Massey Wilcox Transport Case Study

Anita Billing, Accounts Assistant of Massey Wilcox Transport Ltd has worked in payroll for almost 20 years and has used IRIS for 14 years. The main reason behind sticking with IRIS is the ease of use on a day to day basis.

Anita runs two separate payrolls; a weekly payroll consisting of around 90 employees and a monthly payroll consisting of around 20 employees. As you can imagine, the variance in the weekly to monthly assessment that goes on for auto enrolment could be extremely time consuming if things were to be processed manually for each payroll cycle. 

Anita explains “I wouldn’t have time to assess people each week, with the split between weekly and monthly pay, it would be impossible”. The IRIS AE Suite™ assesses the employees’ eligibility every time the payroll runs which means that every time there is a change, Anita is notified and the corresponding pension communications are published accordingly.

Time Saving

Anita told us that the IRIS AE Suite™ saves her a lot of time. We put all new employees on a probationary period when they first start which fits in perfectly with the postponement period that we can utilise with auto enrolment. We then don’t have to remember to auto enrol people when their three months are up because the software just does it for you with each payroll run”.

Anita also went on to explain that on a recurring basis, the IRIS AE Suite™ also saves her time because of the ongoing assessment that is needed. As well as this, in three years when employees will need to be reassessed, the software will do this for them. The Centre for Economic and Business Research (CEBR) state that on average it takes around 103 days to set up for auto enrolment and a further three-and-a-half days per payroll period to stay compliant. Anita agrees with the research and explains that she simply would not have the time to assess employees as regularly as she would need to and couldn’t do it without the IRIS AE Suite™.

Electronic communications and Quick Report Writer

Electronic communications comes as part of the IRIS AE Suite™ and distributes payslips and P60s electronically, cutting down on the amount of printing, sorting and sending needed each payroll run. Anita explained that almost half of the employees at Massey Wilcox have already accessed their payslips and auto enrolment communications online which has increased the amount of time she has for other payroll tasks.

Another additional module of Earnie Business is the Quick Report Writer that Anita uses to generate reports that she can easily share with her manager in order to make quick decisions. Anita explained that “I use the Quick Report Writer to get reports from other areas of the businesses that I may not have necessarily been able to get which makes things quicker for me.”

Support

In terms of support, especially during the implementation of the IRIS AE Suite™, Anita says that “initially, we had a few questions when implementing the software but the support was great and the questions were solved very quickly. The IRIS consultant we had went the extra mile to gain the correct information needed for the electronic communications software and it has been great ever since”.

Recommendations

Anita explained that they prepared for auto enrolment around 6 months before their staging date and recommended to smaller businesses that this was the adequate amount of time in their case. She explained however that all businesses were different and each companies needs were sure to differ.

IRIS recommends that you find out your staging date and from this, develop a plan on The Pension Regulator’s website so that you are properly and effectively prepared for hitting your staging date. Anita’s advice to businesses who have yet to stage is that “it is important not to panic. A lot of information is available and things are explained in ways that may make you panic but this is just to emphasise the importance of automatic enrolment and why it is that it is being implemented by the government.” As you may or may not know, the main reason behind the workplace pension reforms is to address the issue that as a society, we aren’t saving enough for our retirement.

In addition to this, Anita explained that “another thing to do is to make sure that you go for any opportunity of help that you can because there is no need to go it alone.”

“I would also recommend the electronic communications to anyone because it makes things so much quicker, your P60s are also distributed in this way and it also saves money on printing, sorting and distributing of payslips, leaving time for other processes.”

Continuing on about the IRIS AE Suite™, Anita explains that “it’s such an easy to use package, I would definitely recommend it to anyone – it saves us so much time to run auto enrolment”.

Anita finally spoke about payroll year-end and RTI and how, thanks to the Earnie Business software, these processes are now “a doddle” as the software does it all for you.

If you want to take the panic out of payroll then browse our wide range of payroll software today.