What happens when my accountant runs my payroll?
Laura Arbuckle • April 24, 2020
My payroll blog here
describes how you would go about operating your own payroll. Alternatively, there are many reasons that you may prefer to get a professional to run it for you.
When you ask someone else to run your payroll for you, you may wonder how that might work in practice. I can’t speak for every accountant or payroll operator but in this blog post I describe how the process works at Armet Accounting. You can also find out more about other services such as VAT
or company accounts.
The process
Every business is slightly different and there may be slight tweaks to the basic process that are specific to your business, but the overall process operates using the following steps.
Initial steps
- Gather the relevant information from your employees for including in the payroll software. This is gathered using the HMRC starter form here. After the initial set up, this step will only be relevant for any new starters in the period.
A couple of days before payroll is submitted
- You tell me how much to pay your employees in each period, either as a monthly salary or as an hourly rate.
- I will add new employees and send through any pension letters that are required to be delivered.
- I will update the amount each employee is due to be paid
- Based on the pay for that period, I will assess whether any additional employees need to be enrolled in the pension scheme.
- A couple of days before the payroll is due I will send you a draft of the payroll showing the net amount to be paid to each employee, the amount of tax and National Insurance due to be paid to HMRC and the amount due to the pension scheme. I will also provide details of how to make the payment to HMRC and your pension scheme and when. At this point there will be an opportunity to discuss whether any changes are required.
On the day the employees are paid
- I will send out the appropriate pension letters and enrol any additional employees in the scheme.
- I will make the submissions to HMRC and the pension scheme.
- I will send out password protected payslips for your employees either to you for distribution or directly to the employees if you provide me with their email addresses.
- You will arrange the payments to employees, HMRC and pension scheme as required, following the instructions I send you.
Year-end tasks
Is this process the same for every client?
Depending on your business and the number of employees, we may be able to simplify this process, but the general steps still apply .
What do we need you to do?
Payroll submissions need to be submitted on or before the day your employees are paid. We therefore require the information from you the day before the payroll is due to be submitted. The key to getting the payroll submissions correct on time is good communication of any changes.
What can you expect from us?
Along with all the usual expectations of an accountant (such as confidentiality), you can expect us to prepare and submit your payroll on the day we have agreed, subject to receiving the information the day before.
If you have questions at any point along the way, you can call us or drop us an email.
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