Are there any other high volume payroll providers who have, or are in, the process of transferring their payrolls from Sage to Moneysoft?
Would be a great help to connect with anyone who is currently dealing with this project to share experience/ideas.
Many thanks
Replies (26)
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Ditch Sage
MS has free a trail version. Why can not you run it parallel with your existing system?
Surely, any system is much better than Sage.
Automatic enrolment
There seems to be currently no positive news about Moneysoft's plans to be compliant with / suitable for assisting with Automatic Enrolment obligations.
I would hope that this is a "temporary blip" in Moneysoft's offering and just maybe there'll be an announcement soon to provide comfort to Moneysoft users.
In the absence of any Moneysoft positive confirmation re: auto Enrolment then I'd suggest the following:
Consider another "budget price" (but easy to use) payroll software such as Brightpay which is compliant / compatible with Automatic EnrolmentDo some research about how much extra work will be involved with Auto Enrolment compliance if the chosen payroll software is not fully functional with regard to producing the necessary reports, letters, etc. for Auto Enrolment compliance
EDIT: See further postings that now suggest that Moneysoft has become Automatic Enrolment compatible / compliant which is good news for fans of Moneysoft.
MS Auto-enrolment
Actually we have just completed auto-enrolment and are using Moneysoft's PAYE proframme. So far we have not experienced problems and the queries we did have were helpfully answered by MS.
Agree with the above, Moneysoft was the go to product but there have been a few niggles of late and I will be planning on trialling a few others before next April including 12Pay and Brightpay.
Same as above
love moneysoft, but they must stay on top of their game and ensure thay can provide everything we need to make our jobs easier (even if the cost was to increase?) as otherwise people will start switching to competitors that do...
Moneysoft
Am I missing something here? My Moneysoft payroll has auto enrollment in it. It has, Nest, Now Pensions, and Peoples Pension
erm yes you are missing something
Moneysoft is a great product but boy, is AE hardwork. You are quite correct that it does handle AE, and you can run reports, but where it is lacking, and there seems to be a general silence from the developers, is in automating communications, and dealing effectively with deferrment for example.
If you are running a small payroll with a steady workforce, Moneysoft is ideal, but if you're handling volume (employees per PAYE scheme) and have a high staff turnover, then there is a lot more manual intervention/input required.
I just moved to Moneysoft this year and love the product overall, though as much as I don't want to go through the process of learning new software within the year, I have to look at it rationally, and if there are slicker products that can save me time, and reduce the risk of errors (on my part) then as painful as it is for me to change again, I need to consider it.
Hope my post is balanced, because as I say I think Moneysoft is a cracking program; great vfm, but in AE it is light, and others seem to be developing their offering in an area that is important to me.
Would be good if Moneysoft could advise if they are looking to improve their AE offering; will give us users a chance to decide and plan our course of action
cheers
What we need is...
What would really useful is an Aweb article specifically covering how much hardwork is involved with Automatic Enrolment specific to particular payroll packages, ie. what "must have" (time / effort saving) features that particular software packages lack.
It seems to me that the price of a particluar software package will fade into insignificance if a particular package creates either hours of extra work through being feature deficient or a need for expensive pension advisor input regarding AE compliance.
I don't think that I've seen any published information to assist payroll bureau or employers in making an informed choice.
I am aware that "going expensive" with payroll software will not necessarily be a solution - as two particular big name (expensive) payroll packages are said (by a pension advisor AE specialist) to be problematical in terms of producing reports with data in the incorrect format or simply incorrect full stop.
I am puzzled
Why would anyone expect payroll software to send letters to the employees about their pensions? Isn't that what the pension companies will/should be doing?
Communication
Not all pension companies do communication, or some bundle it into a full AE service that requires non-payroll assessment as well. For example, NEST don't do any communication - they offer a qualifying pension that supports AE, not an AE service. NOW and People's pension both do communication. Other pension companies are variable.
In principle, I agree that the communication is a pension problem and not a payroll problem, but then assessment could be described in the same way. In practice, it's an employer problem that needs to be solved either by manual work, payroll software, a 3rd party or a pension provider. It's just another part of the decision - if your pension company won't and you don't want to pay a 3rd party, you want payroll software that does it because doing it manually for a high turnover payroll is time consuming.
No, No to Sage!
