What is Sage Payroll?

Payroll Software Solutions from Sage

Sage Payroll is one of three payroll solutions developed by Sage. It’s simple and easy to use, with a focus on helping you pay your staff faster and manage other payroll and HR processes, all in one place.

They offer 2 other payroll options to suit different needs and organisation sizes: Sage 50 Payroll and Sage People Payroll.

In this article, we’ll provide an overview of Sage Payroll and the other payroll solutions that Sage provide, finishing with a side-by-side comparison to help you select the best one for you.

Sage Payroll – up to 150 employees

Sage Payroll is a cloud-based payroll solution for small to medium businesses to manage and pay up to 150 employees. Whether you’re a start-up or a growing small business, Sage Payroll is simple enough for anyone to use, while being able to scale with your business as you grow.

The core features include:

• Pay your staff quickly and accurately
• Automatically calculate tax deductions, National Insurance contributions and other statutory deductions
• Automatically assess and enrol employees into workplace pensions, including providers such as: NEST, Now, People’s Pension and more
• Give employees secure access to payslips and P60s via a mobile app
• Self-serve holiday and sick leave requests
• Organise, manage and sign documents electronically
• Built-in new starter onboarding and staff development
• Submit staff timesheets to accurately calculate overtime and pay
• Reporting for payroll, timesheets and HR

All the payroll options from Sage are fully HMRC recognised and continually updated to comply with the latest payroll legislation. They allow you to submit FPS (Full Payment Submission) and EPS (Employer Payment Summary) to HMRC directly from within the platform.

There are 3 different plans to suit different budgets, get pricing information on Sage’s website here.

Sage 50 Payroll – more advanced needs

Sage 50 Payroll is a desktop-based payroll solution with cloud connectivity for timesheets, payslips, P60s and more. It’s best suited to small and medium businesses with in-house professionals managing payroll and those with advanced needs such as departmental analysis and batch processing.

Used by over 40% of businesses in the UK, Sage 50 Payroll includes all the features in Sage Payroll, plus:

• Set up departments and cost centres to help manage and control costs
• Speed up larger payroll runs with batch imports
• Generate pension letters for enrolment, changes and contributions
• Includes HR Advice Online for best practices on HR & employment law
• Rich library of reporting options

Prices are based on how many employees you have, find pricing information on Sage’s website here.

Sage People Payroll – mid-sized businesses

Sage People Payroll is a cloud-based HR and payroll solution for businesses with anywhere ranging from hundreds or thousands of employees. It handles multiple companies, high volumes of data and complex requirements with ease, making it perfect for mid-market businesses.

It has all the features from the other solutions, plus extras:

• Process thousands of payslips in just 2 minutes
• Manage payroll for multiple entities, companies and departments all from one dashboard – perfect for payroll bureaus and umbrella companies
• Bulk payroll processing and automated workflows
• Stay up to date with tax and pension regulations in the UK and Ireland
• Validate payroll easily with built-in rules and warnings
• Handles P11D and CIS (Construction Industry Scheme) returns

Available as a standalone solution or combined with HR in one unified platform. Request pricing on Sage’s website here.

Compare Sage Payroll solutions side-by-side

Next steps

If you’d like to explore your options further, browse the payroll solutions on Sage’s website. We have connections with lots of providers that install and support Sage Payroll and we have the expertise in-house to build reliable integrations between your payroll and accounting solutions.