A per-payslip price is not a quote
A prospect asks for a quote for twenty staff. On paper, it is your per-payslip rate times twenty. Then you find out they are paid weekly, half are on variable hours from a rota system, there are three pension schemes, a salary sacrifice arrangement and a couple of company cars. The effort is several times what a monthly salaried payroll of twenty would take.
If the quote was already given, you are now running an expensive payroll for a cheap fee. If it was not, you are trying to price all of that from memory, and a colleague would probably come up with a different number.
Why bureau quotes drift
The effort in a payroll sits in its complications, not its headcount. Frequency multiplies the work. Variable hours add intake and checking. Each extra pay element, pension scheme or benefit adds setup and ongoing effort. Starters and leavers volume matters. None of these are captured by a single per-payslip price, and each person quoting weights them differently.
Rate cards also age. Extras that were fairly priced years ago may now be much more work, and new services, such as more complex holiday pay calculations, are not on the card at all.
What inconsistent quoting costs
Underpriced payrolls take the most administrator time and make the least money. Overpriced ones are lost to competitors. Clients who compare notes find differences they cannot understand. And quoting depends on one or two senior people, so enquiries wait.
| Driver | Why it changes the effort |
|---|---|
| Pay frequency | Weekly means many more runs than monthly |
| Variable hours and overtime | Data intake and checking each run |
| Starters and leavers | Setup, documents and final pay |
| Pension schemes | Uploads and changes per scheme |
| Benefits and salary sacrifice | Extra elements and year-end work |
| Multiple PAYE schemes or sites | Separate runs and reports |
How we build a bureau quote calculator
- We capture your pricing approach as explicit rules: base rate per payslip by frequency, and charges or weightings for each complication.
- The discovery form asks every prospect the same questions, and can be sent to them before a call.
- The calculator produces a fee with a clear breakdown, so the person quoting sees what drives it and the prospect can understand it.
- It compares with existing clients of similar profile, using run counts, employee counts and element counts from your payroll software, and shows what they pay.
- The person quoting can adjust the price, with a reason recorded.
- The accepted quote generates a proposal and stores the assumptions against the client, so later changes in headcount or complexity can be compared with what was quoted.
Your rate card stays in a settings screen you control. When you change a rate, new quotes use it and old quotes keep the rates they were priced on.
Setup work is priced separately where you charge for it. Taking on a payroll mid-year, importing year-to-date figures, configuring pay elements and connecting pension schemes is real effort, and the calculator asks about it rather than letting it disappear into the monthly fee.
Quotes anyone can defend
Similar payrolls get similar prices, because the same questions and rules apply. More of the team can quote routine enquiries, so prospects hear back sooner. Complex payrolls are priced for their complexity. And every client's fee has a written basis, which makes future fee reviews much easier to explain.
Is your quoting inconsistent?
- Your fee is mostly a per-payslip rate with extras added from memory.
- Only senior staff feel able to quote.
- Some clients cost far more to run than they pay.
- Your rate card has not been reviewed in years.
- You cannot say what assumptions a client's fee was based on.