Employment Management services provider, Esentual Ltd, has implemented Albany ePAY, the intelligent electronic payments and collections solution from Albany Software. Albany ePAY has enabled Esentual to gain greater control over its existing payment processes, whilst also adding additional services such as flexible and emergency payments, which have helped further the company’s growth.
Esentual delivers a suite of Employment Management solutions that include a PAYE Umbrella service, a Contracting Service, and an Emergency Payment Service (EPS), as well as advisory services. In the five years since Esentual’s inception, the company has seen rapid growth with a turnover currently in excess of £45 million. It was recognition of the growth potential that could be achieved through having a more flexible service, as well as a need for greater control, that led Esentual to implement Albany ePAY as an in-house solution rather than continue to outsource.
“Prior to Albany, we used an outsourced provider for all of our payroll and associated processes,” explains Sean Gibbins, Operations Director at Esentual Ltd. “We currently make in excess of 2,500 payments per week. Yet we were being constrained by the rigidity of our outsourced providers’ processes: we would input payroll data into our front office system, it would then be transferred to our outsourced provider who would calculate the necessary tax and National Insurance deductions, then pay the workers by Bacs transfer.”
Gibbins continues, “In addition, we were reliant on the three-day Bacs process. All payments would need to be sent by Wednesday, in order for wages to be cleared and paid on Friday.”
As Esentual continued to expand and recognised the opportunity to offer additional services, the logical solution was to bring the payroll in-house. “We wanted more control over our core competencies,” continues Gibbins. “Not to mention, with the company’s growth ambitions, it became obvious that an in-house payroll system would prove financially beneficial by removing the costs incurred by outsourcing. We have already seen dramatic cost savings since we implemented our own payroll system and Albany ePAY.”
Esentual’s selection of Albany as its payments software provider was a straightforward decision, as Gibbins explains: “It quickly became apparent that Albany was the only provider that could meet all of our requirements. Flexibility was imperative, as was the ability to make bulk Faster Payments. It’s a fast-moving market and we often find ourselves presented with last minute payment requests. Implementing payment software that allows us to make bulk Bacs and Faster Payments as and when we need to has been invaluable. Now we can make payments on any day, and being able to offer this flexibility has been extremely beneficial in terms of client acquisition.”
Albany’s ePAY has also been crucial to the success of Esentual’s Emergency Payment Service (EPS). “Customers come to us when they’ve had failures within their banking system; for example, a Bacs file that has failed and it’s too late to send it again,” explains Gibbins. “We take a copy of the payment file, run it through our system and make the payment the same day, resolving the problem for our client and saving them the cost of making multiple CHAPS payments. It’s thanks to the Faster Payments functionality within ePAY that we can offer this service. This service has been endorsed by Barclays and we have numerous client testimonials praising the service and our ability to turn around what is potentially a business critical problem and deliver the solution within hours of being notified.”
Gibbins concludes, “Our business is about paying people accurately and on time, and Albany Software has facilitated the capability and flexibility to do just that. Albany ePAY is a critical piece of software in our business and has proved to be reliable and efficient.”
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