CIPP Outsourced Payroll Provider of the Year 2025

Payroll Outsourcing Services

Our payroll outsourcing services are built to bring you cost-effective, accurate, and compliant payroll—every time. At Cintra, we’re a team of payroll experts backed by 40+ years in industry serving 1,500+ UK businesses. And we’re built with ease of use at the heart of everything we do.

The award-winning choice for UK outsourced payroll services

With Cintra, you have total flexibility. Armed with our cloud-based portal, Cintra People, you have full visibility into your payroll at any point in time. Combined with your dedicated payroll contact & full UK team on hand to support with just a quick phone call, we’re committed to absolute excellence in our payroll outsourcing services.

Accuracy

Cintra People makes it easy to spot mistakes, with an average user error rate of 0.0027% thanks to real-time data and variance analysis.

Cost savings

We work on a price-per-payslip model, with no user license fees, so we can make your outsourced payroll as cost effective and scalable as possible.

Security

We pride ourselves on our cyber security, spanning ISO9001, ISO27001, Cyber Essentials Plus, and more—with Bulletproof rating us 100% compliant.

Compliance

Our payroll experts take care of your compliance needs. They’ll keep up to date with legislation changes and file with HMRC, so you don’t have to.

What you're saying about us

How do payroll outsourcing services work?

We’ve built our payroll outsourcing to be as straightforward and easy-to-use as possible. At the core of that is Cintra People, where you kick-off your payroll cycle with us:

Submit your payroll data into Cintra People

Log into your secure portal and input your employee data; like new starters, leavers, salaries, bonuses, one-off payments and more. It’s user-friendly, safe, and accessible 24/7 so you always have total transparency of your payroll data.

Recalculate your payroll at the click of a button

Simply hit recalculate to see the impact of your changes. Access instant reports and variance analysis before you submit your payroll to your outsourced team—so you can catch errors early and stay in control.

Your payroll outsourcing team process & finalise payroll

Once you’re happy with your data, you submit your payroll to us for processing. Your dedicated team will handle data validation, processing, and compliance checks—keeping everything accurate and on time.

Approve payments and reports

You’ll receive a summary for your final approval, so nothing goes through without your say-so. You sign off on payments, and we’ll take care of BACS, HMRC filings, payslip generation and more—we’re here for whatever you need us for.

Access reports, payslips, and audit trails in real time

Your reports, compliance records, and payslips are all available to access whenever you need them. You’ll also have full access to historical data and payroll cycles in one central location, so you’re always in control of your outsourced payroll data.

PAYROLL OUTSOURCING BROCHURE

Find out more about Cintra’s UK outsourced payroll service, including the incredible technology we’ve invested over £10m into in the last three years.

How much does payroll outsourcing cost?

The cost of payroll outsourcing services largely depends on the size of your organisation. At Cintra, we operate on a price-per-payslip model rather than per user license, to make your services as cost effective and scalable as possible.

You’ll find that payroll outsourcing generally comes at a lower price tag than running your payroll in-house; when you factor in the cost of salaries, benefits, recruitment, training… outsourced payroll is generally more affordable than the in-house cost. It’s also much easier to budget for thanks to the per-payslip pricing.

We’re more than happy to provide you with a no-obligation quote. We just need a few details (like your headcount & any unique requirements) to generate that for you. Let us know below and we’ll create a pricing package that meets your specific needs.

What you get with Cintra's outsourced payroll

The latest technology

Our in-house engineers push software updates daily and our product team are always working on new features, so you’re always getting the best in Cintra Cloud.

In-depth payroll expertise

Your payroll is managed by a large team of CIPP-qualified payroll professionals. We’re passionate about all thing's payroll, and we’re proud of our internal expertise.

Personal customer support

We prioritise your experience with us at every single stage; from your full project implementation team, to your payrollers, to the Cintra Solvers.

Full scalability

All our payroll solutions scale and change with you. Say you need to swap to payroll software, or your headcount has doubled—we’ll meet you wherever you are.

Fully integrated payroll

Our payroll outsourcing services are fully integrated; meaning you can connect with other back-office systems like HR, expenses, and more.

Handling complexity

Our expertise and in-house software mean we’re equipped to deal with even the most complex payrolls, so you never have to worry about meeting your requirements.

The highest standards in payroll security

Add-ons to your UK outsourced payroll service

Employee Self-service

Our brand-new employee self-service portal is one of the newest and most modern apps available. Synced directly with your outsourced payroll, your teams can access full functionality from their phones:

Admin Support

Alongside your standard payroll outsourcing services, we’re here to support you with:

Processing payrolling benefits
Payment of liabilities
Pension provider payments and reporting
Employee payments via BACS and Faster Payments
P11D preparation and submission
Holiday and absence management
Timesheet claims

Payroll outsourcing services in action

Reducing Payroll Processing Costs by 40% For Brean Leisure

Brean Leisure Park's seasonal workforce means they need a payroll provider that changes and scales with them. Here's how they turned a 4-week process into 1-week, and saved 40% in payroll processing costs.