Kazmc,
I have also noticed this differences when I parallel run both MS and IRIS. I do not even know which one is correct. I would not change a system half-way the year. I presume you have paid for a yearly license. You can compare both reports at the year-end and then make a decision.
Personally, I hate Sage products to the core and would not recommend any of Sage's products to my worst enemy.
Sage NIC
Sage uses the old tables method to calculate NIC. The monthly tables show pay in increments of £4 (e.g: £993, £997, £1001, £1005) and you round down to the nearest. So, Sage calculates NIC on monthly pay of £1,000 as if it were £997. As far as I am aware, everyone else calculates on the exact % method, so the NIC is calculated on £1,000.
NI calculation
I suspect that you can select which NI method to use. All software should support the exact percentage method since that is how the specification is defined. HMRC used to provide a tables specification but no longer do.
Edit: Although I've just noticed that software isn't supposed to allow both methods in the same year,so maybe you can't do it now.
Employer duties
Interesting discussion here. With a range of different options sometimes it can get confusing but please remember, it is an employer duty (legislation) to perform worker assessment and produce statutory communications. How an employer chooses to achieve compliance is down to them. There are many different services offered in a competitive market from many different providers. At NEST we would always advocate start planning early and shop around for the best solution.
"Start planning early"
At NEST we would always advocate start planning early and shop around for the best solution.
That is also what The Pensions Regulator says.
Am I just being cynical or is "Start planning early" a euphenism for "We know that this an horrendously complicated piece of legislation, which has been mis-sold to employers as Auto-enrolment when it should have been called Compulsory Pensions for Employees, and that is why we have phased compulsory start dates (which we call staging dates to make it sound less onerous) in the hopes that the large employers who have HR (AKA Personnel) resources will be able to sort it out for us before we have to deal with the small employers, for whom we are simply not yet geared up to providing suitable pension schemes"?
MS + AE
We use MS and have approached them about AE. MS can produce the reports but these require manual uploading to HMRC websites which is going to be hugely time consuming, and MS won't tell you went employees need to be auto-enrolled etc. Checkout the auto-enrolment page on MS website.
I contacted MS last week to ask if they have plans for integrated upload similar to RTI. MS said 'None of the pension providers have such a system in place -they are talking about it but that is at least 2 years away. I have no idea what Sag and Iris are talking about, but they do not mean they have a system that allows you to online file returns.'
MS is not without other problems too eg lack of support for annual schemes and that all employees and subbies in the same pay period have to have the same pay day eg all weekly employees have to be paid on the same day. Also the inability to convert an employee from weekly to monthly pay. Also it does not automatically deal with more than one SMP period per tax year.
Weekly to Monthly
To change from weekly to monthly you have to set a leaving date for the weekly paid, and then set them up as a new employee, but paid monthly Time consuming if you have quite a few.
We also have about 350 companies and we swapped to MS in the new 13/14 year because of RTI.
Prior to that I started setting up the companies with all details as though I was going to run the payroll, in December 2013 (don't put any company start dates as it will flag as RTI due) so that they were all on there for when I needed them, but would be too busy to do it, in April.
When the new year started I just rolled the companies forward, checked details hadn't changed since set up, changed what had and ran the payrolls.
12Pay has been sold to Iris
Accounting web report today - 8th Oct, that 12Pay has been sold to Iris --- pooh
12Pay
Accounting web report today - 8th Oct, that 12Pay has been sold to Iris --- pooh
That's a shame, I had them on my list to review after a couple of little niggles with MS. Won't bother with them now.
Actually - why - if the prices stay reasonable and the service is good - I won't have a reason to move -
the big question now is auto enrolment - and if it takes the might of someone like Iris to set up a good AE service - then why not - 12Pay lists the AE as a separate module for around £160 (from memory) in addition to the 12pay bureau licence
I used to run 80 - 90 payrolls - some big and complex, for a practice and Iris was the practice software, and it worked fine
I think it's a price based question
I did have reason to email 12Pay last month and the reply was short and sharp, I wondered then what was wrong with Tom because when he was there the emails were professional, but friendly and reasonable
I have to have a reason to jump ship - so I'll wait and see
I moved from Sage to Moneysoft when RTI hit and I couldn't be happier with it.
AE is a concern for the future, but it is 2 years before my first payroll stages, so I have a while to sort out whether I can still stay with MS or reluctantly move to another product.
It feels like AE will end up being one of the biggest ever disincentives for a business to take on their first employee ... and a massive headache for those businesses that already have employees.