Further into our initial engagement to provide Management Accounts Services to Herts Young Homeless, Visionary Accountants were additionally tasked with migrating the charity’s payroll from an outsourced provider to our in-house team.
Visionary Accountants now provide monthly payroll services for nearly 50 employees and fully manage two Workplace Pension schemes on their behalf, including assessment, compliance and communication.
Payroll and Pension Review
An initial meeting was held with the CEO and the internal finance team to discuss systems, HR policies, pensions, pay variables and how the business currently provides payroll information to its provider, employees and internal accounts. We then discussed what they wanted to achieve moving forward. Adapting communications to a single page summary with static and variable information each month that suited the client – we agreed on a method of payroll exchange.
The client adopted Visionary’s new employee and starter checklist forms to obtain information from their new employees. We applied for Agent Authorisation with HMRC which means that all tax code changes submitted online by HMRC can be downloaded by Visionary and processed accordingly on the client’s behalf. It also provides access to their online account with HMRC, therefore we can review HMRC/NIC payments made and/or outstanding.
Pension Auto Enrolment
With authorisation from HYH, Visionary registered as administrators for the Automatic Enrolment Workplace Pension scheme provider; which enables us to prepare and directly upload pension contributions each month for payment by Direct Debit. We are also able to set up new members or notify the pension provider of leavers on behalf of the client.
Additionally, Visionary provide all ongoing communications for the client to issue to its staff each month, carry out monthly pension assessments and calculate pension contributions.
Payroll Transfer
To prepare for the live payroll transfer, we ran a parallel payroll alongside their existing provider, during the month prior to the transfer date. This was to ensure that all data had been supplied and had been processed accurately. Usually, data can be supplied to us electronically from reports provided, but we will draw up a bespoke data-migration plan according to the particular circumstances of the transferring client.
We registered the client for electronic payslips via a secure online portal provided by Sage. This means that employees can receive their payslips direct, once the payroll is approved, using their own password protected log-in to access the portal. The employee receives an email on payday informing them that their payslip is available to view, download or print as required. The client has its own set of payroll and pension reports which are issued securely before the payslips are released to employees.
We set up banking details in order to make salary payments and payments to HMRC on behalf of the client. To satisfy their internal security, the client chose to log-in and authorise the banking payments on a monthly basis.
We agree monthly cut-offs with the client for payroll variables to be notified and this gives us the flexibility to work around client’s flexible factors including aspects such as holidays and deadlines.
Following on from the initial payroll transfer, Visionary completed the pension re-enrolment process for the client. Under Automatic Enrolment legislation, re-enrolment has to take place every three years from the staging date. All employees, not currently enrolled, have to be re-enrolled in to the automatic enrolment pension scheme, communications provided and a Re-Declaration of Compliance is required to be submitted to The Pension Regulator.