuming. Add to this any Government requirements such as auto enrollment pensions that need consideration, keeping an eye on data security, as well as managing queries from employees about their pay, their tax and more.
Rather than risk the potential for costly errors, outsourcing the payroll function can save small businesses the cost of an in house payroll employee, as your payroll management, as well as tax, NICs, reporting and your HMRC returns, will all be well covered.
Your payroll outsourcing company will also take away the burden of staying up to date with legal and regulatory requirements, and will keep you in the loop on any changes you need to know about. All leaving you with precious extra time and resources to focus on the day to day running, productivity and profitability of your new business.