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NEWS & INSIGHTS

Free webinar: How can new payments tech help the professional employment services sector?

Wednesday, 29 March 2017

10am – 11am

Hosted by Modulr in partnership with FCSA

As we all know, IR35 is a hot topic at the moment. While the conversations are quite rightly focussing on staying the right side of the HMRC regulations, it’s also an opportunity to take another look at your payroll processes and see where there might be inefficiency. 

At Modulr, we see 3 potential payments implications of the updated IR35.

  1. Payment processing taking strain: with the burden of ensuring tax compliance now falling on the agency rather than the contractor, it means more complex processing. If your processes are already very manual this is going to put increased strain on the organisation.
  2. Increased chance of errors: payroll errors are a pain to deal with, not just the work needed to correct them, but the cost involved. PwC estimated in 2015 that the average FTSE100 company loses between £10-£30 million every year due to payroll mistakes. If your processes are more complicated there is more likelihood that errors could occur. 
  3. Customers in control: with all the change going on it’s a good opportunity for freelancers and contractors to re-evaluate who they’re working with. As always they’ll be looking for the businesses that provide them with the most revenue and pay them on time and correctly. Having a slick payments process will be key to this.

There is no one solution to these challenges but embracing new technology is a useful starting point. APIs (Application Programming Interface) are now being used widely to automate the scheduling of payments and collection of commission. The Faster Payments Service is becoming more accessible, and this allows 24/7 payments that are affordable: imagine a contractor finishing their shift and receiving their payment within minutes. And accounts are becoming much easier to open; in fact it’s possible to get dedicated payment accounts for all the businesses you serve and open them instantly. This has huge implications for the reconciliation time needed each month if invoices are paid into separate accounts.

IR35 is certainly bringing uncertainty into the employment services industry. But it could also be a huge opportunity to ensure your payments infrastructure is up to date. 

Register for Free Webinar

To help you make sense of it all, Modulr will be running a free webinar in conjunction with FCSA on this topic on March 29 at 10.30am – 11.30am.

To register your interest, simply send us an email, and we will notify you when the registration page is open.