should you manage auto enrolment yourself or outsource it? · should you manage auto enrolment...

Should you manage auto enrolment yourself or outsource it?

This guide will help you to decide on whether it is best for your business to manage auto enrolment in-house, or to outsource it to a third party.

With 30 years' experience, IRIS provides business critical software and services to the UK SME sector and accountants in practice. Over 90,000 small and medium-sized companies including 18,000 accountancy practices rely on IRIS every day to run their business and collaborate, with around 466,000 end-users subscribing to IRIS cloud solutions.

IRIS Software Group is the number one solution provider for RTI and its software pays 14 percent of UK businesses that operate under PAYE. All customers receive the greatest choice of RTI payroll software and services managed under the brands IRIS, Earnie and KashFlow.

There are specific duties that must be undertaken and completed and this must be done during every single payroll run.

With 1.8 million businesses staging between 2015 and 2018, the numbers seeking support and advice about the legislative transition will increase considerably.

Call: 0843 357 1802 for IRIS Payroll0844 815 5677 for Earnie Payroll

Email: [email protected]@iris.co.uk

Visit us: iris.co.uk/autoenrolment

This information doesn’t constitute financial, investment or professional advice and shouldn’t be relied on as such.

IRIS do not make any personal recommendation or give advice to employers and their workers on how to make investment decisions. If you are seeking this kind of advice we would suggest speaking with a qualified financial adviser.

Legal information

About IRIS

Call IRIS on 0843 357 1802 or Earnie on 0844 815 5677 Visit iris.co.uk/autoenrolment

IRIS & IRIS Software Group are trademarks © IRIS Software Ltd 11/2015. All rights reserved Version 1.0

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What are your 4 options at a glance?

1) Work out your auto enrolment manuallyManaging your auto enrolment manually can take you a vast amount of time and effort. Imagine having to assess each and every employee to see if they fit into a certain criteria every time you run your payroll? This is what the law requires and managing it yourself could take up as much as 4.5 hours per payroll run according to the CIPP. In addition to this, having to manage such a complicated process manually so often, you could end up making mistakes and being non-compliant with the workplace pension legislation.

2) Export your auto enrolment to a middleware providerA middleware provider is a third party piece of software that runs outside your payroll. At the beginning of auto enrolment, many businesses that staged adopted a middleware provider to manage their auto enrolment solution purely because there were no better alternatives. Middleware; whilst appearing to be free up-front, can be very costly going into years two and three. Middleware can complicate the process, it doesn’t run within your payroll software and can cause complications further down the line when it comes to re-enrolment

3) Manage auto enrolment efficiently within your payrollIf you are going to manage your auto enrolment solution in-house, the most logical solution is to manage it within your payroll software. This is because all of the information needed to assess your employees already lies within your payroll software. In addition to this, managing your auto enrolment from within your software will allow you to integrate sending pension communications, payslips and P60s all electronically, further reducing the cost and streamlining your payroll process.

4) Outsource auto enrolment to a third partyWhat many small businesses are considering is to outsource the entire responsibility to a third party provider. This is because some businesses may not have dedicated payroll personnel so outsourcing means that they can relieve themselves of the whole thing, confident in the knowledge that knowledgeable professionals are taking full care of it.




Manage auto enrolment efficiently within your payroll

Benefits:

• Auto enrolment assessment can be fully integrated into your payroll software. This means that there is no exporting and importing of data to third party solutions because all of the information you need to run assessment of your employees is ready for you.

• Once the auto enrolment solution is configured, payroll and auto enrolment processing occurs automatically every payroll run – no extra steps within your payroll process (apart from submitting the pension output file to your pension provider).

• No user input is required in the assessment process which means that there is no potential for error.

• Your business is compliant every payroll run through the different aspects of employee assessment, pension communications and pension output files.

• The IRIS auto enrolment solution is scalable: no extra time or resource is required to manage auto enrolment (e.g. 00’s companies or 000’s of employees).

• Postponement is automatically defined until the next payroll period to allow for the contributions to be processed in the next payroll run

• Removing the flexibility of postponement reduces the high risk that an error could be made and the auto enrolment is not compliant.



You can simplify your payroll process

The IRIS AE Suite™ sits within your payroll software and automatically assesses employees’ eligibility for auto enrolment as well as sending payslips and P60s electronically and distributing pension communications to employee’s secure, online portals.

As you can see from the tables above, the 3rd party or middleware provider process contains a lengthy, tricky method that requires you to run your payroll twice. The IRIS AE Suite™ allows you to manage your auto enrolment assessment within your payroll and then subsequently generate the required payroll, P60 and pension letters as well as generating the pension output file.

