As an accountancy practice, your clients expect you to handle their payroll. It’s part of the service, part of being their trusted adviser. But payroll has become a beast that’s quietly eating away at your practice’s profitability and your team’s sanity.
The problem is that payroll isn’t the straightforward compliance task it used to be. It’s grown into a complex, resource-intensive operation that demands specialist knowledge, constant vigilance, and relentless attention to detail. And it’s probably not why any of your team got into accountancy in the first place.
This is why more and more accountancy practices are making a strategic shift – partnering with specialist payroll providers to deliver better service for clients whilst freeing up valuable internal resources.
The hidden risks of keeping payroll in-house
When you run the numbers properly, in-house payroll may not make commercial sense, especially when you factor in all the costs and risks that extend beyond the obvious.
Compliance headaches
With over 200 pieces of legislation and regulations to stay on top of, from auto-enrolment and salary sacrifice to IR35 and National Minimum Wage calculations, payroll compliance is a moving target. One small mistake, and your client’s reputation is on the line – along with yours.
Deadlines, deadlines
Relentless deadlines typify payroll. Monthly (or even weekly) payroll cycles don’t care if someone’s on holiday or off sick, and then there’s BACS submissions, RTI returns, pension filing – they all need to happen on time, every time, regardless of what else is going on in your practice.
Security
Payroll data is personal and sensitive, and traditional ways of communicating with clients are not secure enough to protect them. Clients emailing payroll data, or your team using email to send reports for approval or PDF payslips for the client’s employees, is a data breach waiting to happen. Investing in secure cloud-based portals and e-payslip apps is yet another cost associated with payroll that you may not have factored in.
Building your team
To handle payroll effectively, you need to hire specialist payroll people, but how many can you afford to employ? It’s a staffing dilemma fraught with risk.
Too few people and you risk service continuity if that person is unexpectedly away or leaves the business.
Too many in the team, and the function becomes a costly fixed overhead for something that could be delivered more efficiently.
If you try to spread the load across your general accountancy or bookkeeping teams and risk bad feelings, which could, in turn, lead to staff churn. People leave when they’re not doing the work they signed up for.
How outsourcing changes everything for your practice
Many practices already outsource activities like tax filing and bookkeeping. Payroll should be no different. When you partner with the right provider, you’re not just offloading a task – you’re gaining a strategic advantage.
Your team can finally focus on high-revenue work, and suddenly, you’ve got the capacity to take on more advisory clients, develop new services, or simply give your existing clients more attention.
Client service actually improves. Professional payroll providers have the systems, expertise, and resources to deliver a consistently excellent service. Your clients get better accuracy, faster turnaround times, and access to specialist knowledge when they need it.
Your practice becomes more resilient. No more worrying about who’ll run payroll during busy periods or the holiday season. No more scrambling when someone leaves. The service keeps running, no matter what. And, when changes happen that affect payroll, with the right partner, you know that they will be ‘on it’ and will make the necessary adjustments to software and systems to ensure your client’s payroll remains compliant.
You can finally grow without the growing pains. Scaling payroll in-house means more staff, more training, more management headaches. With a payroll partner, you can take on more clients without the operational complexity.
Why Ascend understands your world
Ascend Payroll wasn’t created by someone who ‘thinks’ they understand the accountancy profession. Our Chairman, Richard Rowell, is a Chartered Accountant who was a Partner at a regional Chartered Accountancy firm. He’s been in your shoes. He’s felt the pressure of payroll deadlines stacking up during year-end. He’s seen firsthand how providing payroll services can strain a practice and frustrate talented team members.
That’s why when we built our service for accountants, we tapped into his knowledge and designed different ways of working to suit the different needs of practices.
Three partnership models to choose from
We offer three distinct ways to work together:
1. Strategic partnership
Perhaps you want to focus entirely on your core accountancy services. In this model, we work alongside you as a trusted partner. Your clients know we’re handling their payroll, but you remain their primary adviser. You introduce us, we deliver the service, and both practices benefit from the relationship.
2. Payroll book purchase
Some practices reach a point where they want to exit payroll services entirely. We can purchase your payroll client base outright, providing you with a clean exit strategy whilst ensuring your clients continue to receive excellent service. It’s a way to unlock value from an operation that may not be contributing to
your practice’s strategic direction.
3. White label service
Your clients continue to see your brand. You maintain the relationship. We handle all the operational complexity behind the scenes. It’s seamless for your clients, and nobody needs to know you’ve partnered with us unless you want them to. You get to offer a premium payroll service under your own name without the operational burden.
Our commitment to our accountancy clients
Whichever partnership model you choose, working with Ascend means access to genuine payroll expertise and professional service delivery.
Expertise across all payroll types
From complex PAYE schemes to pension intricacies, our team has seen it all. We can even offer specialist services such as setting up and running tronc schemes for your hospitality clients.
We’re not generalists trying to cover everything – payroll is what we do, and we do it exceptionally well.
Up-to-date compliance knowledge
Legislation changes constantly. We stay ahead of it so you don’t have to. Your clients remain compliant without you needing to track every regulatory update.
The Elementary app advantage
One of the things you will have access to is our Elementary platform. Elementary gives your clients’ employees access to payslips, pay information, pension communications and more – all from their phones.
Elementary is a bespoke solution designed as an employee platform, including secure two-way communications, broadcast messaging and company document uploads. It’s the kind of modern, professional service that makes your practice look exceptional, and it comes as part and parcel of our service to accountants.
The Ascend Easy Switching Service
One of the biggest worries we find accountancy practices have when thinking about outsourcing is the upheaval of moving and setting up their client payroll.
We understand – which is why we have our ‘Easy Switching’ service. We handle everything, including data extraction, liaising with your current systems, filling any gaps and ensuring complete accuracy. You’re kept informed, but we do the heavy lifting. Your clients won’t miss a single pay run during the switch.
Time to make the move
The question isn’t really whether outsourcing payroll makes sense – the numbers speak for themselves. The question is who you partner with and how you structure that partnership.
Choose a provider who genuinely understands accountancy practices. Someone who’s been there, felt the pressure, and built a service specifically to solve these problems. Someone who offers flexibility in how you work together because they recognise that every practice is different.
Whether you’re interested in a white label service, a strategic partnership, or exploring the sale of your payroll book, we’re here to have an honest conversation about what would work best for your practice. Payroll should support your practice’s growth, not hold it back.
Get in touch with Ascend today, and let’s discuss your options.
