Enter your business details to see what each option would cost you. Prices are live from our database and shown in pounds sterling.
If you run payroll for other businesses, as an accountant, a bookkeeper or a payroll bureau, the software is your production line rather than a back-office tool. It has to handle many employers at once, each with its own PAYE reference, pay dates and pension scheme, and its price has to work at the volume of payslips you process, not at one company's headcount.
This guide is for practices running client payrolls. If you are a business choosing payroll for your own staff, our guide to payroll software for small business covers that decision, including when to hand payroll to a bureau.
How we chose. A practice buys payroll software to run other people's payrolls, so we judged each of the 13 payroll providers in our UK data from the bureau's side of the desk, with costs from the engine behind our payroll software comparison. Four things counted: a market our data records as including accountants or bureaus, a price we can cost at client sizes, HMRC recognition with RTI, and support for auto-enrolment and the pension schemes your clients use. Our calculator prices one employer's payroll, so the table above opens at 10 employees as a single client; change the headcount to match one of yours. No pick is here, or placed higher, because a vendor pays us.
What should accountants and payroll bureaus look for in payroll software?
An accountant or payroll bureau needs payroll software that handles many client employers from one login, prices sensibly at the number of payslips you run, files RTI to HMRC for each client, and runs pension auto-enrolment client by client. Our data covers the compliance and pricing half of that list well. It does not yet record practice features such as multi-client dashboards or white labelling, so those are questions to ask.
| What a practice needs | What our data says |
|---|
| A price that works at bureau volumes | Published prices, costed in the table above and by client size below |
| HMRC recognition and RTI submissions | A column for each, per provider |
| Pension auto-enrolment and scheme connections | A column for each, per provider |
| CIS for construction clients | A column per provider, with plan and add-on qualifiers |
| Employee payslip portal or app | Employee self-service and mobile app columns |
| Who the product is built for | A target market column, shown in full below |
| Many clients under one login, bulk pay runs, white labelling, practice pricing | Not recorded: ask the vendor, using the questions further down |
GOV.UK's guide to choosing payroll software adds a warning that matters more to a bureau than to any single employer: some software will not produce payslips, record or pay pension deductions, pay different people over different periods (both weekly and monthly), or send an Employer Payment Summary or Earlier Year Update. Across a client book, each of those cases can come up.
Which payroll software is built for accountants and bureaus?
Among the UK payroll software we list, our data names accountants or bureaus in the target market of Staffology and BrightPay. The others are sold to employers directly, though several, Xero and QuickBooks Online included, are products accountants also run on their clients' behalf. Here is the market our data records for each, with our wording intact.
| Provider | Target market in our data |
|---|
| BrightPay | Micro to mid SMB + bureaus |
| Staffology | Accountants, bureaus, scaling SMB |
| Sage | Small UK business to ~150 emp |
| Xero | Xero accounting users / SMB |
| QuickBooks Online | QuickBooks users / small SMB |
| FreeAgent | Sole traders / micro Ltd / contractors |
| Employment Hero | Growing SMB (HR + payroll) |
| Moorepay | SMEs ~50-500 emp (outsourced) |
Some providers in this category do not fit a UK practice running domestic payrolls, and we leave them out of the picks for that reason. Deel, Remote, Papaya Global and Payoneer Workforce Management are built to employ or pay people across borders; their global payroll cells read Yes (100+ countries), Yes (global), Yes (160+ countries) and Yes (160+ countries, EOR). Rippling is an HR, IT and payroll platform whose target market reads Mid-market (HR + IT + payroll). If a client employs abroad, our payroll guide for global teams covers those.
Moorepay is in the table because it is a managed payroll service, in effect a bureau itself, with prices on request; our data records its contract term as Annual. For a practice it is the alternative to running payroll, not a tool to run it with: worth knowing if you would rather refer a larger client than take its payroll on.
How is payroll bureau software priced: per client, per employee or per payslip?
