Payroll compliance is an important consideration for HR and payroll professionals.

You need to make sure you can protect your payroll team – and your merchantry as a whole – from any penalties that may stem from non-compliance.

You’ll moreover want to make sure that you’re keeping your employees happy by paying them on time – and seeing that they’re receiving the correct salary in the process.

To help you with payroll compliance, we’ve compiled a series of tips that will alimony you on the right track.

Here’s what we imbricate in this article:

• 1. Alimony well-judged personal records
• 2. Manage employee expectations
• 3. Understand workplace pensions
• 4. Use inspect trails
• 5. Stay up to stage with payroll legislation
• 6. Understand international legislation
• 7. Speak to the experts
• 8. Get feedback from your employees
• 9. Switch to a self-service model
• 10. Submit your payroll information on time
• Final thoughts on staying compliant with payroll

1. Alimony well-judged personal records

Making sure you have the correct personal information for each employee may seem obvious but it’s really important.

Remember, it’s your responsibility to maintain employee records virtuously for the elapsing of their tenure.

The personal information of your employees can transpiration on a regular understructure – and some of that info will be likely to stupefy your payroll.

No matter whether the transpiration is lanugo to a promotion, a salary increase without a pay review or taking time off for maternity leave, everything needs to be processed in the right way.

While it may seem like a juggling act at times, keeping well-judged personal records is something you need to stay on top of.

2. Manage employee expectations

It’s vital you ensure your employees understand what they need to do in terms of remaining compliant.

One example of this is making sure they stick to your company’s expenses policy. Another is keeping overtime records accurate.

To help your employees, put procedures in place where you explain how to document expenses and overtime properly, so they don’t leave you exposed.

Put together a comprehensive set of policies and practices for all issues that stupefy the pay of your employees.

This provides a useful guide for your staff to follow and will help if they have any queries virtually additions or deductions to their earnings.

3. Understand workplace pensions

Workplace pensions were introduced in 2012. It doesn’t matter what type of merchantry you run – plane if you have just one employee, that makes you an employer and you therefore have ‘duties’ under the pensions law.

Have you heard well-nigh automatic enrolment?

If not, it simply ways that your business, as an employer, needs to put unrepealable staff into a pension scheme, which you will make contributions towards.

Key sites such as the Pensions Regulator will have increasingly information on workplace pensions.

Your payroll provider should be worldly-wise to offer translating too.

4. Use inspect trails

Did you know there’s a way to protect your merchantry and your reputation if there’s an investigation?

Audit trails are the wordplay – trammels to see if your payroll software offers this functionality.

They indulge you to link each transaction that is made with supporting information, such as purchase orders and invoices, which will validate any payments that squint unusual.

Other things inspect trails can do:

• Guard versus fraud
• Ensure corporate finance are as well-judged as possible
• Provide insights into the health of your company.

5. Stay up to stage with payroll legislation

One thing you’ll need to alimony up with is payroll legislation, as things can transpiration regularly.

But how can you do that?

Attending payroll seminars, watching webinars and going to industry conferences can help to enhance your knowledge.

You’ll find they offer translating on various topics such as legislative changes and new payroll procedures.

You and your payroll team will learn well-nigh the latest regulatory changes, industry trends, innovation virtually payroll and increasingly topics that will have an impact on payroll processing.

Experts in their field will be on hand at seminars, conferences and webinars to provide you with the valuable insights you require.

Your payroll software provider may moreover offer translating and updates so you can alimony on top of legislation. And HMRC will have news on payroll legislation too.

6. Understand international legislation

Does your merchantry operate wideness multiple countries?

If so, you’ll need to deal with the complexities of international payroll.

When it comes to wages, deductions, remittances and reporting, each country has its own rules and regulations. You’ll need to alimony up to stage with them.

Meanwhile, increasingly countries are moving to real-time filing and electronic deposits. Having to deal with variegated currencies, surcharge and time zones will make this process increasingly of a challenge.

Having a good understanding of international legislation will make things easier.

Read increasingly well-nigh payroll

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7. Speak to the experts

Need help with payroll compliance and legislation? Have a yack with an expert.

If you use an purser (discover how to choose an purser for your business), they will have a good knowledge of payroll compliance and can squire you with regulations, important changes and updates.

In addition, they can help you alimony records up to date, file your returns and remit taxes.

And if you need support virtually payroll issues or with finding solutions for discrepancies in records, they can provide it for you.

8. Get feedback from your employees

One thing that can help your merchantry is to monitor complaints and request feedback from your employees on how processes can be improved.

This counts for your payroll processes too.

Once an issue has been identified, you and your payroll team can analyse workflows to spot where errors are creeping in.

If your employees finger they can comfortably voice any concerns, managers can be informed surpassing problems get out of control.

By reassuring your staff that you have their weightier interests at heart, you’ll be helping to maintain a single-minded and happy workforce.

9. Switch to a self-service model

Your payroll team shouldn’t have to ventilator and add every piece of data well-nigh the working lives of your employees into systems.

Chasing timesheets and expense forms takes a lot of time (try using online timesheets instead) – time that could be largest spent doing increasingly valuable tasks.

By moving to a self-service model, you’ll be giving your employees increasingly responsibility. It makes it easier to review and legitimatize their requests as they come in.

It moreover puts the responsibility on your staff to submit their personal information.

10. Submit your payroll information on time

If you make late submissions, your merchantry risks stuff penalised.

Payroll can be very ramified and you have numerous considerations that need to be dealt with including:

• Tax deadlines
• Shifting paydays
• Quarterly reporting.

So make sure you factor in unbearable time to get tasks done.

To help you stay on top of things, you could create an yearly calendar. It should full-length all the important dates that you need to stay on top of, tent the submission of timesheets and invoices, and when payments need to be made.

This will help you ensure that key tasks aren’t missed.

The timetable will moreover indulge you to alimony employees informed on when they’ll get paid. And it will help your team stay on top of any tasks that need to be carried out so payroll is run smoothly.

One task you need to imbricate is payroll year end.

This is the process that involves you ensuring your final reports to HMRC are submitted by 19 April. And your employees must have wangle to their P60s by 31 May.

There are increasingly steps you need to imbricate to tropical off the old payroll year and start the new one.

Want to learn increasingly well-nigh the process? Read our payroll year end checklist article.

Final thoughts on staying compliant with payroll

Payroll can be ramified but staying on top of legislation is important. As you’ve seen, there are a number of things you need to do to stay compliant.

By getting support where you need it from accountants and other payroll experts, using good payroll software, and keeping up to stage with legislation changes via training, webinars and seminars, you’ll requite yourself the weightier endangerment to stay compliant with your payroll.

Editor’s note: This vendible was first published in August 2019 and has been updated for relevance.