Leading Chartered Accountants Armstrong Watson Adopts Rutherford Webb’s Payrite To Administer Over 1300 Payrolls
Flexible payroll solution enables leading accountancy practice to provide a wide range of payroll services to clients.
Armstrong Watson is a leading independent firm of chartered accountants with 15 offices across northern England and southern Scotland. The company provides a range of services to clients that include payroll services, business consultancy, financial planning and wealth management, accountancy and audit, corporate recovery and taxation.
With payroll requiring adherence to new legislation it is becoming increasingly complex to administer in-house. Many clients are choosing to outsource their payroll processing and concentrate on their core business activity. As a result, over recent years Armstrong Watson has seen an increase in customers requiring payroll services – from a basic payroll bureau to fully managed service.
Differing payroll requirements
The company now has over 1300 payrolls that it administers on behalf of clients – including weekly, fortnightly, monthly, quarterly, six monthly and annual payrolls. Managing such complex payroll requirements calls for a flexible, easy to use tool.
After evaluating many different payroll products on the market, Armstrong Watson selected Payrite from Rutherford Webb.
Brian Stenhouse, Payroll Services Manager at Armstrong Watson explained:
“We chose Payrite after evaluating over 20 different packages. We wanted a windows-based system that adhered rigidly to legislation and was easy to use. Payrite is user friendly and intuitive, so we could implement it with minimum training, plus the team at Rutherford Webb speak payroll language – not just IT.”
Central management of data
Armstrong Watson has Payrite installed on its main server and on their PCs. Over forty users log in through the network via the company’s Citrix system. Citrix enables data to be stored and managed centrally, providing security and back-up facilities for the data. It also enables staff in different offices to access the data – an important factor for a firm with 15 offices.
Payroll staff can view all the payrolls, subject to the security levels set. Non-payroll staff, such as Accountancy Managers, have read-only access to P60 information for tax self-assessments, and managers responsible for dealing with tax compliance on benefits such as customer car fleets are also able to view P11D information.
Intuitive and flexible
“Because Payrite is so intuitive, it is really easy for non-payroll staff working in other parts of the practice to look at the system for information that they need. This is really beneficial for the client as it improves our response time and makes our whole client services much more efficient,” said Stenhouse.
Although Payrite is easy to use, the payrolls that Armstrong Watson administers can be very complex. The company provides a wide range of payroll services – a basic payroll bureau service, a managed service, where the whole payroll is administered including year end balancing and submitting forms to HMRC (HM Revenue and Customs) via the Internet, and a fully managed payroll service where they deal with employees directly.
“On average we produce around 22,000 payslips a month. Our largest weekly payroll is around 650 employees. Of course, processing these payrolls is more complex than processing one standard payroll of 22,000 employees for a single company because of the different combinations – some may be weekly, some monthly or even half yearly and each with its own processing criteria. Without Payrite we couldn’t even begin to administer such a myriad of payrolls,” said Stenhouse.
The large majority of the payments are made via the BACS system which, according to Stenhouse, works extremely well.
Easy to manipulate data
When it came to selecting Payrite one of the important factors for Armstrong Watson was the ability to manipulate data. As part of the services offered by the company, bonus schemes need to be calculated, which requires the exporting of data into spreadsheets and the results then imported back into the system. The company also administers many payrolls where calculations from net to gross are required, as well as pension returns. Payrite can handle all of these variations easily.
Armstrong Watson has some clients who have a ‘cut-down’ version of Payrite (Front End) installed at their offices. The client can amend and input data and add new employees directly into the system. The Payroll file is then sent to Armstrong Watson via e-mail, or via an FTP (File Transfer Protocol) site set up by Armstrong Watson for the client’s use. The data is then processed, payslips printed and an updated payroll file sent back to the client. The client can then print their reports and create new reports if they wish. Armstrong Watson also administers the BACs payment on their behalf.
“The ability to extract data automatically from Payrite® and import it again is vital to many of our client service offerings. Not only does it ensure the accuracy of data and reduce errors, it enables us to provide a wider range of flexible services in addition
to core payroll,” explained Stenhouse. “For some clients, we carry out year-end P35 e-filing, even though we do not administer the payroll for them. The easy importing and exporting of data makes it a straightforward process.”
Business growth
Since implementing Payrite over four years ago, Armstrong Watson’s payroll services to clients have doubled and profitability improved, yet staffing levels have not increased significantly. This, Stenhouse claims, is as a result of using Payrite.
Stenhouse has a dedicated team to deal specifically with payroll queries from external clients and AW employees working on client accounts. In the past, these staff members would have spent more time fixing IT problems and are now able to concentrate on using their time more productively on client payroll tasks. Any software updates to Payrite are easily installed – either supplied on disk or downloaded from the Internet.
“Since using Payrite we have been able to increase our service levels for the benefit of our clients including speed, accuracy and complexity. Clients get a better, more efficient service and we are able to conduct more business. We are delighted with how Payrite has helped us to grow our business and with the increased service levels we are now able to offer to our clients.”