An ultimate guide to payroll for your small business

As your business grows, the time will come to consider taking on employees. When that step happens you need to start managing payroll for your small business.

This is an important step as it will involve a host of new processes that you will have to manage or oversee.

Tax and compliance are two key areas that you need to consider when dealing with payroll, not to mention the fact you want to keep your employee(s) happy by paying them on time.

To help you with this new challenge, we have created The ultimate guide to payroll for small businesses.

The guide will help you as you make those first steps to implement a payroll software system within your business and it will assist you as you face a number of new challenges.

From taking on new employees to dealing with PAYE (pay as you earn) and understanding RTI (Real Time Information), this guide will put you in a position where you’re ready to manage your payroll with confidence.

The ultimate guide to payroll for small businesses has the following topics:

• Building problem-free payroll
• The basics of onboarding and paying employees
• Processing payroll step-by-step
• Payroll tax year end
• Understanding payroll compliance
• Options for small business payroll management
• Choosing your solution

An excerpt from The ultimate guide to payroll for your small business

The next phase of business building

You’ve started a business that has expanded to the point of requiring more staff to meet demand. Congratulations!

This is a landmark and critical graduation point that many small businesses fail to reach.

It also means you’ll have more complexities to deal with as you add new staff, namely a new set of processes to pay employees, applicable employee tax, and maintain compliance where applicable.

All these things must be done on time, every time.

It’s a new world for an entrepreneur to step into and there are many intricacies and scenarios that makes for a unique payroll scheme. It can be difficult to keep the reins on it all.

This guide aims to break down the basics of payroll in phases:

• setting up a payroll scheme
• understanding compliance
• processing payroll
• options for how to best manage it all
• how to decide which is best for your business.

The importance of getting payroll right

Employees quite rightly, and perfectly reasonably, expect to be paid accurately, on time, every time. And they should never need to worry about the process that makes that happen.

But you’re aware of the complexities involved in payroll and understand it’s the linchpin of employee and, consequently, business confidence.

According to Sage research conducted in the UK, 35% of workers would look for a new job if their employer paid them incorrectly just once.

Just once.

A further 51% would lose trust in their employer and half would positively resent them.

This puts a tremendous weight of responsibility on your shoulders to ensure your employee(s)’ confidence in the business that employs them.

Beyond explaining the basics and the options for a solution, we’ll also recommend the features and benefits you should look for in a small business payroll solution.