Payroll software for accountants and bureaus is priced in one of three ways: a subscription per client employer, a count of payslips across your whole account, or a practice rate given on request. The published prices we hold describe a single employer, so the figures below show what one client of a given size costs. Ask each vendor which count it bills a practice on.
| Provider | 1 employee | 5 employees | 10 employees | 20 employees | 50 employees |
|---|
| Sage | £12 | £12 | £24 | £37.50 | £75 |
| Xero | £19.50 | £25.50 | £33 | £48 | £93 |
| Deel | £21.67 | £108.35 | £216.70 | £433.40 | £1,083.50 |
| Papaya Global | £21.67 | £108.35 | £216.70 | £433.40 | £1,083.50 |
| Remote | £21.67 | £108.35 | £216.70 | £433.40 | £1,083.50 |
| QuickBooks Online | £22.50 | £28.50 | £36 | £51 | £96 |
| Employment Hero | £30 min | £30 min | £30 min | £60 | £150 |
| FreeAgent | £33 | £33 | £33 | £33 | £33 |
| Rippling | from £37 | from £65 | from £100 | from £170 | from £380 |
| Staffology | £43 | £43 | £43 | £43 | £107.50 |
| BrightPay | Get quote | Get quote | Get quote | Get quote | Get quote |
| Moorepay | Get quote | Get quote | Get quote | Get quote | Get quote |
| Payoneer Workforce Management | Get quote | Get quote | Get quote | Get quote | Get quote |
Estimated monthly cost in pounds for one employer on each provider's entry plan, at the price each provider publishes; we do not add or remove VAT. Prices published in US dollars are converted at 0.7471 USD to GBP, captured 12 June 2026. Plans and pricing checked October 2026. "min" means the provider's monthly minimum is the whole bill at that size, and "from" marks a published starting price. Get quote means the provider does not publish a price we can cost.
The 1-employee column is a director-only company. The 20 and 50 columns are where per-payslip pricing shows: Staffology's flat £43/mo covers up to 20 payslips, and each one above that costs £2.15/payslip. Our data notes the charge is per payslip per run, so a weekly payroll counts four or five times a month, and that IRIS quotes rather than publishes a price above 50 payslips a month.
Xero and QuickBooks Online work the other way. Payroll is an add-on to the client's own accounting subscription, charged per employee: £1.50/emp/mo at Xero and £1.50/emp/mo at QuickBooks Online. FreeAgent includes payroll in its subscription with no charge per employee. BrightPay prices its cloud product through a calculator on its own site, which our table cannot cost.
None of these published figures is a practice price. Before you compare a bureau plan, get answers in writing to the questions in the last section of this guide.
RTI, HMRC recognition and registering as a payroll agent
A payroll bureau or accountant filing RTI for clients needs two things from HMRC. The software must be able to send each client's Full Payment Submission and Employer Payment Summary, and your firm must now be registered with HMRC as a tax adviser, a requirement HMRC is bringing in by stages. Our data records HMRC recognition and RTI filing for each pick.
| Provider | HMRC-recognised | RTI / FPS to HMRC | Year-end (P60/P45) |
|---|
| Staffology | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| BrightPay | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Xero | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| FreeAgent | Yes | Yes | Yes |
HMRC publishes its own list of recognised payroll software, updated through 2026, and says it cannot recommend one product over another. HMRC's free Basic PAYE Tools is not an option for a practice: its user guide says it is not suitable for agents and bookkeepers.
Registering as a tax adviser. HMRC's guidance on when you need to register as a tax adviser says anyone who interacts with HMRC about someone else's tax affairs and gets paid for it must register for an agent services account, and that includes sending returns for clients. A firm that only provides third-party payroll services on behalf of clients, and deals with HMRC in no other way, must register from 18 November 2026. Each firm has 3 months from its window opening to apply, and an existing agent services account means you do not register again. Payroll software developers themselves are exempt, but a bureau using their software is not.
