ince the Covid-19 lockdown was announced in late March 2020, we have noticed a substantial increase in the interest shown by businesses for Payroll Outsourcing services. This might also be true for other types of Outsourced services. We have found the main reasons to be the following:

• Businesses who were forced to retrench staff due to C-19 are more inclined to cut staff from supporting and non-core business functions.
• TERS claims highlighted the importance of having experts doing your payroll and manage peripheral (but significant) issues like TERS. Many businesses battled to claim TERS and were left exposed because their records were not up to date at the UIF, even though they had paid their UIF contributions over to SARS.
• Savings costs – with payroll being focused to a specific time of the month, it is more cost effective to outsource payroll than to have fulltime staff not working at capacity.
• Businesses who used legacy/desktop payrolls had to ask their payroll staff to work from the office, which was not ideal given the C-19 work safely from home principle. If they had cloud technology, it would not have been the case. Businesses started looking for cloud payroll services and then stumbled onto outsourcing.
• Having only one person doing payroll creates dependency on that specific person and presents a risk for the business.  A sudden resignation or illness can leave the organisation vulnerable and result in staff grievances if they are not paid accurately and on-time.