News & Events

Back to articles

General & People

National Payroll Week 2021

6th September 2021

National Payroll Week was established by the Chartered Institute for Payroll and Pension Professionals (CIPP) in 1998. They wanted to recognise the vital contribution (in excess of £249bn during the 2020/21 tax year according to estimates) payroll makes to the UK’s economy by aiding the collection of income tax and National Insurance.

2020 brought about the 40th Anniversary of the CIPP and during 2020 there was even more to celebrate than previous years due to the exceptional effort by payroll professionals in understanding and supporting clients with the impact of Covid 19 and the Furlough scheme.

Roll on a year to 2021 and a lot of this has not changed, at Rowleys our payroll professionals are skilled individuals and continually deal with adhoc client queries, ensuring exceptional client service. They continue to support clients with the Furlough scheme and the impact of Covid 19 on their people costs.  The most important thing however and arguably the most tangible outcome for our clients is that our team ensure……….. our client’s teams get paid!

As it is National Payroll Week we are celebrating all that is great about our payroll team and the services they offer.  Over the next 4 days we hope you will find out even more about us, including some promotions in the team and how we are continuing to invest in technology to enable the best service for clients.

Over the next 4 days we will be celebrating why we think we offer a great service, touching on some key areas:

  1. Our unique service offering
  2. Our team
  3. Our forward thinking
  4. Our competitive edge

1. Our unique service offering

Our payroll team is embedded with our wider firm culture at Rowleys.  Having been around for over 100 years we know that what comes with a service from Rowleys is an expectation in our chosen markets that we are experts at what we do and we work in way that suits our clients.  This is no different with our payroll department.

We consider our payroll service offering to be unique, many payroll providers act as bureau’s and will give you a service designed by them for you to work around.   Our team will get to know your business so we understand your priorities and the specific challenges you face. We’ll then use that understanding to tailor the way we work to your specific needs and to make sure you receive all of the services you need.  We believe in investing our people and technology to enable our teams to be able to work in this way, this gives the highest standard of service our client’s desire. Some key areas we help our clients with are:

2. Our Team

Our specialist payroll team currently consists of three individuals who all have many years payroll experience.  At Rowleys we are experiencing a level of growth across the practice and therefore we are also looking to add further team members to ensure we are ready and able to work with more clients, offering the continued level of service we demand from ourselves.  At Rowleys we believe in taking specialist services seriously and ensure that those with the specialist skills are not dragged in to other tasks around our business, our payroll team are focussed on payroll!

Our team is headed up by Rebecca Gotch as Payroll Manager.  Rebecca joined the firm in 2015 and has a degree in Payroll management.  Rebecca has progressed through the ranks at Rowleys and during the early part of 2021 we were delighted when she took up the opportunity to sit at the helm.  Rebecca has already looked at how our payroll business can be more efficient and ultimately how we can further enhance our services to clients.

Rebecca works closely with Sophie Macey and Radoslaw Grela both experienced payroll professionals who work closely with clients, managing their payroll process for them but ensuring that we deliver a bespoke service to each clients.  Giving them the information they require in a format that suits them and offering adhoc advice where required.  Like any outsourced service we  see ourselves as part of our clients team.

3. Our forward thinking

At Rowleys we have a team of technical and operational specialists across the whole business, we are large enough to deal with issues affecting our largest and most complex clients, yet attentive enough to care about the smallest.  Our payroll team are a great example of this, ensuring they are tailoring their approach to suit our client’s needs.

2020 and 2021 has seen our firm further develop our technology across the firm, ensuring we are always thinking about how we can operate in an innovative way, enabling us to improve our service offering to our clients and ensuring our people have a say in how we operate.  In early 2021 the firm undertook a significant project to roll out a new bespoke client management system which we are in the later stages of rolling out across the whole firm.  This will benefit our clients in the management of information and data, but also improve the way we operate as a business.

Rebecca and the payroll team have also embraced the opportunity to look at how we can improve our offering using technology.  With this in mind we are delighted to announce that in the next month we will be rolling out a new client portal, in partnership with Sage Payroll.  This will give improved access to payroll data and reports for our clients through the cloud based portal.  This will also give direct access to the employees of our clients to enable them to access their own data.  Individuals will be able to do this on many types of devices (including smartphones & tablets). The direct access gives your employees the opportunity to obtain copy payslips, year-end reporting documents and pension letters etc, at the touch of a button.

Our team also has direct access to most of our clients pension providers dashboards, this is something we like to do to ensure that we are in a position to process and manage the information going to the pension providers.  Our team can set the pension arrangements up, enrol, opt out, calculate and submit the contributions. Many of our clients don’t need to get involved in the pension processing at all.

Our firm has more than a century of heritage in the heart of the East Midlands, we have learnt over many generations that enabling our teams to be forward thinking brings great results for our people and our clients.

4. Our competitive edge

The final day of National Payroll Week brings to a close our summary of why we feel we have a great payroll team who give a great service to our clients.

The final point to mention is our competitive edge as a payroll provider.  We are an independent firm who operate in an agile way.  This enables us to offer a consistent service that is tailored to suits our client’s needs.  2020 saw the country go in to a global pandemic and at one stage the rules around payroll, and particularly the “Furlough” scheme calculations were changing on a weekly basis.  We were in a position to support our payroll clients successfully, however our team also made themselves available to support clients of the wider firm.  We processed furlough claims for many clients during the last 12 to 18 months, some of these were non-payroll clients.

Our pricing structure for our clients is bespoke to each client with an element of consistency across the firm.  This enables us to give the level of service required, and with our focus on technology we feel that we are extremely competitive, compared to those that offer a similar level of service.

Our final comments this week will be left to the person leading the development of our payroll team, Rebecca Gotch MCIPPdip.

“Each year it is great for us to celebrate what we do as a payroll team and for my first year leading the team it has been a great time to pause and think about what we do so well, and what we have achieved in the last 12 months.  We work hard to give a great level of service to our clients and I want to thank Sophie and Radoslaw particularly, who have worked hard in supporting me in my new leadership role.  We are also looking to further recruit payroll advisors so fingers crossed this time next year there will be even more to celebrate!”

We don’t just process payroll!

If you’d like to find out more about our payroll services and about how we could seamlessly take over responsibility for your payroll please email rebecca.gotch@rowleys.biz or call us on 0116 2827000.

Registered to carry on audit work in the UK; regulated for a range of investment business activities; and licensed to carry out the reserved legal activity of non-contentious probate in England and Wales by the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales.  Associate Directors of the firm are not Directors of The Rowleys Partnership Limited (registered no. 06125028) and are not subject to the obligations and responsibilities of Directors within Part 10 of the Companies Act 2006.  Any reference to an individual with the job title “Partner” refers to someone who is a Director of The Rowleys Partnership Limited and also a registered member of Rowleys Group LLP (registered no. OC306056)  A list of Directors and Members are available at Companies House. Details of our audit registration can be viewed at www.auditregister.org.uk and details of our probate registration can be viewed at www.icaew.com/probate, both under reference number C001486455. View our Legal and Privacy PolicyView our Terms of Business