Quick summary: The best academy payroll and HR software for schools and MATs handles term-time and annualised pay, TPS and LGPS pensions (including MCR), and statutory returns such as the FEWDC without workarounds, with HR and payroll sharing one employee record. The main UK providers are Cintra, Access, IRIS, MHR, Civica, Zellis, and SAMpeople. Compare them on education focus, whether payroll is software, a bureau, or both, and how closely HR and payroll are joined.
Last checked: October 2026.
If you’re choosing HR and payroll software for a school, academy, or multi-academy trust (MAT), getting the shortlist right early makes everything that follows easier. Education pay isn’t standard pay. Term-time contracts, teacher and support staff pensions, staff with more than one role, and statutory returns all put pressure on a system built for general business use.
To make things easier for you, this guide sets out the five criteria that really separate academy payroll and HR providers for schools and trusts, how the main options compare, and the questions worth putting to every vendor.
Why combined HR and payroll software matters for schools
Most schools and trusts hold the same facts in two places:
- The HR record: contract, post, hours, and start and end dates.
- The payroll record: pay scale, spine point, pension, and deductions.
When those sit in separate products, every change in one has to be repeated in the other. That’s where late or inaccurate pay, audit rework, and delayed reporting usually start.
With HR and payroll on a single platform, a contract change made once flows straight through to pay. For MAT payroll with several schools and several pay arrangements, that’s the difference between central oversight and a monthly reconciliation exercise.
That said, a single platform isn’t a magic fix. It works well when your data’s clean and your processes are agreed across schools. If they aren’t, treat the move as a chance to tidy both, or you’ll simply carry old problems into a new system.
| Criterion | What good looks like | How Cintra handles it |
|---|---|---|
| Term-time and variable pay | Term-time only, annualised, casual, hourly, and substitute pay all handled without workarounds, with accurate backdating | Supports term-time only and annualised pay, casual and hourly staff, and retrospective adjustments |
| Teachers’ Pension Scheme (TPS) and Local Government Pension Scheme (LGPS) | TPS and LGPS contributions, banded rates, Monthly Contributions Reconciliation (MCR), and pension reporting built in | TPS, LGPS, and private schemes, MCR reports, and a full pension administration service |
| Further education (FE) workforce data | The Further Education Workforce Data Collection (FEWDC) return produced from payroll and HR data | Pre-built FEWDC report and import interface |
| One platform for HR and payroll | One employee record across HR and payroll, not two products joined by an integration | Cloud HR and payroll on a single platform, with multiple contracts and pay structures per employee |
| Accreditation and support | Recognised accreditation for the software or bureau, and support from people who understand payroll | BACS Approved Bureau, Chartered Institute of Payroll Professionals (CIPP) Payroll Assurance Scheme, ISO 9001, and ISO/IEC 27001:2022, with 90% of support calls answered first time and 100% returned within two hours |
1. Term-time and variable pay
A lot of school staff are paid across twelve months but only work during term. Others are casual, hourly, or on short contracts. Exam invigilators, cover supervisors, and after-school staff are typical examples.
Ask each provider to show you three things end to end: a term-time contract, an annualised salary, and a mid-year change being backdated. A smooth demo is reassuring, but the backdated change is usually where problems appear.
2. Teachers’ Pension Scheme and LGPS
Teaching staff are normally in the TPS and support staff in the LGPS, often within the same trust. Check three things:
- How contribution bands are maintained.
- How MCR is produced.
- Whether pension reporting comes straight from payroll or from a separate export.
MCR is the monthly Teachers’ Pensions return that replaces the older Monthly Data Collection (MDC). Some employers are still on MDC, so it’s worth asking whether a provider supports both.
3. FE workforce data
If you run or are part of an FE provider in England (a general FE college, sixth form college, or adult education provider, for example), the FEWDC is a mandatory statutory return for the Department for Education (DfE). It’s easy to overlook when you’re comparing school-focused products.
