Meet IRIS’s Payroll Bureau Manager

We’ve recently met with Clare Temprell, IRIS Bureau Senior Manager, to find out about the team of experts who runs the payroll for over 1,200 of our clients each month from our Stockton-on-Tees office. Let’s take a look behind the scenes…

Clare Temprell, who has been working in payroll and HR services for the past 28 years, took over the management of the IRIS bureau earlier this year.

“When the IRIS payroll bureau was set up 15 years ago, it only produced around 50 payslips per month. Nowadays, we issue over 50,000 payslips every single month. Obviously, our team has dramatically expanded to meet the high demand of the market”, Clare tells us.

“Today, there are over 30 employees in our bureau; all are CIPP qualified or working towards it.  They run payroll for a wide scope of business sectors and sizes, ranging from sole traders to companies with several thousands of employees. Because we are one of the largest bureaus to UK General Practices, several of us are specialised in NHS payrolls and pensions.”

Clare and her team use IRIS Payroll Professional, a software that was developed in-house. The Bureau, which is recognised by HMRC and is BACS approved, prides itself in delivering a very high-quality service. “Not many companies can claim a 99.9% accuracy rate and a Net Promoter Score of 67”, adds Clare. “This is of course down to the expertise of the team, our robust processes and our dedicated customer service: our clients are provided with a named contact among our payroll specialists, who will always be on hand to provide them with advice and support when needed.”

More and more companies chose to outsource their payroll to third providers and analysts are reporting a market growth of 5% per year. So, why is outsourcing such a popular choice for businesses?

“Ever-changing and complex legislation can become a burden for companies; it is particularly true for small to medium-size companies where maybe an administrator or someone in Finance is running payroll alongside their day-to-day job. Changes to Holiday Pay and Workplace pensions are rife with complexity. Our clients have chosen to minimise this legislative stress by handling their payroll to specialists like us. It means they can save time and focus their time on areas of their business that really matter. They’ll never have to organise their time around payroll dates and payroll year end ever again”, Clare explains.

“It’s not just about legislation and time though”, Clare continues. “Outsourcing your payroll is actually very cost-effective if you take into consideration the average salary of a Payroll Manager, which is around £29,000, and add this to the cost of printing payslips, sealing machine expenses, implementing payroll software and the training cost involved with remaining up-to-date with legislation.”

The IRIS Bureau offers different levels of services, depending on the needs of their clients. “We can process as much or as little of the payroll as you like! Most of our customers sign up for a fully managed payroll service where we take care of their payroll processing, payslips, reconciliation, BACS processing, A/E and Year End, and where we also liaise with third parties such as HMRC or benefit providers on their behalf. However, some of our clients choose to only outsource one part of their payroll processes to us; we can do this too.”

We finally asked Clare what she enjoyed about her job and the payroll industry in general: “If you think payroll is simple and routine, think again! My interactions with my team, my colleagues across the whole of IRIS, and most importantly with our customers, are extremely varied, covering business as usual activities, new customer projects and continuous internal improvement initiatives. I can honestly say I never get bored. Seeing my team receive so much positive feedback from clients is tremendously satisfying.”

If you’d like to find out more about our IRIS Managed Payroll service and how it can benefit your business, try our Managed Payroll Calculator today, or give us a call on 0333 2304 312.