Reducing a 11-Day Payroll Process to 2-Days for Ocado

Ocado sought a partner who could take its labour-intensive payroll from a time-consuming, manual process with calculations and spreadsheets into a seamless, streamlined operation—saving them £18,000.

Providing Payroll Expertise to Small Business Rigby and Peller

With just 7 colleagues at head-office running the small retail business, Rigby and Peller don't have the payroll expertise in-house to manage payroll complexities; so we handle it for them.

How does reporting work?

You’ll be provided with a standard set of reports, and you’ll also be able to pull and customise your own reports through Cintra People. And for any additional requirements, we can build you bespoke reporting packs that give you all the information you need.

Can you support holiday and absence?

Of course. Your teams can manage their holidays and other types of leave themselves, submitting requests and viewing their upcoming time off.

Do you manage additional requirements like pension payments and payrolling benefits?

Yes! We can handle pension payments on your behalf, including BACS and Faster Payments, and we also offer a payrolling benefits service to manage that process for you. We offer a range of admin support, also including P11D preparation and submission, pension reporting, and more.

What is payroll outsourcing?

Outsourced payroll is the practice of handing over the responsibility of managing your payroll and related tasks to an external service provider, like Cintra. Instead of handling all payroll functions in-house, a specialist service provider will handle those tasks on your behalf. That includes calculations and deductions, payroll processing, employee payments, real-time information reporting, and more.

You and your team are still responsible for providing the outsourced payroll provider with all the relevant information they need to run your payroll in a timely and accurate manner. And they’ll likely provide you with an online payroll portal to do this. In that portal, you’ll need to enter data such as new starters and leavers, salary data, working hours, pension schemes, and so on. Once they’ve got all the correct information to process your payroll, they’ll take the reins and do all the complicated work around calculations, deductions, compliance, and reporting.

How secure is my data in Cintra’s portal?

Cintra is ISO27001 accredited which assures you that at every level, and in every project, information security is our number one priority.

Below is how we keep your data secure when you choose our payroll services;

Multi-factor authentication.

User security: role-based access control can be assigned on a per user basis.

Data input: all data you enter is via your secure portal, which means you avoid the risks associated with sending data and information via email.

Messaging: our integrated messaging tool allows you to securely communicate with your outsourced services team.  From within the portal, you can directly message your OSS team, upload documents, and send confidential information.

Our payroll team works with you to understand your pay cycle and provide a deadline for data submission. Data is securely submitted via our cloud portal. It is possible to import spreadsheets to input employee data at once, avoiding the data risks associated with transferring files via email.

Who will manage my payroll?

Your payroll will be fully managed by our expert payroll team which means you aren’t dependent on one person. This allows processes to be centralised and you stop you being impacted by any changes within your own business.

Will I be able to preview my team's payslips if needed?

Yes—if your team ever has a query about their payslip, you’ll be able to access it from your side too. You can check individual payslips to make sure everything looks as it should be and make live edits if needed.

What’s your timetable for payroll submissions?

We provide a predefined timetable for payroll submissions, which you’ll always have access to, to keep things as straightforward as possible. This can be customised to meet your specific needs if necessary—simply let us know!

How does your service delivery work?

You’ll have a dedicated payroll team with a payroll manager to oversee your outsourced payroll, so you always have a point of contact with a direct phone number. You’ll never get lost in general ticketing pools or have to wait multiple working days for a response. Cintra People also comes with a messaging portal for you to securely communicate and share documents, so you can keep everything centralised and avoid getting lost in emails.

Why should I choose Cintra as my payroll outsourcing provider?

We’ve been delivering professional payroll and HR solutions for over 40 years’, supporting over 1,550 customers across all sectors—with specialist payroll features to serve unique industry requirements.

What sets us apart is our best-of-breed software, developed in-house and used by our own payroll outsourcing team. There’s a continuous cycle of feedback between our in-house developers and our payrollers, and we listen carefully to our customer feedback to make changes—quickly. We’re proud of the client-led product innovation we’ve implemented. We’re always listening your needs and acting fast to make sure you get exactly what you need from our products and services.

Is payroll outsourcing cost effective?

In short, yes! When you consider the employment and training costs of running your payroll in-house, outsourcing your payroll is absolutely cost effective.

Managing an in-house payroll team means you’ll be covering costs for recruitment, training, salaries, benefits, and everything else that comes with hiring internally. And all those things are much more difficult to budget for. But with outsourcing, the fixed fee or cost per payslip make it much easier to budget for your payroll expenses.

See Cintra in action

We’ll show you Cintra’s cloud-based payroll portal, and you tell us about your needs and challenges. Together, we’ll find the perfect managed payroll service for your organisation.

Extra’s to compliment your UK outsourced payroll

HR
Outsourcing

Everything you need from an entire HR team, at a fraction of the cost—including advice, admin, compliance, and more.

Expense
Management

Simple but sophisticated expense management software bringing all your spend together in one easy platform.

HR
Software

A cloud-based, integrated HR solution that helps organisations transform their people and payroll processes within a single platform.

Ready to see a Cintra demo?