preschool treasurers - payroll, how do you do it?

[bumpybecky]

argh! gave out wage slips and cheques today and first error found 2 mins later I've made mistakes every time I've done it now (4x). This seems to be appaling given we've only got 6 staff members.

It's the first 'job' that I've ever done payroll and I've had to work it all out myself using Excel and the HMRC CDRom. I'm obviously not as good at Excel as I thought....

Do other treasurers do the pay roll themselves? It was previously suggested we paid for a private company to do it for us, but we just can't afford this (quoted £360 per year ).

I've found free payroll software online, but they all assume monthly / 4 weekly / weekly payments and we pay half termly. I don't want to have to do payroll 12x per year rather than the current 12.....

Any tips?

God, not being wanting to sound rude but how do your staff cope being paid half termly!!!I have worked in various nurseries over the years and have never been paid like that.

Sorry not any help with your question.

we have sage software and pay our staff monthly. Seeing as though they are all entitled to holiday pay how on earth do you pay them half termly?

When I did this we used Sage and we also had their help cover which was invaluable, especially at year end, but we did pay monthly else the year end would have been more of a nightmare than ever.
I now do my husbands payroll for a small firm and we use a payroll system from Moneysoft which is cheaper than Sage and seems quite concise. Once I got the hang of it it doesnt take long to process pay. You can see their products at www.moneysoft.co.uk I also use their moneymanager program to do accounts for our am dram club. I find it easier than excel as you can get reports of accounts or events straight away.

Sage support is about £100 a year I think. It also means you are paying the correct NI & IT to the goverment which is by far the most important thing. Does all your SSP calculations very easy to use.

Well, they've always been paid half termly, so that's the way I've continued to do it! I must say if it were me being paid, I'd not be hugely keen on it...

As for holiday pay, I've had it explained to me and at the time I understood it, but several months later I'm a bit confuddled

The way it works is they've got an hourly rate (either qualified or unqualfied rate) and that's what they get paid for any extra time outside normal sessions (planning meetings, if they help out on trips etc). Then there's a holiday / sick pay rate per session wored out pro-rata as

holiday pay per session = (hourly rate x hours per session x weeks entitlement)/ number of sessions per year

That's what the sheet in my handbook says anyway.

I'm not entirely convinced that's right, as at the moment if they're off sick they get paid the holiday pay element, and we have to also pay it to the memebr of staff who covers, so sick staff (or staff who's children are sick, or those who fancy a day off.....) cost preschool lots

doens't make much sense, trying to clarify...

the holiday / sick pay element is added to the normal hourly rate, so for each full session worked they get the hourly rate x3.25 (no. of hours) plus the holiday/sick bit

meant to ask...

if you pay monthly, how do you work our holiday pay then?

certain staff members tend to swap sessions about lots, which makes working things out tricky (well it does it you can't use excel accurately anyway! )

sick pay is down to what is in their contract. Our old contracts said 2 sessions per month, we've proposed 7 days per rolling year for new contracts. At the end of the day they could just have SSP. Depends on whether you think someone is abusing it. None of our staff work 5 days per week so quite often they swap days off to cover for sick days/dc being ill etc.

We pay a small fee to PATA to do ours every month. We give them the hours the staff do and they work it all out - it's worth every penny!

Well worth looking into!

well I've still not actually seen their contracts, so no idea what they say [sigh!]

we're not actually paying sick pay anyway, it's just the holiday pay pro rata bit that gets paid for the session they'd normally work, whether they turn up and work or not.

Thinking about it, that can't be right. I'm sure legally they must be entitled to some sick pay? off to google now....

Hobnobfantic, do you mean these people? as they seem to be for Gloucestershire only, and we're not in Gloucestershire!

no, there is no legal entitlement to sick pay.

Hi, I don't know if you've got this sorted yet but I'm happy to look at your payroll calculations for you. I'm a treasurer and a freelance bookkeeper so I might be able to help you. CAT me if you wish.

I only use the HMRC CD-ROM - it's very good but I think you'd be better off paying your staff monthly to save you alot of hassle.

We pay monthly by cheque We farm our payroll out to a private company.We pay staff 40 % of their normal pay during the holidays.We don't do sick pay other than SSP.

Hi Katiestar. Do you pay your staff 40% on bank holidays as well as during the usual school holidays?

Hi

Where abouts is the pre-school? I do payroll for pre-schools in the northanst area