Payroll Officer

Payroll Officer

3 Month Contract – Potential to go permanent

Based in Kensington, London – Onsite

£26.04 PH (36 hours PW) Inside IR35, VIA Umbrella

Job Purpose

• To be responsible for correctly calculating employee gross pay and net pay in accordance with statutory and contractual requirements, ensuring that all permanent and temporary transactions are correctly processed on time, and that all anomalies are investigated and corrected prior to payroll finalisation.

• To resolve day-to-day payroll enquiries originating from employees, managers and third parties, in accordance with the agreed timescales, and to ensure that this feeds back into correct payroll transactions.

• To provide an excellent level of customer service to employees, managers, third parties and anyone else who transacts with the payroll service.

• To provide advice and guidance to employees, managers and third parties on payroll procedures, general matters associated with income tax, National Insurance and statutory and contractual pay entitlements, and local requirements in respect of pay.

DESCRIPTION OF DUTIES:

• To have a good understanding of statutory and contractual requirements relating to the payroll, including PAYE Tax, National Insurance, National Minimum Wage, London Living Wage, Local Government Pension Scheme, Teachers Pension Scheme, Statutory Sick Pay, Statutory Child-Related Pay, contractual sick pay, and contractual child-related pay.

• To work with the Senior Payroll Officers in the accurate and timely production of all payrolls and their outputs throughout the payroll processing cycle.

• Running a range of regular and ad-hoc processes as part of the payroll production cycle, including provisional payslip calculations, and ensuring that changes are implemented to underlying employee data as necessary to maintain accuracy of the payroll.

• Performing regular reviews of employee data contributing to payroll calculations (eg tax codes, NI categories, pension scheme memberships) to ensure that all data sets will flow through to accurate payroll calculations for all employees.

• To perform the regular daily processes for ensuring that all payroll data for new starters is correctly input into Oracle, for example payment method, bank details, tax code, NI category, pension scheme membership, pay elements, etc.

• To work with the Recruitment Team and Organisation Structure Team to ensure that starters, movers and leavers are correctly actioned for payroll purposes, and that any anomalies affecting the payroll are identified and corrected prior to payroll finalisation.

• Handling less complex overpayment casework, ensuring that overpayment recoveries are in place and that employees receive notifications of the intention to make recoveries, issuing invoices where appropriate for any overpaid employee who subsequently leaves without the full recovery being made.

• To perform a wide range of pay record checking and pay calculations for the pay awards as appropriate providing the Senior Payroll Officers extra resource in business-critical timeframes.

• Responding in a timely and accurate manner to incoming payroll enquiries from employees and managers, which will predominantly be through the HR Helpdesk but can also be through other channels, eg by phone, in meetings, through email, etc.

• Providing advice and guidance to employees and managers on how to transact in Oracle on anything which impacts the payroll, such as in the submission of expenses and mileage.

• Reviewing claims submitted by employees for overtime, additional hours, sessional and casual claims, etc., to ensure consistency with the job-related duties and to monitor correct authorisation processes and correct payments.

• Calculating annual leave purchase requests and arranging follow-up with the claimant and through payroll.

• Updating master data based on changed circumstances of the employee, such as changes to National Insurance (NI) category, receipt of P45 data for new starters, etc.

• Actioning instructions received from third parties in respect of voluntary deductions, such as pension additional voluntary contributions (AVCs) and additional pension contributions (APCs), union memberships, medical/dental insurance, salary sacrifice schemes for bicycles, and charity deductions.

• Implementing court orders and liaising with the issuing authority as required to ensure that any changes in circumstances of the employee are communicated back to the court where it affects the ability to make the necessary deductions from pay.

• Reviewing and processing requests for season ticket loans and liaising with the HR Business Administration Team to ensure the accurate administration of travel allowance payments.

• Collating Teachers Pensions and London Pension Fund Authority (LPFA/LPP) submissions from relevant external education establishments and making submissions of the data to Teachers Pensions, ensuring that amounts reconcile back to the payment made by the employing body.

• Participate in testing of payroll-related updates to software systems, record outcomes of testing, and re-test where appropriate, providing updates and raising any concerns to the Senior Payroll Officer or Payroll Manager as required.

Skills; Experience and Attitude

• An understanding of payroll processes, taking into account statutory and non-statutory requirements, and to provide advice and guidance to employees on how their pay is calculated

• A good understanding of the components of an employee's pay and of the range of issues that can impact on an employee's gross and net pay.

• Previous experience working with payroll systems and understanding of processes and pay data.

• An understanding of pension scheme membership rules and statutory employer pension obligations as they affect payroll production

• An understanding of employer obligations regarding payroll outputs for the Local Government Pension Scheme (LGPS) and Teachers Pensions (TP).

• An understanding of government guidance and best practice in relation to pay, with an awareness of where to check knowledge such as the government website and an interest in guidance and policy.

• Ability to perform complex payroll-related numerical calculations.

• Good level of proficiency and accuracy in Excel to support the analysis of payroll information.

• Clear written and verbal communication skills to accurately communicate payroll requirements to a wide variety of people, both internally and externally.

• Ability to work effectively under pressure and to tight deadlines whilst ensuring the high quality and accuracy of outputs.

Due to high demand we are only able to respond to applications that meet the required criteria