Carval involved in Payroll Standard consultation

This week I attended a consultation meeting with the HMRC on the future of the Payroll Standard. For those customers that chose our Uniwage payroll product within the last 4 or 5 years, it was no doubt a significant factor in the decision making process that Carval is one of the products officially accredited by HMRC (although it should be clarified that this is not an endorsement by HMRC).

In fact Carval were one of the first payroll providers in the country to achieve the full Payroll Standard 5 years ago and now there are exactly 100 other suppliers on the market with Standard. There are many more that do not have the Standard and it is not mandatory but we believe that it is important to be seen to be accredited by the Revenue because it provides peace of mind for our customers that we get the basics right.

This week’s consultation was a review of the Payroll Standard which is now eight years old. Because Carval was an “early adopter” of this process, we felt that it was important to keep on top of potential changes to it, which is why I attended. Indeed, it is not the first time we have been involved in HMRC’s workshops and consultations for payroll software; I was involved in the changes made from the old “Secure Messaging Service” (SMS) to the “Data Provisioning Service” (DPS) which handles your in-year forms electronically. This is why we were able to provide our payroll customers with a solution before almost anyone else, because we were privy to the changes that were forthcoming. Certainly we were amongst the first payroll providers in the UK to be “recognised” for it.

So what was the purpose of this meeting? Well, it turns out that not every payroll provider in the country believes the Payroll Standard achieves what it set out to accomplish. For many, it is too complex for smaller systems and contains tests and hurdles that smaller companies won’t ever need; and for others it is not complex enough, only scratching the surface of the needs of their payroll customers.

I think it is important to set out my position on this. Personally, I believe the Payroll Standard to be A Good Thing but I have come to realise that is because of the customers we have and the marketplace we provide for. It is certainly true that some of the goals of the Standard go far further than any payroll provider should have to go as a “minimum” but then, Uniwage isn’t a payroll product that just gives you the minimum. As the consultation progressed, I was beginning to think that only our product was capable of delivering what was in the Payroll Standard, and developers were asking for things to be removed from the Standard that we have been doing even before the Standard was introduced! But for Carval, the Standard fits the software perfectly and with the introduction of “aggregation of earnings” in v4.0 we moved even further ahead of most of the crowd.

However, the day was a learning curve for me as I understood that a lot of small businesses did not even know that there was a Payroll Standard or did not understand what it meant. It is certainly true that the wording of it for the employers is too verbose and dense and a good section of the day was spent trying to reduce the number of points by combining some or removing some all together, whilst clearing up the wording.

HMRC also came under fire for their website with almost unanimous agreement that it was too difficult to find the list of accredited products and suppliers. This, too, will be up for review by them.

I’m not sure I am in a position to outline the changes that were discussed, nor am I convinced you’d want to read them! After all, you already use a payroll product that has been accredited since 2003 and is capable of sending and receiving 16 forms electronically. And you can be sure that no matter what changes HMRC make to the Payroll Standard, Carval will be ensuring Uniwage doesn’t just provide our customers with the minimum.