Ask whether it’s a standard report or a custom piece of work. Also ask how much data (teaching qualifications, for instance) you’ll still need to collect separately.
4. One platform for HR and payroll
“Integrated” can mean one database, or it can mean two systems with a connector. Ask which it is, who maintains the link, and what happens when one side changes. Connectors can work perfectly well, but every link is one more thing to test after an update.
5. Accreditation and support
Bureau and software accreditations tell you different things:
- BACS Approved Bureau: shows a bureau has been approved by Pay.UK to submit Bacs payments, such as salaries, on behalf of other organisations.
- CIPP Payroll Assurance Scheme: an independent review of how a payroll operation is run, including how the payroll team is trained and developed.
- ISO/IEC 27001: the international standard for information security management.
Ask each vendor exactly what its accreditation covers and when it was last assessed. Then ask the simplest question of all: who’ll support you day to day, and how quickly?
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How do the main academy payroll and HR providers compare?
The providers schools, academies, and MATs commonly shortlist are Cintra, Access, IRIS, MHR, Civica, Zellis, and SAM People. They differ mainly in three ways:
- Focus: whether they were built for education or serve it alongside other sectors.
- Delivery: whether payroll is software, a bureau, or both.
- Integration: how closely HR and payroll are joined.
Cintra
Cintra builds payroll and HR software and outsourced services for colleges, schools, academies, and MATs, with more than 40 years’ experience of school payroll. It suits organisations that want HR and payroll on one cloud platform, whether they’d rather run it in-house or have a specialist team run it for them.
Access
Access Education (part of The Access Group) offers Access Education People, cloud HR software built for schools, academies, and MATs. You can pair it with in-house payroll software or Access’s managed payroll service, and HR data flows into payroll. It also connects to Access’s education finance and budgeting tools through its Access Evo platform, so it suits trusts that want HR, payroll, and finance from one supplier. Ask whether you’d be on the payroll software or the managed service, and how each one links to the HR system.
IRIS
IRIS Education (which now includes the Every brand) offers Every HR, Every Payroll for running payroll in-house, and Every Payroll Services, a fully managed payroll and pensions service for schools and trusts. Every Payroll covers multiple posts, pay spines, term-time contracts, and TPS and LGPS reporting, and changes made in Every HR flow through to payroll. IRIS also owns the iSAMS management information system (MIS), so if your school uses a different MIS, ask how well Every connects with it.
MHR
MHR’s iTrent is a cloud HR and payroll platform built on a single database, used by multi-academy trusts alongside organisations in other sectors. MHR offers both the software and managed payroll services. Cidari Multi Academy Trust, for example, uses iTrent with MHR’s managed services. Because iTrent isn’t built only for education, ask how term-time pay, teacher pensions, and pay spines are set up, and whether that’s standard or configured for you.
Civica
Civica Education People Hub is cloud HR and payroll software for schools, academies, and colleges. You can run payroll in-house on Civica Payroll or outsource it to Civica Managed Payroll Education, its BACS-approved bureau. It connects with MIS products including SIMS, iSAMS, and Progresso, so staff changes don’t need entering twice, and Civica says more than 14,000 education providers use its education products. Ask how the HR and payroll products are joined, and what the managed service includes.
Zellis
Zellis provides HR and payroll software and an outsourced service for multi-academy trusts, alongside further and higher education and other sectors. It says its platform handles term-time only and split roles, Teachers’ Pensions, and local authority arrangements, with AI checks that flag pay anomalies. Enquire Learning Trust, with more than 32 primary schools, chose Zellis as its HR and payroll partner in 2026. As Zellis also serves other sectors, ask to see a term-time contract and a pension scenario in the demo.
SAM People
SAMpeople is HR software built for schools and trusts, with recruitment software and a managed payroll and pensions bureau that handles HMRC, Teachers’ Pension, and LGPS returns. It’s now part of Arbor, the MIS provider. HR changes feed a payroll export for the bureau to process, and the bureau itself launched in 2023. Ask how many full payroll years it’s run, what accreditation it holds, and how it works if you don’t use Arbor
Software or outsourced service?
