Payroll and Pensions FAQs

Payroll is essentially a list of all your employees and how much you pay them, if you have employees, you will be paying your staff under the PAYE scheme run by HMRC. This essentially tells you how much income tax and national insurance to deduct from your staff. When you pay staff through payroll all necessary deductions like tax and NI are applied through PAYE. How much is deducted depends on many factors including how much is earned and will go directly to HMRC. Income tax is a deduction on your personal earnings, regardless of where they come from. You can earn wages through PAYE or self-assessment, both will be subject to taxation. Income tax is usually paid on the following:
• Salary or earnings made from employment
• State benefits
• Pensions
• Profits made from those in self-employment

A payroll package saves you time in numerous areas, Collating hours, holidays, sick days, processing time, payslip distribution, answering queries, and keeping up to date with legislation changes. A good payroll provider will take care of all of this for you, the time and cost saving to your business by outsourcing your payroll could surprise you.

We have six levels of charges for our standard payroll service, so dependant on the number of payees on your payroll will determine our charge. We start at £5.00 per payslip per month for up to 10 payees, reducing through five further levels to £2.50 per payslip per month for over 1000 payees. Each charging level is subject to a monthly minimum charge.
We would be happy to accommodate any variation on our standard service, but this would most likely incur additional charges. We would identify our charges once it has been determined what service is required. Please contact us to discuss your requirements.

All data is encrypted and kept on secure servers, on top of this all employer files are password protected. Any reports or files that are emailed are also password-protected. We will only share employee data when we have a legal obligation to do so, for example enrolling staff onto a pension scheme. Employer information may be shared amongst Bigmore Associate companies only if you have given us permission to do so.

Auto-Enrolment is a government scheme that helps save towards your retirement by paying into a pension scheme, under UK law, all employers must offer a workplace pension and automatically enrol their eligible workers into the scheme.
Auto Enrolment is an initiative that was introduced by the government as part of the Pensions Act 2008. It aims to address the high number of British workers not saving enough money for their retirement. The new workplace pension law was phased in between 2012-2018. Companies of different sizes were given different workplace pension staging dates.

We will assess your employees every month, if they qualify, we will enrol them into your chosen pension scheme and deduct employee and employer contributions. An employee can opt out of auto-enrolment, but this must be done in writing. We will then email you a pensions report advising you of the contributions you must pay into the scheme.

Our standard payroll service allows you to enter the data directly into the payroll system via a link we send you each month. This is rather than you sending us the details of your employee’s salary (or hours), details of any starters or leavers, holiday or sick pay on forms and/or in emails each month. You are in control of your payroll, with BPP providing the expertise, checking and supporting you. In addition to BPP carry out the actual processing of your payroll, our payroll experts will also be ensuring you are meeting all the employer payroll and auto enrolment related statutory obligations.

We use payroll software to send a Full Payment Submission (FPS) to tell HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) about payments to your employees and what deductions to their pay you’ve made. The employer is responsible for ensuring that all required reporting is received by HMRC each time you pay your employees.
HMRC will send you a late filing notice if you’ve paid any employees and do not send an FPS or send one late. They can also charge you a penalty unless you have a valid reason for reporting late.

Yes. Companies typically have to pay a minimum of 3% pensionable earnings into your pension.

The core difference between a personal pension and a workplace pension is that a company has to contribute to a workplace pension. It also has to comply with certain minimum workplace pension requirements.

The annual allowance for the current tax year (2022/2023) is £40,000. However, you will only get tax relief up to 100% of your annual earnings or up to £40,000 whichever is the lower amount. You can contribute over £40,000 however anything over the annual allowance will be subject to tax charges

The lifetime allowance is how much you can build up your pensions over your lifetime while still maintaining the full tax benefits. The current lifetime allowance for this tax year (2022/2023) is £1,073,100. If all your pensions you have accumulated exceed the lifetime allowance, you will then incur tax charges.

Some state benefits such as the full basic state pension are based on your national insurance (NI) contribution record. For example, you need 35 qualifying years of NI contributions to receive the full basic state pension which is currently £185.15 per week or £9,627.90 per annum.

Other state benefits such as child benefit, and universal credit are means tested which means that what you are entitled to will depend on your individual circumstances, including your level of income and/or savings.

With regard to the state pension, his majesties revenue and customs (HMRC) have a helpful online calculator to work out when you will be eligible to start claiming your pension.

In relation to means tested benefits such as universal credit, when you will be able to claim will depend on your individual circumstances. The Department for work and pensions (DWP) is a good starting point to check your eligibility for means tested state benefits.

In accordance with our terms of business, the minimum period of notice to terminate our service is three months by either party.