An accountant helps with payroll by taking over its four moving parts: calculating each employee’s pay and deductions correctly, submitting the required reports to HMRC every time you pay staff, administering your workplace pension duties, and keeping the records employers must keep. The legal responsibilities remain yours (payroll obligations attach to the employer, not the adviser) but the mechanics, deadlines and constant rule changes are exactly the kind of work that rewards handing to someone who does it all day.
Payroll is unusual among accounting tasks in one respect: it is relentless. Accounts happen annually and VAT quarterly, but payroll happens every single pay period, visibly, to people who notice immediately when it is wrong. That is why it is so often the first thing small employers outsource.
The calculations
Each pay run means working out, for every employee: gross pay, tax under PAYE, National Insurance, pension contributions, student loan deductions where they apply, and any statutory payments due: sick pay, and the family-related payments around parental leave. Add starters, leavers, tax code changes mid-year, overtime, and holiday pay, and a “simple” payroll accumulates plenty of places to go wrong.
The rates, bands and thresholds behind these calculations change over time; current figures are on GOV.UK. An accountant’s payroll service applies the current rules automatically, so nothing depends on you noticing an announcement. Errors here are not abstract: they surface as an employee paid wrongly, and unwinding an error across pay periods takes far longer than preventing it.
The submissions
Employers must report payroll information to HMRC on or before each payday, under the real-time reporting system described in GOV.UK’s PAYE guidance. Miss submissions and penalties follow; get the figures wrong and the errors flow into employees’ tax records, generating queries months later.
An accountant builds the submission into the pay run itself: the reporting happens every time, on time, as a by-product of running the payroll. They also tell you each period exactly what to pay HMRC and by when. The deductions you have made from employees are money you hold on HMRC’s behalf, and paying it over promptly matters. The annual cycle, including year-end reporting and providing employees with their annual summaries, comes as part of the same service.
The pension duties
Auto-enrolment made every employer, however small, a participant in workplace pensions. GOV.UK sets out the duties: assessing which staff must be enrolled, enrolling them, making contributions at least at the required level, processing opt-outs correctly, re-assessing regularly and keeping evidence of all of it. Even a company employing one person has duties to declare.
This is the area small employers most often get wrong on their own, because the duties are ongoing rather than one-off: every new starter must be assessed, and the cycle repeats. Run alongside payroll, the assessments happen automatically each pay period and the paper trail builds itself.
The records and the responsibilities
Employers must keep payroll records (what was paid, what was deducted, leave, absence, statutory payments and pension activity) for the periods the rules require. An accountant’s payroll service produces these records as it goes and keeps them organised, which pays off at year end, feeds cleanly into the accounts, and answers questions quickly if HMRC ever asks. Payroll data is also part of the standard year-end package described in what information an accountant needs.
What stays with you: employment decisions. Who to hire, what to pay them, employment contracts and workplace disputes are employment-law territory, not payroll processing. A good accountant is clear about that line and will point you to specialist advice when a question crosses it.
Directors count too
If you run your own company and pay yourself a salary, you are an employer and everything above applies to you: the reporting, the records, sometimes the pension declaration. Single-director payrolls are simple to run but easy to neglect, and they interact with the wider question of how to take money out of a company. That bigger picture sits in what an accountant does for a limited company, within the overall role described in what an accountant does for a small business.
Frequently asked questions
What does a payroll service actually include?
Typically: running each pay run, payslips, all HMRC submissions, pension assessments and contributions files, starters and leavers, statutory payments, year-end reporting and ongoing records. Scope varies by provider, so check the engagement letter lists what you expect.
Do I still have responsibilities if my accountant runs payroll?
Yes. The employer remains legally responsible for operating PAYE and pension duties correctly and for paying HMRC and the pension scheme. Outsourcing transfers the work and drastically reduces the errors. It does not transfer the accountability.
I only employ one person. Is a payroll service worth it?
Often, yes. The reporting duties apply from the first employee, and the cost of a tiny payroll service is small against the time it takes to learn and track the rules yourself. This applies equally to paying yourself through your own company.
What information does my accountant need each pay period?
Only the changes: hours or amounts for variable pay, new starters with their details, leavers, and anything unusual such as absence triggering statutory payments. A stable salaried payroll may need nothing from you at all most periods.
What happens if payroll has already gone wrong?
Errors can be corrected through subsequent submissions, and the sooner the better, because corrections compound in complexity the longer they wait. An accountant can review the position, fix the records and put the process right going forward.
How we can help
Our payroll and auto-enrolment service runs the whole cycle (calculations, submissions, pensions and records) so paydays just happen. Request a quote and tell us how many people you pay.