parasol IT

[WotNxt]

I've had it with Parasol

Promises made and broken too many times.

As far as I am concerned they are NOT GETTING ANY BETTER.

My agency are very keen for me to leave Parasol too as all this is causing them a headache - having to resend remittances, emails unanswered, etc.

The phone system is still up the spout and they seem to have now lumped the 0800 sales line in with the same wait queue as the customer service line. Now there IS NO WAY to speak to them.

Think I might give Giant a go. What does anyone think of Giant?

[jellyyacht]

Hindsight is 20/20 vision

I got two replies to an e-mail sent last week, duplication is the quickest way to double your workload. However both told me the payroll lock was off but is it? No.
Still haven't been paid for April and the financial situation is now officially dire. They ballsed up my first month when I was stopped more than a third in tax and NI because although I worked in March it wasn't processed in the tax year to April 2006. I hadn't worked last year so I told them I'd put in my expenses in April thinking I'd pay zip in tax for March. Thats OK they said, no warning as to what would be the result of this misconception.
I used to run as a ltd but didn't this time because the contract was only 2 months. God I wish I had now.

[dmini]

Still haven't been paid for April and the financial situation is now officially dire. They ballsed up my first month when I was stopped more than a third in tax and NI because although I worked in March it wasn't processed in the tax year to April 2006. I hadn't worked last year so I told them I'd put in my expenses in April thinking I'd pay zip in tax for March. Thats OK they said, no warning as to what would be the result of this misconception.

They did that to me as well - my last week in March was paid in April & I lost all allowances They actually calculated NI with no base allowances & tried to justify it. They will tell you it is calculated right - it isn't. I emailed Rob Crossland directly & he agreed they had messed up and at some point would be recalculating it.
Qutoe I got off him was:

***************
The issue with the NI has occurred due to allowances in tax year 05/06 not being carried forward into 06/07. Effectively the new system has (in this scenario) not provided NI allowances based on the number of weeks worked.

We will calculate the differences and apply rebates in due course. The system has been fixed so that next year (the only other scenario) this will not occur.

***************
When the recalc will be was never determined!

[Mordac]

Think I might give Giant a go. What does anyone think of Giant?

Don't. Not if you value your sanity...

[IanF]

Parasol Accounting Disaster

I am a new user to this forum and I am dismayed as to how many of us have been affected by these idiots. I too, like many of you have had to fight tooth and nail to get paid. They have also had the cheek to charge the management fee despite their errors. I have posted this to ask if anybody else has had deductions for student loans that they know nothing about. I discovered this last night on some of my payslips. I never authorised them to do this and the student loan I did have at one time, I paid off last year and any payments I did make was done through my bank. I'm sure you all check your payslips, but it may be worthwhile checking them again. There is something very fishy going on with these people.

[geekboy]

Okay I've been holding back and waiting to see if Parasol got their act together but it just doesn't seem to be happening. I've been with Parasol for a long time and up to this point I've been singing their praises.

I've never had a problem with them before, they always answered queries quickly, paid me on time, and best of all took the hassle out of contracting. Having run my own limited company before the days of IR35 I just wanted someone else to handle the financial side of things and let me get on with being a nerd.

Sadly the service has hit an all time low.

In the past week I've had to log multiple tickets for the same issues after the original ones were closed and the work not completed.

The tickets have been taking an average of two/three days to be closed (that's without the request being completed).

I was expecting to be paid Friday but that looks seriously doubtful. They just lost another customer.

[Denny]

I posted 5 timesheets 3 weeks ago. When I managed to get through to them a week last Thursday (13th) I was told invoices hadn't been sent out because thay had mistakenly entered my contract as self-billing but it would be sorted out that day. It wasn't. Couldn't get through to them because thier phone were constantly engaged. Then I got a mail telling me that they were taking there phones off-line because of the volumes of calls. That was Wednesday and Thursday last week.

My account indicated that my agency was invoiced last Thurday which raised my hopes. Rang the agency today that and they haven't received any invoices. There is a notice on the Parasol website saying they have engineers onsite fixing a fault with their phone system. Rang Parasol Sales but they couldn't put me through to Invoicing\Payroll because the line was busy. Advised to submit a web ticket or e-mail. Done both today, threatening legal action. No reply by phone or mail.

I can't help feeling that there is something very wrong here. Rang another umbrella company "Giant" who were recommended to me by Elan and was told that thay had had a lot of contractors move to them from Parasol in the past few days.

I have 9 Direct Debits due to go out of my bank account on Friday which I can't pay and have every intention of taking Parasol to court for any charges I incur.

I knew they were bad news earlier last year, when everyone on here seemed to be raving about them - not that I knew they may be financially unstable. The reason I didn't like them was because they sent me endless forms to fill in and even when I had filled them in and sent them back they resent the same blank forms back to me to fill out again. This told me immediately that their processes were faulty and the operations too fragmented with poor coordination. Also, they were too closely affiliated with agency based trade associations ATSCO and the PGC, which to me spells bad news and a clear message that we're not their clients, the agencies are.

Before my application was finalised - after exhaustive efforts to clear up the paperwork I just abandoned ship and went elsewhere.

[rz6bm7]

Totally impressed with your services
and kindest regards


Finally dumped them , just thought I'd pass on my feedback to Parasol.

[EternalOptimist]

unimpressed

[claudius]

I can only judge as I find. I got paid today on time. I'm on a self billing contract through a large agency.

Are the problems occurring only for people where an invoice needs to be raised?

Does anyone with a self billing contract have a problem getting paid?