Pay part-time staff properly, keep trustees and auditors happy, and claim everything you are entitled to, on a budget your funders will not question.
Grace Adeyemi · Youth programme · £18,000 a year
Department breakdown
Costs by project or fund, every month
A registered charity that employs staff is an employer like any other in HMRC’s eyes. PAYE, Real Time Information, workplace pension auto-enrolment and statutory pay all apply in full. What is different is the context: part-time and variable hours, trustees who are personally responsible for the numbers, funders who want staff costs allocated to the right project, and a budget line for software that has to be justified.
PayAdjust is priced for small teams and built to be run by whoever has the job this year. £15/month covers up to 10 staff with every feature. Costs can be broken down by department, which charities use for projects or restricted funds. Every change is in an audit log that trustees and auditors can read, and Employment Allowance, which most charities can claim, is filed on your EPS in one click.
£15/month with every feature, and lower on annual billing. A charity with four part-time staff pays the same base price as a business with ten.
Assign each employee to a department and see payroll cost, headcount and average salary per department, every month, for funder reports.
Every edit, approval and HMRC submission is logged with who did it and when. Give a trustee or your independent examiner read access to the real thing.
Charities are generally eligible for Employment Allowance against employer National Insurance. Tick the box and PayAdjust files the claim with HMRC.
The obligations are standard. The patterns, part-time hours, grant-funded posts and volunteer boundaries, are what make charity payroll its own thing.
Salaries are entered as annual amounts, and mid-month starters and leavers are pro-rated automatically. Extra hours are logged by the employee as overtime and approved by you.
Each employee is assessed against the earnings trigger every month, so someone who crosses the threshold with extra hours is picked up. Entitled workers who ask to join are handled too.
Department breakdown reports show gross pay, employer NI and pension per department, exportable as CSV for restricted-fund reporting.
Sick, maternity, paternity, adoption and parental bereavement pay from the dates, with recovery and small employers’ relief claimed on your EPS.
Employee expense claims with receipts are approved and reimbursed through payroll. Volunteers are not employees and stay outside it.
Trustees or your examiner can be given admin access to see pay runs, reports and the audit log directly, rather than receiving spreadsheets.
Payroll records, submissions and HMRC marks are retained with the six-year rule applied, and personal data can be exported or erased in line with UK GDPR.
Invite employees by email. They fill in their own address, NI number and bank details, so you never chase a form.
Create the month and every payslip is calculated: PAYE, National Insurance, pension, student loans and statutory pay.
Release payslips for preview. Employees see their pay before payday and can adjust pension contributions with live tax impact.
Approve the run, file the FPS with HMRC in one click, download the BACS file and pension schedule. Done until next month.
Everything included
Includes 10 employees, then £2/month each. Pay annually and save 40%.
| Employees | Monthly | Annual |
|---|---|---|
| 4 | £15/mo | £108/yr |
| 10 | £15/mo | £108/yr |
| 20 | £35/mo | £288/yr |
Most small charities sit inside the included seats. Annual billing is the cheaper option if your budget is set once a year.
Full pricing detailsThere is no charity exemption from PAYE or from Real Time Information. If you pay anyone a salary, you register as an employer, deduct tax and National Insurance, file an FPS on or before each payday, and assess staff for a workplace pension. Trustees are usually unpaid and outside payroll; where a trustee is paid for services under the charity’s governing document, that payment may need to go through PAYE, so take advice.
Volunteers are not employees. Reimbursing their actual out-of-pocket expenses does not create employment and does not go through payroll. Paying them a flat amount that exceeds their expenses can, which is why charities keep a clear line between the two.
Employment Allowance reduces the employer National Insurance you pay each year. Charities, including community amateur sports clubs, are eligible unless excluded for another reason, and for a small charity it can wipe out the employer NI bill entirely. The claim is made on an Employer Payment Summary once per tax year. In PayAdjust you tick the box in your HMRC settings and file the claim in one click; the allowance is then applied against your monthly liability automatically.
Funders want to know what a grant paid for, and trustees are responsible for the accounts. Assigning each employee to a department lets you report payroll cost per project or fund each month, including employer NI and pension, which is the figure that belongs in a full-cost recovery calculation. The employer cost report gives the all-in figure for the organisation, and everything exports to CSV for your accounts package or your independent examiner.
Most charity staff are part-time, and many have hours that change with funding. PayAdjust takes an annual salary and pro-rates mid-month starts and leavers automatically. Extra hours are logged as overtime by the employee, approved by you, and paid on the next payslip. Because auto-enrolment is assessed every month, someone who crosses the earnings trigger with extra hours is picked up rather than missed.
PayAdjust runs monthly pay periods, so if your staff are paid weekly it is not the right tool. Payroll Giving (Give As You Earn) deductions are not supported. Gift Aid is not a payroll matter. If your charity has more than a hundred staff or complex multi-employer arrangements, you will want something built for that scale.
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Set up in an hour, file with HMRC in one click, and give your people a payslip they can read.
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