Ross shared his thoughts recently about The Profit Equation. The idea that profit in a dental practice is made up of three moving parts – “P = I – CC – OH” – Profit can be calculated as Income less Clinician Costs less OverHeads. Increasing income, reducing clinician costs, or reducing overheads can all lead to a healthier profit. I’ll leave the intricacies of increasing income to our marketing team, and I’ll leave the challenge of reducing clinician costs to our consultancy team, but I’d like to touch on the subject of reducing overheads.

Your employees are individuals with individual needs. Your senior management team may spend a lot of time keeping your employees happy and devoting time to getting their pay right but, you’d never recommend that someone purchase tooth extracting forceps from Amazon and go and yank out that that pesky tooth that keeps giving them gyp, so why wouldn’t you seek the advice of an expert when it comes to ensuring your staff are paid correctly each month?

Payroll can be a complex area. You can try and rely on payroll software to calculate deductions and statutory pay correctly, but payroll errors can be costly not only in cash terms but also in terms of good employees.

You might initially think outsourcing the practice’s payroll goes against my initial argument of reducing overheads, but if your practice or business manager is spending less time on staff administration, they can spend more time on managing the staff and helping the practice to become more efficient.

Hive Business prides itself in giving timely, expert advice in all aspects of payroll. We can assist with:

• Processing and calculating Gross Pay and all legally required deductions (e.g. PAYE tax, national insurance, student loans, court orders, auto-enrolment pension contributions).
• Ensuring the pay for all employees meets the national minimum wage requirements.
• Processing and calculating of Statutory Pay elements (e.g. SSP, SMP, SPP, SAP, ShPP).
• Providing electronic payslips direct to the employees, using BrightPay Connect.
• Calculating your monthly or quarterly liability due to HMRC.
• Starter and leaver calculations (including assistance with accrued holiday entitlements and the provision of electronic P45s following the end of employment).
• Tax year end processing and support including completion of the year-end online filing requirements, and the provision of electronic P60’s for your employees.
• Dealing directly with third parties on your behalf (e.g. HM Revenue and Customs; IFA; Pension Providers) and the completion of all RTI requirements by HMRC.
• Your auto-enrolment pension responsibilities with the submission of the monthly contribution details to your chosen pension provider, and the provision of compliant correspondence to your staff if required.
• Making monthly wages payments on your behalf to the staff and to HM Revenue & Customs, using Modulr.
• Providing friendly expert telephone and email support during normal business hours.

A key aspect of our payroll service is the ability to not only calculate the amount due to the staff, but also make the payments to them on your behalf. Modulr is a payments account, which enables a fast, secure, and easy way to make and manage payroll payments. It works in four simple steps:

1. We run payroll as normal within our payroll software and send the payment instructions directly to Modulr.
2. You are notified that payments are awaiting approval and are invited to log into your Modulr portal to approve them.
3. You then transfer funds from your business bank account to your Modulr account in one single transaction to cover the total of the payments due.
4. On pay day, Modulr sends the payments to the staff.

The system will save you time, eliminate any issues with staff being paid the incorrect amount and, because they use the Faster Payments system, payments can be sent 24/7, 365 days a year and are settled almost instantly. It’s run on a secure, compliant network and Modulr is authorised and regulated by the FCA as an Electronic Money Institution (FRN: 900573). It’s a valuable tool which helps to streamline the payroll process and save you even more time.

If you’d like further information regarding our payroll services, please get in touch.