ISTM that there are 3 distinct questions in here; and letting someone else touch your company bank account is not part of the answer to any of them
1. How to account for and reimburse expenses. This IMHO is the real question for the OP, other QQ are incidental and would be better not mixed up with this one. To me it's simple: you do the work yourself, or you pay somebody else to do it. The work is minimal if you set it up properly. I mean really minimal, I am a lazy disorganised sod but I find it no trouble, especially since there is money at the end of it. Expenses reimbursemenent need not be part of payroll. Personally I just put all receipts in a folder; once a week (or month if lazy) enter them in a simple spreadsheet and transfer them to a "done" folder; once a month, transfer the sum from Co to me.
2. Running payroll: without the expenses it is trivial. I use Sage One so that I have complete control over it and I can do it from my phone anywhere in the world. Equally your accountant would do it for a very small sum, or a slightly bigger sum if you wanted to be able to vary it every month for some reason.
That leaves you with only the bank payments to make to yourself, and as pointed out, far from being a chore, that is an activity that brings a nice warm glow.
3. Accountant. If you are bending your operational procedures into something that you can't or won't handle, in order to fit with your accountant, you know what to do about that.
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Previously on "How do payroll companies instruct banks to make salary payments?"
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I do my own payroll using Brightpay
I love paying myself it gives me an enormous sense of wellbeing
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Originally posted by 7specialgems View PostThere has been some useful information on this thread. Thanks all for that. Certainly it appears that outsourcing the actual instruction and payment of funds is uneconomical for a YouCo and a huge no-no from an MSC perspective.
Instead of pursuing that further, it would appear that the best course is to route all expenses through a company credit card to mitigate the need to pay employee expenses (thank you Malvolio) and to migrate my sordid dance of spreadsheets to a capable cloud platform to speed up the payroll (thank you NL - said sorry array only came into being due to the poor reporting capability of my former accountant's* cloud tool and my distrust of their calculations, and my persistence to maintain shadow books).
* When you read accountant, read "shareholder of the company who is an accountant, but who is a complete ghost who employs about 80 beautiful young below-the-wage-of-20 female administrators who would appear to have no accounting qualifications whatsoever between them".
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There has been some useful information on this thread. Thanks all for that. Certainly it appears that outsourcing the actual instruction and payment of funds is uneconomical for a YouCo and a huge no-no from an MSC perspective.
Instead of pursuing that further, it would appear that the best course is to route all expenses through a company credit card to mitigate the need to pay employee expenses (thank you Malvolio) and to migrate my sordid dance of spreadsheets to a capable cloud platform to speed up the payroll (thank you NL - said sorry array only came into being due to the poor reporting capability of my former accountant's* cloud tool and my distrust of their calculations, and my persistence to maintain shadow books).
* When you read accountant, read "shareholder of the company who is an accountant, but who is a complete ghost who employs about 80 beautiful young below-the-wage-of-20 female administrators who would appear to have no accounting qualifications whatsoever between them".
Last edited by 7specialgems; 14 July 2015, 13:59.
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You'd have to speak with your bank and ask them if they offer an 'Autopay' type setup, this is what many payroll agents use but it is being phased out by most high street banks now.
It works by the client authorising the payroll agent to send a payment instruction to the bank on a set payment pattern every month/week and the bank processing this and making the necessary payments to the accounts listed which can include salary, expenses, PAYE etc.
For the payment of one salary and one expense submission a month the costs in my opinion wouldn't be worth it but the bank would probably only charge ~£20 per month for this which seems like it might be a price you'd be willing to pay. You'd obviously have to find a bank that would provide this and a service provider that would do your payroll/expenses as you wish and see how much one would charge for this service.
If it's your accountant you would need to be careful with the MSC legislation as others have mentioned.
Hope this gives you a starting point for your search.
Martin
Contratax Ltd
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Originally posted by 7specialgems View PostSlow 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.
Along with divesting yourself of the effort, you inevitably increase the risk.
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My accountant runs the payroll and tells me what tax is owed when. Creating one SO and four Bill Payments a year isn't too onerous.
I don't get expenses, all company expenses are paid for by MyCo directly. So no complications there either. Call it an hour a month.
But NLUK is right; it's your company and you are its director. If running it is too difficult/boring/time-consuming then tough. Your job is being a contractor; get on and do it. If you really don't want to do it, go use an umbrella.
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Isn't this the kind of noddy stuff you could pay your spouse to do?
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Originally posted by 7specialgems View Post
This got me thinking - how do companies with loads of employees do it?
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Originally posted by 7specialgems View PostSlow 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.
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Because it's part of what you do to achieve the rewards that we reap contracting possibly?Originally posted by northernladuk View PostYou want the benefits of contracting without putting the effort it then. No sympathy here.
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.Last edited by 7specialgems; 14 July 2015, 13:05.
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Originally posted by 7specialgems View Post
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.
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Originally posted by 7specialgems View PostI 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?
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.
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Originally posted by meridian View PostSo 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?
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.Last edited by 7specialgems; 14 July 2015, 12:43.
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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?
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