Doing PAYE yourself

[bobby280]

Does anyone? Accountant wants £77 plus vat per quarter to do it for us but suggested we could do ourselves and they would help. How easy is it? Ltd company, two equal directors, no other employees, would be paying oursleves beneath the tax threshold.

Thanks!
Bob

 

[Newchodge]

It is relatively simple, provided there are no complicating features. However it can be a nightmare if something goes wrong.

A lot of payroll providers would be able to do it for you for much less than what your accountant has quoted.

 

[MyAccountantOnline]

Does anyone? Accountant wants £77 plus vat per quarter to do it for us but suggested we could do ourselves and they would help. How easy is it? Ltd company, two equal directors, no other employees, would be paying oursleves beneath the tax threshold.

Thanks!
Bob

Payroll isnt too bad but I've been doing it for a while and I'm an accountant

I'd look at it this way - your accountant will ensure its dealt with properly for you and the effective net cost to you after tax relief is £246 per annum. If you buy some decent software to run the payroll and then add in the real cost of you learning how to deal with payroll and the time you'll spend doing it is that actually going to save you anything? I'd be really surprised if it did.

 

[Anonymouse72]

i've done ours for years using HMRC basic paye tools & just an excel worksheet for wage slips (done weekly & printed off once a month). we're less than 5 employees & 2 directors.

weekly wages for staff takes 10-15 mins maximum, month end an extra 5-10 mins to fill in my spreadsheet & make sure my TAX/NI tallies with what the software states. year end takes no more than 30 mins, mainly me double checking all figures match & printing off file copies of year end return(s) & P60's.

new real-time reporting (RTI) comes in this April with HMRC (wages info sent to HMRC when paid, instead of one yearly return) will have to see how their systems & the basic tools copes with that...

 

[Tom McClelland]

Does anyone? Accountant wants £77 plus vat per quarter to do it for us but suggested we could do ourselves and they would help. How easy is it? Ltd company, two equal directors, no other employees, would be paying oursleves beneath the tax threshold.

Thanks!
Bob

The situation you describe would be very easy to handle with HMRC's Basic PAYE Tools or cheap/free commercial software. You just have to be disciplined enough to remember to file a return every month, which will take a couple of minutes from start to finish.

 

[bobby280]

Thanks for all the responses. For a tenner a month I may someone but we'll see. Didn't realise the accountant was so expensive as their accountancy fees are very competitive.

 

[Lentinus]

I am looking at this as I happily do my own book keeping/accs, I have tried Payroo - too ugly, badly laid out and not compatible with my browser.
Moneysoft - installed it and opened it to take a look before I registered for PAYE and now it's trial has expired before I got to look at it so not buying something I can't try!
Trying 12pay at the moment but it is full of boxes with strange acronyms with no help/explanation (APP anyone?) and the trial version just deletes all the info you have entered for your company.....grrrrrrr
I am spoilt with the simplicity of Quickfile for my book keeping but payroll just seems to be made overly complex.
Not got to the HMRC software yet...

 

[Tom McClelland]

Trying 12pay at the moment but it is full of boxes with strange acronyms with no help/explanation (APP anyone?) and the trial version just deletes all the info you have entered for your company.....grrrrrrr

Hi, Thanks for trying us. In general if you don't understand an acronym then you don't need the feature. Every field is explained in the status bar when you're on it. (and all fields are explained in the online help, that you summon, as usual, with the windows F1 key).

Most fields are obvious, but I agree APP is an unfortunately obscure acronym, to keep the length of something that scarcely anyone requires and makes no difference in 99% of cases whether you click it or not. It stands for "Approved Personal Pension" and it is in the software solely to satisfy the most arcane (craziest) requirements of HMRC's Accreditation scheme, otherwise we wouldn't have it.

As to 12Pay deleting your payroll data, I'm afraid I don't understand the reference. 12Pay never deletes any data. It doesn't even have the capacity to do so in its code. Clearly you believe that it did so in some particular situation, but without more details it is hard for me to comment on why you believe that. If you are interested I'm pretty sure that I could find your data on your PC if you get in touch. In the past when people have believed that 12Pay had deleted their data they've accidentally moved or renamed the folder where it stores its data.

