When you run a business in the UK, unless you are a sole trader, you will have a few employees. This might be anywhere from 1 to 49, and government statistics state that there are 1,372,705 businesses in this category. By contrast, there are 35,620 with 50 to 249 employees, and just 7,655 with 250 or more employees, so there are far more SMEs than anything else.
What this means is that there are some millions of people who are either owners or directors of a small business, every one of which has to run a payroll in one form or another, and of course, comply with all the legal requirements from HMRC. Just imagine the number of man hours that are spent poring over payroll and checking the statistics!
It Is All An Overhead
Of course, today we have software that can help with payroll, but unfortunately it is not infallible, so each payslip has to be double checked in order to ensure that it is legally compliant, and then tax deductions must be made and returns to HMRC on every occasion that an employee is paid. It is bad enough if employees are paid monthly, but some businesses pay weekly! And none of this work actually contributes a single penny to the turnover of a business. It is all an overhead.
Of course, if you happen to be director of one of the 7,655 businesses with more than 250 on the payroll, you can afford to employ a manager to take care of it, but the vast majority of businesses cannot do that. So, running the payroll either eats into management time which could be spent doing something productive, or an employee has to be trained up to undertake the work for a couple of days a week, or however long it takes.
This is why so many more SMEs today are using payroll outsourcing services in the UK such as those we provide at PayCheck. We negotiate a fixed fee with you at the outset, starting at just £35 per month, and for that you get rid of the whole job.
Our payroll outsourcing services in the UK allow you to get on with running your business, instead of working part-time for HMRC for zero wages, which is effectively what you are doing otherwise.