Presentation to The Accountancy Group

By Chris McCracken, Commercial Director

Proud to announce Advo’s appointment as Payroll Partner to TAG Community (The Accountancy Group). The Community supports accountancies and helps link them to businesses that can directly add value to accountancy services.

Last week I had the good fortune of presenting Advo’s ‘Payroll for Accountants’ proposition to TAG members and partners at their Regional Meeting in Solihull.

Our message to TAG covered the financials around payroll provision (payroll is a low-profit undertaking and in some-cases even loss-making when fee earner input is taken into account), and the risks to the business posed by the stringent reporting requirements and monthly cut-offs.

We saw how in a typical accountancy practice payroll may generate 5–12% of revenue yet consume 15–30% of internal time and resources; how payrollers are required to be au fait with an extraordinary array of rules, regulations, taxes, benefits, deductions and calculations which off-the-shelf software cannot be relied on to calculate correctly, and how when an internal payroller is on holiday or sick, a fee-earner may have to step in to complete a low-value task.

In short – payroll does not help accountancies build their businesses and it can distract and drain away resources from truly profitable work.

We looked at holiday pay as an example where mis-calculation can lead to liabilities accumulating unnoticed over months or years, and / or employee claims, disputes and tribunal risk under the Working Time Regulations, and compliance failures created by misalignment between HR, timesheets and payroll data.

We saw how hidden costs lie within errors, corrections, re-runs, missed deadlines, client complaints, lost billable hours, staff holidays, sickness, stress, staff training and turnover, and further costs when errors require client compensation.

In a Practice of 500k turnover

• Typical payroll revenue = £25k–£45k per year
• Staff costs = 1.2–1.6 FTE required
• Staff cost = £34k–£50k annually
• Software = £2k–£6k

(source: internal modelling)

Our proposition removes the stress, cost and risk associated with payroll and pays a small retainer to the Accountant-Partner for the privilege.

Accountancies for whom Advo does the payroll become free to concentrate on the most profitable expertise, their clients are offered a superior employee experience, and the employees themselves receive access to a portal housing all their pay history and company documents together with a retail discount facility unique to Advo, worth up to roughly 3.4% of salary.

We offer up to 7 different Reports to hold ourselves accountable, and our bespoke software can configure these in whichever format is required.

We are aware that some accountancies may be looking to sell their payroll book to a trusted partner and we are open to a conversation about this, too.

One of our first Accountant-Partners was HURST, based in Stockport. Hurst hasn’t run a payroll since 2021 and since then they’ve invested heavily in AI and the advisory side of the business and are going from strength to strength.

In the words of Simon ‘Si’ Brownbill, Equity Partner at HURST: “All we’ve had is really positive feedback; they are genuine, responsive and easy to deal with. Our clients are in the best possible hands.”

_{Picture: Advo’s Chris McCracken (R) with TAG’s Head of Marketing & Partnerships Sukhy Dhami (Middle) and Co Founder Mark Allen (L)}