When MPP Solicitors first became a Quill client, for legal accounts software only initially, the practice employed its own cashier. Responsible mainly for managing its accounts on Quill’s software, another facet of its cashier’s role was processing the firm’s payroll.
The internal structure changed when its cashier retired, as explained by Allan Hunt, Senior Partner at MPP: “Before retirement, our accounts function ran wonderfully well. After retirement, I decided to take over and look after our payroll. Looking back, I don’t think I ever intended for this to be a permanent arrangement but it certainly provided a temporary fix to our cashier problem.”
Allan coped with MPP’s payroll, on top of his existing demanding responsibilities, for a period of two years. At this point, a longer-term solution was sought primarily because of the challenges presented by constant payroll changes.
“If there were no changes, everything was fine because once we were set up, our payroll kept ticking along nicely,” states Allan. “With payroll, though, things do have a tendency to change on a fairly regular basis, for example new starters, leavers, absences, salary increases and contracted hours adjustments.
“There’s also the continual introduction of new and revised legislation. Over the past few years, we’ve seen auto enrolment pensions, Real Time Information, shared parental leave and abolishment of National Insurance for under 21s. Then, when the end of the financial year arrives, there are all manner of hoops to jump through.
“On the basis that payroll never stands still, it was all too much to handle by one person – me – as a minor part of their job. Payroll is so time consuming and was causing me pain on an almost daily basis. We had to take action.”
As an existing Quill user, the team at MPP was aware of the Quill Payroll service for payroll processing and optional pension management. The practice compared software purchase and outsourcing costs, and chose Quill.
“Dedicated software, such as Sage, is very expensive,” adds Allan. “We fall into the ‘over 10 users’ bracket which, for a relatively small business such as ours, is prohibitive. It’s much more cost effective to simply outsource payroll in its entirety to Quill. So that’s exactly what we did.”
Despite MPP’s familiarity with Quill, research was undertaken on competitive suppliers before the final decision was made. Several years down the line, MPP continues to use Quill Payroll.
“Whilst we did look at other payroll providers, we selected Quill because of our long-standing, trusted relationships,” concludes Allan. “Essentially, it’s the same core people and ethics. Quill Payroll is an extra bolt on to Quill’s Pinpoint outsourced cashiering service, Interactive legal accounts, case management and document management software, all of which we already subscribe to. With Quill firmly behind us, our back office operates smoothly and integrates seamlessly. We’re absolutely delighted with Quill Payroll. It comes highly recommended by MPP!”