This means that you can simplify your payroll process and reduce the amount of time it takes for you to manage your auto enrolment. Consequently this allows you more time to concentrate on other, more business-centric tasks.

The simplified process on the right only adds one further step to your auto enrolment process and that is simply to export and upload the pension output file to your chosen pension provider. As of November 2015 the IRIS AE Suite™ is supportive of NEST Web Services, which allows you to upload your pension output file directly to NEST within the IRIS AE Suite™ itself meaning that you don’t have to export a file from your payroll software to upload to the NEST website.




You can automate the distribution of payslips, P60s and pension letters

The automated distribution of payslips, P60s and pension letters means that you could save up to £1.75 per payslip, per payroll period. This is because you will no longer have to print, sort and send the documents as they are automatically produced and delivered to the employee’s online portals with the click of a button within the IRIS AE Suite™.

Automating this distribution means that you do not have to worry about remembering to do it manually. This is a legally required aspect of your auto enrolment responsibilities which means that forgetting to do it or getting it wrong could lead to your businesses being non-compliant with auto enrolment and therefore incurring a fine.

There are four legally required pension letters that must be sent out at various different stages in an employee’s auto enrolment journey. This means that you should be sending out communications to the correct employee at the correct time depending on their auto enrolment status. Failure to do so means again that you are non-compliant and likely to incur a fine.




The IRIS AE Suite™ is superior to 3rd party (middleware) solutions

IRIS 3rd Party

Auto enrolmentAssessment Automatic

No distinction between

Pensionable Pay and Qualifying Earnings. All Earnings are counted

as one or have to be manually calculated

Calculation of Qualifying Earnings and Pensionable Pay

AutomaticManual

Configurable postponement

Configurable for:

New startersThose becoming Eligible Jobholders

Defined by 3rd Party to allow for

importing data into Payroll

Auto enrolmentCommunications

Digital Cloud Electronic payslips

Smartphone/ Tablet App

Time to run payroll negligible additional processing

time per payroll run

2x Resource and/or Up to a day

to process single payroll

No risk of processing non-compliant payroll

Non compliant If operator misses

any manual steps.

Postponed employees are

assessed on the previous payroll period NOT on deferral date

Published statistics5,000+ Customers & 500,000+

EmployeesUnknown

Auto enrolmenttraining

~ 5,000+ Course places sold & largest provider of AE training in UK

Unknown



The IRIS AE Suite™The industry's leading auto enrolment solution

Auto enrolment legislation and communications is very complex. Here at IRIS we have developed the industry's most comprehensive auto enrolment solution; the IRIS AE Suite™.

The IRIS automatic enrolment solution has been adopted by over 2,700 organisations assessing 556,000 employees.

This comprises of three elements; assessment, communications (pension letters) and electronic payslips and P60s.

Employees no longer just require payslips and P60s, they require additional pension communications delivered at key stages.

Effortless Communications

The IRIS AE Suite™ takes care of your communication requirements, removing the administration. It allows you to:• Produce relevant automatic enrolment

communications and deliver them directly to your workforce

• Access audit facilities for producing compliance evidence

• Print and deliver electronic and paper payslips and P60s

Electronic Payslips and P60s

You can view your payslips and P60s wirelessly via:• Your smartphone or tablet• Your laptop/desktop PC• Secure online employee portal accessed via email

Book a Free Demo

Call 0844 815 5772 or visit iris.co.uk/autoenrolment to see how we can help you

"Can’t imagine why any company wouldn’t invest in the IRIS AE Suite™. It is the whole package, our auto enrolment process is so streamlined.“

Carol Arrowsmith, Payroll Administrator of Taylor Bloxham Ltd

Call us now on 0844 815 5772



http://www.iris.co.uk/campaigns-sme/demo/iris-openenrol-and-automatic-enrolment-module-demo-id-2473

The 5 benefits of outsourcing your auto enrolment

2 Save time

Payroll is a vital cog in any business, but handling it can be a time consuming task. Outsourcing this to an external provider can free up time to be spent focussing on your business

3 Reduce your costs

According to PayScale.com, the average salary of a payroll manager is £30,000*. When you add this to the cost of printing payslips, sealing machine expenses, implementing payroll software and the training costs involved with remaining up to date with legislation, outsourcing your payroll could save you a lot of money.

4 Utilise the expertise of experience payroll professionals

Rather than having one or two members of staff running your payroll alone, outsourcing it gives you access to a much wider range of knowledge, experience and expertise from professionals who have spent years dedicated to payroll.

5 Improve efficiency

Outsourcing your payroll gives you access to a huge variety of reports, specialised to suit your business needs. These can help in other areas of the business, streamlining your internal processes.