 

[kevin.doran]

That's a shocking price in my opinion.

If you're already putting your bookkeeping/accounts through one firm they should really be offering it for free seeing as it's only for the two of you.

How much do they charge for your LTD just out of interest and what's included?

 

[Rolo Tomasi]

Moneysoft - installed it and opened it to take a look before I registered for PAYE and now it's trial has expired before I got to look at it so not buying something I can't try!

Have another look at moneysoft - I don't think you will find anything more cost effective or easier to use (sorry Tom!)

As for the accountant quote its hardly 'shocking'.Why should they do it for free? Yes you could find a cheaper quote but you know and trust your accountant and that may be worth paying extra for.

 

[Tom McClelland]

Have another look at moneysoft - I don't think you will find anything more cost effective or easier to use (sorry Tom!)

No need to apologise. Moneysoft is very good software. For some requirements it is definitely as good as 12Pay.

 

[kevin.doran]

2 directors presumably on a low recurring monthly salary? It takes 15 mins max to process so what, 3 hrs a yr at most (and even that's a push!)

I don't know many payroll clerks on £100 an hour...

 

[Tom McClelland]

2 directors presumably on a low recurring monthly salary? It takes 15 mins max to process so what, 3 hrs a yr at most (and even that's a push!)

I'd say more like 2-3 minutes per month, at most. If the accountant has several such clients they can lump them together, do them systematically, and have the lot done in 10 minutes.

 

[kevin.doran]

I'd say more like 2-3 minutes per month, at most. If the accountant has several such clients they can lump them together, do them systematically, and have the lot done in 10 minutes.

I was being generous!

 

[Ola1]

Accountant wants £77 plus vat per quarter to do it

just over £25/month

Thats a decent price, plus they'll probably handle all hmrc inquiries or challenges up to a point .

To be candid, Payroll looks easy, till it goes wrong, and unless you're planning to study the UK tax system and law, I'd take their offer to do it.

 

[bobby280]

Turnover is very low and the accountgs are very basic so paying circa £360 inc vat for the accounts and 2 x SA.

 

[PuddlePayroll]

I'm not speaking for all but in my experience payroll is just an add on for accountants that they won't make any money on unless they charge a fair whack.

As said above it can be done yourself but it may be more cost effective on the long run to outsource. We'd be happy to offer any advice you may need.

 

[kevin.doran]

Turnover is very low and the accountgs are very basic so paying circa £360 inc vat for the accounts and 2 x SA.

Well, that IS a very good price which makes it even harder to believe they would want almost the same again just to run a minuscule bit of payroll for you.

Tbh, I don't have any standalone payroll clients but if a couple of directors came to me like this and asked the question, I doubt is charge them annually much more than you're being asked to pay quarterly.

Yours really is a very simple situation.

 

[MyAccountantOnline]

......

If you're already putting your bookkeeping/accounts through one firm they should really be offering it for free seeing as it's only for the two of you.

That sort of comment really puzzles me - why would you expect an accountant to work for free :|:|

 

[kevin.doran]

That sort of comment really puzzles me - why would you expect an accountant to work for free :|:|

I just don't see having two directors on minimum salaries as 'work' in all honesty, especially when you're already being paid to do the bookkeeping/accountants.

I've just spent the last hr doing my clients PAYE and the relevant bookkeeping entries to match. Could I live with myself charging them all £25 a month + VAT each for that?? Not in this lifetime...

Admittedly, in this case the annual accounting charges are very good indeed but I still fail to see how they can then justify charging not far off the same again for a fraction of the work. As above, it's a few hrs tops per year and even that is OTT.

Just my opinion obviously.

 

[MyAccountantOnline]

I just don't see having two directors on minimum salaries as 'work' in all honesty.....

It takes time to deal with, and I truly dont see why or how you can expect or would expect an accountant in business to do work for free.