Moneysoft or Sage payroll with auto enrolment?

Moneysoft or Sage payroll with auto enrolment?

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We use Moneysoft for our clients' payroll, which are mostly one or two person schemes. We have been advised that Moneysoft is "clunky" for auto enrolment and that we should consider moving to Sage. Sage is a lot more expensive and our clients' needs are currently well met by Moneysoft. We might be acquiring some larger payrolls.

Please can anyone advise on whether Sage (or anything else) would be better than Moneysoft, once auto enrolment starts, and comment on whether your answer would differ for smaller or larger payrolls. We have been very happy with Moneysoft so far and it is much more cost-effective than Sage.

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By DMGbus
27th Apr 2015 13:49

Alternatives to be compliant with Automatic Enrolment (AE)

I spent several hours last week on course about employer obligations in the context of AE.

What was impressed on the audience was the risk of failing in assessment and communications which not only could lead to fines but "no win no fee" lawyers making claims against employers for lack of (or late) communications to employees.    Prior to this my main focus/concern had been on the subject of how much time / hassle is involved in tailoring .csv reports to make them acceptable to the pension providors - I now see that there is what some would say is more serious issue - the communications and keeping an evidential audit trail of the generation of assessments and communications.

I am aware that some payroll software is lacking in the assessments / reports feature (Moneysoft and Pegasus Opera included) whilst other softtware is being advertised as having these (I say) vital features - IRIS and Brightpay as examples (and possibly 12pay is fully functional for AE re: communications too).

Now, I am hoping that Moneysoft take on board the assessment and communications deficiency in their product and introduce it before the one client that I have using Moneysoft has to stage for AE.  Thankfully, as Brightpay outperformed Moneysoft in some respects I have been recommending Brightpay to clients instead and they will be blessed with better AE functionality as a result.

Where a payroll software is lacking in assessment / communications a the payroll operator (bureau, accountant or employer) has to make one of several choices:

Spend time manually assessing and dealing with assessment and communicationsChange to a software that is more functional in the AE context(Dangerously) Ignore the assessment and regular ongoing communicationsFinally, rather costly, use a third party software to deal with the communications / assessment aspect

With small payrolls I can see the assessment / communications being perhaps manageable by a knowledgable person with plenty of time on their hands, but for larger payrolls I can foresee this being a serious burden of a manual process that could lead to errors and grief for all concerned - so my advice to my clients is change to Brightpay if their existing payroll product (eg. Moneysoft) is AE function deficient.   By the way, I will not be recommending IRIS or 12pay as they both part of the IRIS stable and, like Moneysoft, have had support issues in recent years..

 

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Euan's picture
By Euan MacLennan
27th Apr 2015 13:51

Some advice
Most one or two person companies will have only directors on the payroll and hence, will not be subject to auto-enrolment.  Even if not directors, the persons may well be paid less than the compulsory auto-enrolment threshold of £10,000, so unless they choose to opt in, the employer would still not need an AE-compliant pension scheme, so you would have no reason to change from Moneysoft.For payrolls with employees, Moneysoft handles AE assessment very well and produces .csv files for upload to most of the usual pension companies in the formats they require.  It can be a bit "clunky" if you have to tweak the .csv file to include other data fields, but Moneysoft is updated every month, so they are likely to improve the upload files as they go along.What Moneysoft does not do is to produce the necessary letters from the employer to the employees.  This can be handled quite easily using the templates provided by The Pension Regulator, but if you want a payroll package that produces letters, we are constantly being told that BrightPay does it.Whatever you do, do not move to Sage.