Running auto-enrolment across a client book
For an accountant or bureau, pension auto-enrolment is a duty you carry out for each client employer separately: assessing staff every pay run, sending contributions to each client's scheme, and completing each client's declaration of compliance. Payroll software for a practice should do the first two inside the pay run, for every scheme your clients use.
The Pensions Regulator's guide for business advisers lists what payroll software should do each pay cycle: assess staff, hold the data enrolment needs, calculate contributions with the right tax relief method, send contribution data to the scheme in its format, handle opt-ins, opt-outs and refunds, offer flexible postponement, and keep records for up to six years. Clients on Basic PAYE Tools or with no software need their own process to assess staff and calculate contributions.
| Provider | Auto-enrolment | Pension schemes |
|---|
| Staffology | Yes | NEST + major |
| BrightPay | Yes | NEST, TPP, Smart, Aviva |
| Xero | Yes | NEST + major |
| FreeAgent | Yes | NOW:Pensions, Penfold |
"NEST + major" means the software connects to NEST and other large workplace pension schemes. A practice inherits whatever scheme each client chose, so list your clients' schemes and check each one against the provider's own list before you move them.
The Pensions Regulator also lets you submit declarations for many clients at once, by uploading one CSV file with a row per employer, and in doing so you confirm you are authorised by each employer to submit on its behalf. Its nomination service sends you the email alerts about each client's duties and deadlines.
Client portals, payslip delivery and bulk processing: what to ask
Practice features such as running many clients' pay runs in one batch, a client dashboard, white-labelled payslips or a practice-level price are where payroll products for accountants can differ, and our data does not record them. What it does record is whether each client's employees can see payslips in a portal or app.
| Provider | Employee self-service | Mobile app | CIS |
|---|
| Staffology | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| BrightPay | Yes (Connect) | Yes (Connect) | Yes (free) |
| Xero | Yes | Yes | Yes (add-on) |
| FreeAgent | Limited | Yes | Yes |
A word in brackets qualifies the yes: the product it comes through, "add-on" for an extra charge, or "free" for included. Ask each vendor these, in writing, so the answers line up:
| Ask | Why it matters to a practice |
|---|
| Do you bill per client employer, per payslip across my account, or at a practice rate? | It decides whether a book of small clients is cheap or dear |
| Does a client with no pay run in a month still cost anything? | Seasonal and dormant clients add up |
| Can I run several clients' pay runs and RTI submissions in one batch? | Payday clusters at month end |
| Can I see every client's status, deadlines and submissions on one screen? | A missed FPS is a client's penalty and your problem |
| Do payslips and the employee portal carry my practice's name or yours? | Clients and their staff should know who runs their payroll |
| Can each client approve its pay run before I submit it? | It keeps the employer's sign-off on record |
| How do I move a client's payroll history in, and out again? | Employers must keep payroll records for 3 years |
The last point is set by HMRC's rule on keeping payroll records, which binds the client as employer whoever holds the data.
Which payroll software suits your practice?
The right payroll software for an accountant or payroll bureau depends on the shape of the client book: how many small employers you run, how many are in construction, which ledger they keep their books in, and how many are director-only companies. Match the largest group first, rather than choosing by the price column alone:
- You run payroll for many small employers and want a published price per payslip: Staffology, then check how it bills across clients.
- A good share of your clients pay subcontractors under CIS: BrightPay, priced from its own calculator.
- Your clients keep their books in Xero, and pay for it themselves: Xero Payroll, client by client; QuickBooks Online does the same for QuickBooks clients.
- Your payroll list is mostly director-only limited companies: FreeAgent, where payroll adds nothing per employee to the client's subscription.
- You would rather not run payroll for a larger client at all: a managed service such as Moorepay, priced on request.
A practice can run two of these side by side, one for clients on their own cloud ledger and one payroll-only product for everyone else.
