Outsourced Payroll Services in Cheltenham
Gro Profit First Accountants run a dedicated payroll bureau from our office at 122 Bath Road, Cheltenham (GL53 7JX). We handle PAYE, RTI, pensions, payslips and CIS for employers across Cheltenham, Gloucester, Tewkesbury, Stroud and Cirencester — and remotely for clients right across the UK. Pricing starts from a fixed £129 a month with no hidden extras, and your payroll is run by Barbara and our in-house payroll team — not outsourced offshore, not handled by a chatbot.
Meet Barbara, your Cheltenham payroll lead
Our payroll function is led by Barbara, who has been running payroll for Cheltenham and Gloucestershire businesses for the best part of 20 years. Barbara started her career in the payroll team at Crowe UK (formerly Crowe Clark Whitehill) — one of the UK's top-10 accountancy firms — before joining a long-established Cheltenham practice, where she looked after hundreds of payroll clients across the county for almost two decades. She joined Gro to lead our payroll bureau, bringing big-firm rigour and deeply local knowledge to every pay run we process. When you outsource your payroll to us, Barbara is the person who knows your scheme, your tax codes, your pension provider, and your starters and leavers.
Why Cheltenham businesses choose us for payroll
We've been part of the Cheltenham business community for 25 years (originally as Cheltenham Tax Accountants, now Gro Profit First Accountants). That matters for two reasons. First, when something goes wrong with HMRC — a wrong tax code, a missing RTI submission, a late pension contribution — you get a real person on the phone the same day, not a ticket in a queue 200 miles away. Second, because we run our clients' bookkeeping and tax planning under the same roof, your payroll data feeds straight into your management accounts and Profit First allocations. No double entry, no version-control problems, no "the bookkeeper said one thing and the payroll provider said another".
Our Cheltenham payroll clients keep three things consistent across every pay period: payslips landing on time, RTI submissions filed before the deadline, and a single point of contact who knows your business by name. If you're hiring, we'll set up the new starter the same week. If someone leaves, we issue the P45 and deal with HMRC for you. If your pension provider changes the contribution rate, we update it without being asked.
Industries we run payroll for in Cheltenham & Gloucestershire
The mix of businesses around Cheltenham is wider than most market towns, so our payroll bureau is built to handle the lot:
- Construction & trades — combined PAYE + CIS payroll, monthly CIS300 returns, subcontractor verification, deduction statements, year-end CIS reclaims. Common across the GL postcodes — particularly groundworks, M&E contractors and small developers.
- Hospitality & leisure — Cheltenham's pubs, restaurants, hotels and racecourse-week traders. We handle weekly variable hours, tronc/tip distribution, and short-notice starters and leavers without missing a pay period.
- Retail & ecommerce — high street and Promenade retailers plus FBA and Shopify sellers across Gloucestershire. Mixed full-time / part-time / zero-hours payroll, plus seasonal headcount swings around Christmas and racing festivals.
- Professional services — solicitors, surveyors, consultancies and creative agencies in town. Salaried payroll, bonus and commission structures, salary-sacrifice pension schemes and benefits-in-kind.
- Healthcare & wellbeing — clinics, dental practices and therapists across GL50–GL53. NHS pension contributions, locum payments, and PAYE for associate practitioners.
- Manufacturing & logistics — small Gloucestershire manufacturers and distribution businesses. Shift differentials, overtime, holiday pay calculations and apprentice payroll.
What's included in our payroll service
Every Cheltenham payroll package includes: PAYE processing on weekly, fortnightly, four-weekly or monthly cycles; RTI Full Payment Submissions and Employer Payment Summaries to HMRC; professional digital payslips emailed to employees or accessed through a secure portal; pension auto-enrolment assessment, enrolment and contribution calculations (NEST, Smart Pension, The People's Pension, Standard Life, Aviva and others); statutory calculations for SSP, SMP, SPP, ShPP and SAP; new-starter and leaver processing including P45s and starter checklists; year-end P60s and P11D benefit reporting; and a named point of contact who knows your business. Bolt-ons for CIS subcontractor payroll, P11D-heavy benefits packages, salary-sacrifice schemes and tronc operation are available at fixed prices.
Outsourced vs in-house payroll: the real numbers
For a typical Cheltenham business with 10 employees, running payroll in-house usually means: 4–6 hours per pay run for the bookkeeper or office manager (so roughly 50–75 hours a year), plus £400–£600 a year for payroll software and pension portal subscriptions, plus the risk of HMRC penalties for late RTI (£100–£400 per late submission, escalating to 5% of tax due for repeat offences). HMRC issued more than £100 million in payroll-related penalties in the last year for late or incorrect submissions. Outsourcing the same payroll to our bureau costs from £129 a month all-in, removes the penalty risk, and gives you back two working weeks a year of internal time. For most owners we work with, the change pays for itself before month three.
Payroll and Profit First
Because payroll is usually the single biggest line in any business's expense allocation, we make sure your salary costs, employer NICs, pension contributions and employment taxes are all factored into your Profit First operating expense (OPEX) account — so you always know exactly what your team is costing this month and how it lands against your target allocation percentages. If your wage bill creeps up, you see it in the next allocation, not at year-end.
Visit us, call us, or get a fixed quote
You'll find our office at 122 Bath Road, Cheltenham, GL53 7JX — five minutes from the town centre, with parking and step-free access. We're open Monday to Friday, 9:00am to 5:30pm. Call our payroll team on 01242 528412, email hello@wearegro.co.uk, or book a free strategic meeting and we'll send you a fixed monthly quote within 24 hours.