As a business, employing staff can be a major milestone. However many business owners are unprepared for the obligations that they have to fulfil. Managing payroll is much more than simply ensuring that employees are paid on time and they receive accurate wages. Payroll includes a selection of different factors from recruitment, salary calculations, benefits, expenses, bonus payments, tax, pensions and much more.
With so many factors involved, you may think that full compliance is difficult to achieve. It is important to consider however that legislation isn’t designed to catch companies out. If they follow simple steps, the majority of business owners can safeguard themselves from penalties associated with non-compliance.
Maintaining an effective audit trail is the best way to ensure full and consistent compliance. Although mistakes happen, a clearly identifiable audit trail will be able to determine where the mistake has occurred. Additionally, audit trails will enable investigators to verify information to separate any genuine mistakes to those which may potentially be fraudulent.
Audit trails allow business owners and accountants to explore every change which has been made to an employee record. This report will record where there has been any change to the information. Common changes will include overtime, hours worked, tax codes or other issues which can affect pay. Most importantly it can identify the employee who made or authorised the change.
As well as payroll and audit issues to contend with, business owners have to comply with HMRC legislation and penalties for missed tax deadlines can be severe. This has been made even more complicated with the ‘Real Time Information’ implementation. Although this has provided an improved reporting method, it requires employers to submit details to the HMRC each time an employee is paid rather than just at year-end.
Managing a business can be a challenge, however with the right accounting support, you can ensure full compliance with Payroll and HMRC legislation. Start your search for a qualified Payroll and HMRC compliance accountant with The Accountancy Network.