To help organisations meet two of the largest and most complex legislative changes in recent years, MidlandHR has launched its Real Time Information (RTI) and auto-enrolment (AE) ready solution.
The RTI and Pensions Reform initiatives are part of the coalition government’s move towards resolving the imbalance between Government income and expenditure: RTI making a contribution by speeding up and improving the accuracy of PAYE receipts; and auto enrolment towards boosting the funding of pensions. The result is one of the biggest, most complex and labour-intensive software developments MidlandHR has ever undertaken.
10.7.05 is the latest version of MidlandHR’s single, integrated solution for HR, payroll, talent management and workforce planning. MidlandHR’s managing director, Declan McGrath explains: “We’ve invested considerable resources in enhancing iTrent to meet new legislative changes, reducing administrative time and cost and minimising set up and configuration costs. Backed up by our best practice consultancy, outsourcing and learning services, we’re really pleased to offer our customers an approved solution to deal with the increased employer duties that will be placed on their operations in 2013.
“Over the last 24 months, MidlandHR has actively participated in various consultation exercises with HMRC and DWP and was instrumental in helping to shape and influence legislative change. This proactive engagement early on in the process provided a thorough understanding of the business impact concerning the new legislation and allowed MidlandHR to engage with and represent the customer community to ensure any changes were practical and realistic. It has also enabled us to design iTrent 10.7.05 with the customer experience in mind.”
iTrent 10.7.05’s advanced functionality minimises the risk and impact of RTI with the inbuilt HMRC RTI schema, for example, checking employers’ RTI submissions before they are submitted to HMRC. This reduces the delay and costs associated with submitting invalid or incorrect information. MidlandHR already has 11 customers that went live on the HMRC’s RTI pilot earlier this year, involving around 40,000 employees and pensioners across 20 payrolls.
The new version of iTrent also fully addresses the complexities of the upcoming Pensions Reform legislation, with users able to access and view all the relevant information they need on summary screens. With the flexibility to accommodate different approaches to the assessment and enrolment process, iTrent users can choose the most appropriate route to meet their own business needs, either undertaking the workforce assessment and auto enrolment separately or as one process.
McGrath continues: “Behind the scenes, auto enrolment has required a lot of complex changes and developments to accommodate all the configurations, options and policies that organisations can choose. Despite this level of complexity, we have remained focused on delivering a solution that is designed for ease of use, minimising the on-going administrative burden of the new legislation.
“We have worked very closely with our customers, through the pilot programmes and customer reference groups, to ensure that our new RTI and auto enrolment functionality meets their needs and, crucially, the needs of the wide range of sectors that we operate in.”
In addition to RTI and Pensions Reform, the latest version of iTrent includes a number of other enhancements, in areas such as Absence, Learning, Employee Self-Service, Performance Management and Recruitment. These will further improve user experience and ensure it continues to save organisations time and money.