1 Minimise your automatic enrolment stress

The biggest change to pensions coupled with the introduction of Real Time Information has forced practices to re-evaluate their abilities and focus on payroll. Outsourcing your payroll means alleviating this burden of complex legislation

* Figure correct at time of print

Call IRIS on 0844 815 5700 or Earnie on 0844 815 5677 Visit iris.co.uk/managedpayroll



Outsourcing your payroll means handing over the full responsibility to someone outside of your business. But why would you do this?

The 15 questions to ask when choosing a payroll outsourcing provider

It’s important to know exactly what you want from an outsourcing provider before you begin your search for one.

The following questions should help you decide which provider is right for you. You can print this out to help you when making a decision about your outsourced payroll provider.

1) What services do they offer?

2) Can I just outsource part of my payroll process?

3) Will they provide automatic enrolment support?

• Assessment

• Communications

4) Will I have a designated contact?

5) Is the service run by CIPP qualified professionals?

6) What is the pricing structure? Are there any “hidden extras” for

changes, new starters, leavers, etc?

7) What data protection measures do they have in place?

8) Do they offer bespoke reporting?

9) What is their track record with other clients?

10) Can they provide e-payslips?

11) Are they BACS accredited?

12) Is the service based in the UK or overseas?

13) Do they have a high level of customer service?

14) How smooth will the transition be?

15) Are they Real Time Information compliant?

IRIS were a 2013 Finalist in the Payroll World Awards in the "Bureau/Service Provider" category.




What are my outsourcing options?

Payroll services: Payroll processing and production of BACS files for processing, a backup can be provided so that payslips or BACS files can be processed in house.

BACS service: Our BACS accredited bureau can make all your BACS payments on your behalf. Our service is completely secure and you can be confident the payments will be processed correctly and on time.

Payslip printing: We will print and seal your payslips and can send to either one address or directly to your employees. You can benefit from professional laser security payslips without the need to invest in a pressure sealing machine. Your payslips will be printed in a secure off-site environment ensuring payroll data is kept confidential.

Year End Service: This service includes: processing PAYE tax and NI payments, P60 production for employees, filing Employer Annual Return (P35 and P14s), filing expenses and benefits and production of the P11D and P9D forms.

P11D production: We can look after your P11D production, carrying out all calculations and submitting information online to HMRC.

Digital Payslips: You can utilise IRIS OpenPayslips with our managed service.

You may only need some payroll services taken care of or you might prefer to outsource your entire payroll process.

Automatic enrolment: The IRIS Managed Payroll service can take care of all of your assessment and communication needs as well as pensions remittance files so you can upload your employee's information directly to the provider. The following providers are included as standard in our software: NEST, NOW Pensions, Standard Life, Scottish Widows, Peoples Pension, Aviva, Friends Life.

If your pension provider is not listed above, don't worry - bespoke pension files can be created upon request.

IRIS outsourcing options include:

Fully managed payroll service: Including payroll processing, payslip printing/email payslips/electronic payslips, BACS processing, Year End Service (including P11D production).




Why outsource your payroll to IRIS?

IRIS has specialised in payroll for over 30 years and this experience means we fully understand all aspects of payroll to be able to offer you a first class service ensuring you are legislatively compliant whilst paying staff accurately and on time.

We use our own, market leading, HMRC accredited payroll software which easily enables us to tailor your payrolls to your individual requirements.

IRIS Managed Payroll is also compatible with IRIS OpenPayslips, our digital payslip production and distribution service which means that you employees will receive their payslips and P60s electronically.

We offer outsourcing which has been specifically developed to deal with both

businesses and GP practices.

IRIS OpenPayslips allows you to publish payslips direct to an online portal, where employees can access their current and historic payslips through a web browser or via a free app available for iOS, Android and Windows Mobile devices.

If you are interested in finding out more about the IRIS Managed Payroll Service, you can get a quote by calling 0844 815 5700 for more information or following the link below.

Honestly, we’ve never had any problems since moving to IRIS, it's all been really easy! The team are incredibly knowledgeable: when RTI was introduced the switch was so seamless we barely noticed any difference!”

Vicki French , ACT Teleconferencing




Click here to use our online calculator to get a quoteiris.co.uk/calculator

http://www.iris.co.uk/calculator



IRIS Software GroupRiding Court House, Riding Court Road,DatchetBerkshireSL3 9JT

IRIS: 0843 357 1802Earnie: 0844 815 [email protected]/autoenrolment


should you manage auto enrolment yourself or outsource it? · should you manage auto enrolment...

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