How do payroll companies instruct banks to make salary payments?

[7specialgems]

I am incredibly lazy and want to pay someone to run my payroll for me.

I am so lazy that I don't even want to log into my company bank account and make the payments - I want that to be wrapped up and outsourced too.

However I am not in the business of giving out my company bank account's username and password to an unknown third party.

This got me thinking - how do companies with loads of employees do it?

Edit: Since the expenses amount varies each month I cannot achieve this with a simple standing order.

[northernladuk]

I smell a someone's ****ed up my payroll cause I couldn't be arsed to take my responsibilities seriously thread on the horizon.

[SimonMac]

How hard is it to set up a standing order for the same amount every month?

(I'll give you a a clue, not very)

[7specialgems]

How hard is it to set up a standing order for the same amount every month?

(I'll give you a a clue, not very)

I missed some detail. You're right, a standing order is easy for salary.

It's the expenses bit that I am fed up with doing.

I currently do it all myself, but I was sat up at stupid o'clock filling in this spreadsheet, that spreadsheet, checking figures, making the payment, wondering if my record keeping is missing anything and just asked myself "why am I doing this?"

Paying someone £10 an hour or whatever the going rate is for all of the paperwork and filing is fair enough, but I fall down on my understanding of how it can't be me that still would need to log in and pay whatever is deemed to be the expenses amount for each month.

Yes, I know I'm lazy but it isn't a billable activity and I want someone else to do it.

[meridian]

So instead of instructing your business bank to make a specific payment to your personal account, you want to instruct someone else to instruct your business bank to make a specific payment to your personal account?

And you think this will save you time how?

[7specialgems]

So instead of instructing your business bank to make a specific payment to your personal account, you want to instruct someone else to instruct your business bank to make a specific payment to your personal account?

And you think this will save you time how?

I think this will save me time because I will be instructing someone to manage my entire payroll and expenses process and they will calculate the amount to pay before making an instruction for its payment.

As I said, I am looking to outsource the entire thing. I will dump my receipts somewhere for them to pick up and then I expect to be paid on payday.

I expect everything in between to be done by the outsource agent.

The nature of the post is I am not sure how I can extract myself as a dependency on having to log in and make the payment myself.

I don't want the process to end with "Your records are up to date Mr 7SG now pay yourself x.xx on payday", I want the process to end with the money being in my account, payslip in my e-mail, all records up to date, and being able to completely forget about having to be in any way involved in my payroll scheme and concentrate on billing during work hours and doing non-work things during non-work hours.

[DaveB]

I am incredibly lazy and want to pay someone to run my payroll for me.

I am so lazy that I don't even want to log into my company bank account and make the payments - I want that to be wrapped up and outsourced too.

However I am not in the business of giving out my company bank account's username and password to an unknown third party.

This got me thinking - how do companies with loads of employees do it?

You really dont want to do that. Allowing a third party to manage company finances for you moves you firmly into MSC territory and you really dont want to be there.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Managed_service_company

Large companies do it by outsourcing the paperwork, but not the payments process. A payroll company will generate and print payslips, P60's etc but only on the basis of information provided by the client company. They will also generate payment instructions for the client company, but the client must then instruct the bank to execute them together with any other payments needed.

If you dont want the headache of doing the admin yourself then go for an Umbrella rather than Ltd. co. You;ll still need to fill in the expenses forms though.

[northernladuk]

I currently do it all myself, but I was sat up at stupid o'clock filling in this spreadsheet, that spreadsheet, checking figures, making the payment, wondering if my record keeping is missing anything and just asked myself "why am I doing this?"

Because it's part of what you do to achieve the rewards that we reap contracting possibly? Why is it taking so long? It takes me like 10 mins a week tops. What are these spreadsheet things? Have you tried freeagent or something similar? Takes half a minute or less to enter an expense entry and the rest is done by the software? Maybe look at refining your process before palming it off first?

Paying someone £10 an hour or whatever the going rate is for all of the paperwork and filing is fair enough, but I fall down on my understanding of how it can't be me that still would need to log in and pay whatever is deemed to be the expenses amount for each month.

Yes, I know I'm lazy but it isn't a billable activity and I want someone else to do it.

I certainly wouldn't be trusting the running of any part of my company to someone on £10 an hour am afraid. This is a terrible idea and won't end well. You want the benefits of contracting without putting the effort it then. No sympathy here.

[7specialgems]

Because it's part of what you do to achieve the rewards that we reap contracting possibly?

You want the benefits of contracting without putting the effort it then. No sympathy here.

Slow down Northernlad, there's no need to introduce the hysterical 'I'm a real contractor, you're a bum on a seat' straw man.

My intention in starting the thread was to find out how anyone else who outsources payroll does so, and if this includes outsourcing the actual payments, how.

Clearly you enjoy the hands-on approach to all of the different psuedo-departments of YouCo. Good luck to you if you do, I don't see that as right or wrong and it worked fantastically well for people like Alan Sugar but I favour a divide and conquer approach and to package up and delegate what I see as overhead and concentrate on the billing side and trying to make the company larger.

Whether or not that is a purist thing to do is arguably irrelevant, but my response to 'you want your cake and eat it' is 'too right' - of course I want to pay someone to do the boring parts whilst do the bits I enjoy.

Thanks for the poster who mentioned MSC. I had completely oversighted on this.

[northernladuk]

Slow down Northernlad, there's no need to introduce the hysterical 'I'm a real contractor, you're a bum on a seat' straw man.

The point of the thread was to canvass how anyone else who outsources payroll does so, and if this includes outsourcing the actual payments, how.

Clearly you enjoy the hands-on approach to all of the different psuedo-departments of YouCo. Good luck to you if you do, it worked well for people like Alan Sugar but I favour a divide and conquer approach and to package up and delegate what I see as overhead and concentrate on the billing side and trying to make the company larger.

Thanks for the poster who mentioned MSC. I had completely oversighted on this.

I don't particularly enjoy it but it's part of the responsibilities of running a contractor LTD.