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Replying to Jan Hobbs:
By ChrisScullard
28th Apr 2015 14:57

Moneysoft

Euan MacLennan wrote:

Most one or two person companies will have only directors on the payroll and hence, will not be subject to auto-enrolment.  Even if not directors, the persons may well be paid less than the compulsory auto-enrolment threshold of £10,000, so unless they choose to opt in, the employer would still not need an AE-compliant pension scheme, so you would have no reason to change from Moneysoft.For payrolls with employees, Moneysoft handles AE assessment very well and produces .csv files for upload to most of the usual pension companies in the formats they require.  It can be a bit "clunky" if you have to tweak the .csv file to include other data fields, but Moneysoft is updated every month, so they are likely to improve the upload files as they go along.What Moneysoft does not do is to produce the necessary letters from the employer to the employees.  This can be handled quite easily using the templates provided by The Pension Regulator, but if you want a payroll package that produces letters, we are constantly being told that BrightPay does it.Whatever you do, do not move to Sage.

I had quite a long conversation with a very helpful chap from Moneysoft about this last week.  Top and bottom of it was that there is a decent chance the automated letters will be included in the 2016/17 release.

Other than ourselves we have no-one to stage this tax year and only two next (as it stands) and I imagine many others are in the same boat.  I would expect that by 2017/18 Moneysoft will have the necessary functionality required for most SME payrolls.

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By Moonbeam
27th Apr 2015 14:05

I'm with Euan

I took a good look at Brightpay in March, planning to move from Sage. I can see it would do the letters no problem but I disliked intensely the way the payroll has to be saved before you can examine reports to see whether your input agrees to the control sheet, and I reluctantly ruled it out.

Sage payroll is so chock full of bugs that they are never going to sort out and yes, it's expense not justified. If you spend even more you can get Iris payroll to do everything, and I suspect it would be better than Sage.

I keep hoping Moneysoft will add in the letters, because their payroll routine is a great deal more to my liking than that of Brightpay. Come April 2016 so many companies will need this option perhaps MS will add on the letters as a separate option for those who are prepared to pay more.

 

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By newmoon
27th Apr 2015 14:41

So how does Moneysoft compare with Star Payroll?

Star is many multiples more expensive, but is it overall the best solution?

Another option is what I've heard called 'middleware' - the AEmadeeasy etc.? Do they fill the Moneysoft gap?

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By lme
27th Apr 2015 16:46

Thanks, all

Very helpful. Looks like we will stick with Moneysoft and use the TPR template letters.

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By essex accountant
27th Apr 2015 21:03

Now Pensions

I have decided to stay with Moneysoft but to point clients towards NOW Pensions for AE. NOW Pensions do all the communications with employees, so not needed in Moneysoft. 

 

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Replying to wd2016:
Euan's picture
By Euan MacLennan
28th Apr 2015 10:58

Are you sure?

essex accountant wrote:

I have decided to stay with Moneysoft but to point clients towards NOW Pensions for AE. NOW Pensions do all the communications with employees, so not needed in Moneysoft. 

All pension providers will communicate with employees who are members of the pension scheme, but are you saying that NOW also undertakes to write the initial letters from the employer to all its employees on their initial AE assessment?

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Replying to Tax Dragon:
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By essex accountant
28th Apr 2015 13:32

I think so

Euan MacLennan wrote:

essex accountant wrote:

I have decided to stay with Moneysoft but to point clients towards NOW Pensions for AE. NOW Pensions do all the communications with employees, so not needed in Moneysoft. 

All pension providers will communicate with employees who are members of the pension scheme, but are you saying that NOW also undertakes to write the initial letters from the employer to all its employees on their initial AE assessment?

 

they say:

Employers are required to inform all employees about AE .....

NOW: Pensions can handle all statutory communications for all employees - not just eligible jobholders, but also entitled workers and non-eligible jobholders  

 

and so on

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Replying to frankfx:
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By Now Pensions
28th Apr 2015 15:46

Statutory communications - Yes we can

NOW: Pensions can handle all statutory communications relating to auto enrolment for all employees - not just eligible job holders, but also entitled workers and non-eligible jobholders. We can send out letters, emails and other member information directly to employees. If we have not been provided with an email address, the employer can elect to have communications for these employees delivered to the employer as PDFs, to a centrally managed company email address, for the employer to print and deliver to the employee within the statutory time scales (6 weeks). Alternatively, we will print and send hard copy letters ourselves, charging the employer for printing and postage.

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