Continuity planning for payroll bureaux: starting somewhere sensible

Payroll is one of the few services where a short delay has immediate consequences for people who are not your client's finance team. That makes continuity planning unusually important for payroll providers, and unusually easy to postpone.

A workable starting point

A useful first plan answers a small number of questions:

• Who runs the payrolls if the usual person is unavailable at short notice?
• How would that person access the software, data and approvals they need?
• Which clients have the tightest deadlines, and who contacts them?
• What is written down, and where is it kept?
• Is there a named firm willing to provide emergency cover, and on what terms?

From plan to arrangement

The step most firms skip is the last one. A continuity plan that depends on finding help during a crisis is not a plan. A named arrangement, agreed in advance, is.

CPX members complete a structured continuity health check, work through practical templates, and can put a documented continuity-of-practice arrangement in place with another member firm.