Payroll outsourcing is when an organisation hands over the responsibility for payroll, along with the associated administration and data handling to a third-party service provider. These providers employ trained payroll professionals to handle payment processing, reporting and administration.
Five good reasons to outsource your payroll
- A dedicated outsourced payroll team can cost less per employee than running an equivalent team in-house
- Pension auto-enrolment is set up to match your scheme provider's exact requirements
- Payroll cut-off falls closer to payday, giving you more time to catch and fix issues before anyone's paid
- Every pay cycle includes built-in review points, so you get more control with less admin
- It frees your HR team to spend time on strategy instead of processing
Built and run by UK payroll experts, for UK organisations
A global platform adapted for the UK market doesn't feel the weight of an HMRC deadline the way a UK-based team does. Ciphr's outsourced payroll service is delivered entirely by our own people: 20+ UK-based payroll experts, and every single one is a CIPP member who undertakes regular ongoing CIPP training. Your data is under UK GDPR and the Data Protection Act, by a team that understands what an in-year HMRC update means for your next pay run.
That's what UK organisations who outsource payroll can rely on: not a system you're handed, but specialists who live and breathe UK payroll legislation and run it on your behalf.
20+ UK-based payroll experts, all CIPP members
HMRC-recognised and RTI-enabled
UK government G-Cloud approved
Bacs-approved bureau
Cyber Essentials Plus accredited
ISO 27001 accredited and externally audited
Data hosted and stored in the UK only
"Choosing Ciphr payroll bureau services with HMRC recognition, providing a range of services in payroll, benefits and pension administration from a team of friendly, well-trained and experienced payroll professionals… was easy! "
The Chartered Institute of Public Finance & Accountancy
Payroll bureau services that flex to how you work
Not every organisation wants to hand over payroll end-to-end, and this service is built around that choice. That’s why Ciphr's payroll bureau service lets teams pick the level of support that suits them:
- Full end-to-end outsourced managed payroll processing
- Payroll processing up to Bacs submission
- Bacs and filing-only service
- Bacs-only service
Whichever level you choose, you're assigned a dedicated payroll administrator, a payroll manager, and a third administrator held in reserve for three times contingency. If one person is unavailable, your payroll still runs on time, because your whole setup is documented in a payroll procedures manual, reviewed and kept current every month by the people who use it.
We support organisations from 50 to 2,500 employees, and we review your current process with you before assigning your dedicated team.
Getting started is a managed handover,
not a leap of faith
Moving payroll to a new provider is the moment HR and finance teams worry about most. With Ciphr, a named team guides that handover from day one, rather than leaving you to work it out.
- You send your data across through our secure portal
- We process it and run our checks and balances
- You review and approve the output before anything is submitted
- We complete the cycle: RTI submitted to HMRC, contributions uploaded to your pension provider, and Bacs files processed
- You receive your payroll reports, job done
All data runs through our secure portal, and all communications are through our customer care portal. So sensitive pay data never sits in an email inbox, and it's the same people each cycle, not a different case handler every time you call.
Precision you can set your clock to
We process over £2.4 billion in Bacs payments every year, backed by a combined 400 years of experience across our payroll services team. That's not a claim about a system; it's a team that has run payroll through almost every scenario a UK organisation can throw at it, and built the checks and balances to match.
Pensions and year-end, handled as part of the service
Pension administration isn't a separate quote; it's built into your outsourced payroll service from the start. You tell us who’s enrolled and opted out, and we process and upload data to your pension provider.
The same team takes care of payrolling benefits-in-kind, plus year-end tasks like tax clear-down, P60 production, and P11Ds. So your own people aren't reconstructing a year's worth of payroll data under deadline pressure.
Backed by connected data, not a separate system to manage
Where an organisation also runs Ciphr's HR software, this service can work from that same data set. Where you don't, the service stands on its own: you don't need to be a Ciphr software customer to use Ciphr's outsourced payroll.
This is HR (and payroll) amplified
One connected suite. Built to make work, work. For HR directors who need payroll they don't have to police, and CFOs who need numbers they don't have to double-check. , Ciphr's outsourced payroll service gives you more control over complexity, not more of it, and a team behind that control rather than a login and a manual.
payroll solutions
Put your people front and centre
Integrated HR, payroll, learning and recruitment solutions that amplify the voice and value of your talent.