Some trusts want to run payroll in-house with strong software. Others, particularly those without a dedicated payroll team, would rather use an outsourced academy payroll service. Both are perfectly legitimate choices.
Ask providers whether they offer both, how easy it is to move between them as you grow, and who’s accountable if something goes wrong in a pay run.
There’s also an option in between that a lot of trusts don’t realise exists. St Chad’s Academies Trust, with 19 schools and 755 employees, uses Cintra’s part-managed education payroll. The trust reports saving £90,000 a year on absence, thanks to new absence procedures informed by its Cintra data, and two days of payroll resource a month.
Questions to ask every provider
To make your vendor conversations quicker, here’s a checklist you can take into every demo:
- Can you show a term-time contract, an annualised salary, and a backdated change in your system?
- How do you handle TPS and LGPS bands, and how is MCR (or MDC) produced?
- Is the FEWDC return a standard report?
- Do HR and payroll share one employee record?
- What does your accreditation cover, and when was it last assessed?
- Who’ll support us, and how quickly are calls returned?
- How long does implementation take, and what happens if we switch mid-year?
- What’s included in the subscription, and what costs extra?
Choosing the right HR and Payroll Software for Schools
Choosing academy payroll and HR software is mostly about a few practical tests. Can it handle your term-time and annualised contracts without workarounds? Does TPS and LGPS reporting come straight from payroll? Do HR and payroll share one employee record? And who’ll support you if something goes wrong in a pay run? The demo is the best place to find out, so take the checklist above with you and ask every provider to use your own scenarios.
If you’d like to see how Cintra handles them, book a demo with our team to find out more about education payroll software, payroll outsourcing, and HR software.
HR and payroll for education
Find out more about Cintra's HR and payroll services built especially for the education sector, tailor-made for your schools unique needs.
Frequently asked questions
Q. What’s the best payroll and HR software for academies and MATs?
A. The best fit is the one that handles your contracts, pensions, and statutory returns without workarounds, and that your team can run confidently. For most academies and trusts, that means software built for education, with HR and payroll on one platform. Test every shortlisted provider against the five criteria above, using your own contract types in the demo. If you're a growing MAT, check the system can handle the number of schools you expect to have, not just the number you have today.
Q. Which academy payroll providers offer HR and payroll on a single platform?
A. Several do, including Cintra. Access, IRIS, Civica, MHR, Zellis, and SAMpeople all offer HR and payroll together, but they join them in different ways. MHR's iTrent runs on a single database, IRIS links Every HR and Every Payroll so changes flow across, and SAMpeople sends HR changes to its bureau through a payroll export. Ask each one whether it uses a single employee record or links separate products.
Q. Which payroll providers support the FEWDC for trusts with FE colleges?
A. Cintra includes a pre-built FEWDC report. SAMpeople says its reporting supports the FE workforce return. Most other providers don't say clearly on their product pages, so ask whether it's a standard report or a custom piece of work.
Q. What’s the difference between BACS Approved Bureau status and the CIPP Payroll Assurance Scheme for academy payroll services?
A. BACS Approved Bureau status shows a bureau is approved to submit Bacs payments on behalf of other organisations. The CIPP Payroll Assurance Scheme assesses how payroll is run across both the process and the team.
Q. Should MAT payroll be outsourced or run in-house?
A. It depends on whether you have a dedicated payroll team and how many schools you manage. Outsourcing suits trusts without that capacity, whatever their size. Part-managed options sit in between if you’d like to keep some control in-house.
Q. How long does it take to switch academy payroll provider?
A. It depends on your size, how clean your data is, and whether you're moving HR, payroll, or both. Expect at least one parallel run, where the old and new systems process the same payroll so you can compare results. A lot of academies aim to switch at the start of a tax year, so there are no year-to-date figures to carry across.
