ADP / Sage Payroll
Payroll platforms that calculate employee pay, deduct tax and National Insurance, submit RTI to HMRC, and generate payslips — automatically, every pay cycle.
What it is
About ADP / Sage Payroll
ADP and Sage Payroll are the two most widely used payroll platforms in UK organisations. Both automate the complete payroll run: calculating gross pay from hours worked or salary, applying PAYE tax codes and National Insurance contributions, processing statutory payments (SSP, SMP, SPP), deducting pension contributions under auto-enrolment rules, and generating the Real Time Information (RTI) submission to HMRC that is legally required on or before every pay day. Sage Payroll (part of the Sage Business Cloud suite) is the dominant solution for UK SMEs: it is HMRC-recognised, handles all UK-specific payroll legislation, and integrates with Sage Accounting for journal entries to flow automatically. ADP is the enterprise platform: it handles multi-country payroll, complex benefit administration, time and attendance tracking, and scales from 50 to 500,000+ employees. For an HR Business Partner, payroll software is the operational backbone of the employment relationship. Every salary change, contractual variation, leaver process, and new starter must be reflected in the payroll system before the cut-off date or it will not be paid correctly. The HR Business Partner is not always the person who runs payroll — in larger organisations that role sits with a dedicated payroll team — but they are the source of the data (new starter forms, P45s, contractual change letters) that the payroll run depends on. Understanding how payroll systems work prevents the most common and most damaging HR errors: an employee not paid on their first day, a leaver continuing to receive salary for three months, or a contractual pay increase appearing on the wrong date.
What you can do with it
Capabilities
Process a monthly payroll run in Sage — importing the hours file from the time-and-attendance system, reviewing the gross-to-net calculation for any employees with PAYE code changes flagged by HMRC, approving the run, and submitting the RTI FPS (Full Payment Submission) to HMRC before the payment date
Add a new starter to ADP — entering their personal details, bank account, tax code from the P45 (or using the starter checklist if no P45 is available), contract type, pay rate, pension opt-in status, and start date, then checking that the first payslip preview shows the correct pro-rated amount for a mid-month start
Process a leaver in Sage — entering the leave date, selecting the correct reason code (resignation, redundancy, dismissal), confirming that the final pay includes any accrued holiday pay, generating the P45 for the employee, and checking that the HMRC submission reflects the leaver before the pay run closes
Run an ad hoc payroll report in ADP showing total employment costs by department — gross salary, employer National Insurance contributions, employer pension contributions, and any salary sacrifice benefits — to produce the figures for a quarterly cost review
Apply a pay award in Sage to a defined group of employees — using the bulk update function to apply a percentage increase to all employees in a specific pay grade from a given effective date, then exporting the before-and-after comparison to send to the finance team for budget reconciliation
How to learn it
Learning Resources
Sage Payroll Getting Started Guide (sage.com/en-gb/support) — free; Sage's official documentation covers every UK payroll scenario including RTI submissions, pension auto-enrolment, statutory payments, and year-end processes; the self-guided learning suite on Sage University is worth completing before your first live payroll run
ADP's Learning Management System — available to ADP subscribers; ADP provides role-specific training modules for HR administrators covering new starter setup, payroll processing, and reporting
CIPP (Chartered Institute of Payroll Professionals — cipp.org.uk) — the UK's professional body for payroll; their free resources include legislative updates, IR35 guidance, and an annual calendar of payroll deadlines; the Foundation Degree and Payroll Technician Certificate are the formal qualifications for payroll professionals
HMRC's Employer guidance (gov.uk/employer-payroll) — free; the authoritative source on UK PAYE, RTI, National Insurance categories, and statutory payments; any payroll question that touches UK legislation should be checked here rather than assumed from memory
Pro Tip
Payroll is unforgiving of timing errors. The single most important discipline is knowing your payroll cut-off — the last date by which any changes (new starters, leavers, salary changes, variable pay) must be entered into the system to be processed in the current period. Anything submitted after cut-off will appear on the next payroll run. In a monthly payroll cycle this means an employee might wait six weeks for a correction. Maintain a payroll deadline calendar and confirm the cut-off date in writing with anyone who submits payroll data (managers, HR coordinators, finance).
Skills that use this tool
Roles that use this tool
Alternatives