Birchwood Group

Eastbourne based car dealership Birchwood Group found that transferring their payroll to Earnie, from IRIS Software Group, saved them hours each month

Birchwood had used Kerridge payroll software for a number of years and were concerned about whether it could cope with the imminent RTI changes.  With payroll to process for 170 employees Birchwood wanted to get a more user friendly payroll system, particularly with the imminent start of Real Time Information. 

Payroll Manager, Lisa Andrews commented “We found our existing system very restrictive, everything had to be done in a certain way and we couldn’t go back to previous periods to find prior data.  This meant that each month we had to print off reams of information just so that we could keep historic employee information.”  

Birchwood looked at Sage and Access payrolls but found Earnie provided the best value for money for their requirements.   Lisa says about the transfer:

“I expected to find moving to a new payroll system quite stressful but the transition has been very smooth.  Earnie is so easy-to-use that I know we had made the right decision selecting it.  One of the key benefits has been the amount of time we have saved.  Not only can we link Earnie directly to our DMS system but I save about 15 minutes per record on things such as processing leavers”.

Lisa now finds it easy to find and access her employee information, including leavers:

“The history facility is great and any information I need to access is there at the touch of a button.  We have also had a real reduction in printing and paper costs – previously I had to print out employee information for each month – just so that I could go back and check it. Earnie is so intuitive - everything makes sense and is where I would expect it to be”

Downloading items directly from HMRC was a new thing for Birchwood and has given them the confidence that Real Time Information will go smoothly. “RTI isn’t a huge worry as we know EARNIE will work well. Downloading thing such as tax codes has been seamless and we have had information and training from IRIS so feel well prepared.  We have already used a report within Earnie to check that we don’t have any missing data so we are as ready as we can be!” 

Being able to accurately split and report on employee costs is also a key requirement for Birchwood. 

“We have a lot of different cost splits in our company and things like salary, commission for used cars and commission for new cars all go to different account codes.  We can transfer this directly to our finance system and the ease of breaking down employee costs is a huge benefit.

I would have no hesitation in recommending Earnie.  It is a very user-friendly system and handles the requirements of dealerships very well. I have only had to use the support service once which is a testament to how good the system is.”