Haines Watts

Haines Watts had four different payroll systems across their four South East offices. They decided to streamline their payroll processes by using one overall solution.

Senior Payroll Manager, Linda Bowley, had used Earnie within the Bromley office for many years and recommended Earnie be used for the four different offices that comprise the Haines Watts South East region.

“Earnie seemed to be the ideal solution for all the offices. It’s easy-to-use, flexible and I can quickly get the information I need. One of the key things I love about Earnie is the history facility – when a client needs information from past periods I can get this instantly without having to trawl through paperwork.”

Earnie has proved to be a robust solution and easily manages the payroll requirements of around 600 clients.

Earnie is networked so all offices can access the same data and the advantages of this are clear to Linda:

“We each have responsibility for our own clients but can also provide support and help to other offices as needed as all the payrolls are on the one system. It means we can be much more flexible in providing a high level of service to clients across all the Haines Watts offices.”

The process of migrating four different offices across to a single payroll system could have been daunting but this was project managed by the IRIS team to ensure a smooth transfer. Linda has found it extremely helpful to have a dedicated Earnie Account Manager, to help her through this process.

“My account manager is always there when we need her to chase things up and make sure we get what we need when we need it.”

Haines Watts provide payroll services to a wide range of clients as Linda explains:

“Around 50% of our clients have 10 employees or less but we also provide payroll services to clients with around 100 employees each. New clients join Haines Watts every month so flexibility is key.

Using Earnie means that payroll frequencies, bonuses and reports can be tailored easily for each company.  Clients often like to see specific information and with Earnie’s Quick Report Writer I can quickly send to them the data they need.”

One development that Linda has embraced recently has been the move to digital payslips with IRIS OpenPayslips.

“We use IRIS OpenPayslips for all Haines Watts employees which makes it so easy to distribute both payslips and P60s.  Previously these were sent by paper and we have made a big saving both in time and cost.”

So with such a big client base is Linda worried about managing automatic enrolment? 

“We are already managing automatic enrolment for 3 of our clients and everything has gone very smoothly.  The software is doing all the assessments correctly and is enrolling the right people at the right time and making the right calculations.  

A couple of our clients are using NEST and one is using Scottish Life and Earnie produces the correct report information for both pension providers.  We are also using IRIS OpenEnrol which makes it so easy to get the correct pension communications sent to client’s employees.  Everything is kept up-to-date without us having to manually produce the letters – another big time saver!”

In summary would Linda recommend Earnie to other accountants and payroll bureaus?

“Absolutely.  Earnie is a great all-round payroll system and makes it easy to manage automatic enrolment.   It also handles the requirements of RTI extremely well for example I can produce an audit log to see exactly what information I have submitted every period.”

If you'd like to manage auto enrolment and payroll more effectively then take a look at our expert range of payroll software.