The Payroll Hub

Not on its own, and it should not. Payroll in the UK has to be run through payroll software that reports to HMRC, such as Xero Payroll, BrightPay, Sage or HMRC's free Basic PAYE Tools for employers with fewer than ten staff. What AI can do well is the work before payroll: collecting timesheets, mileage and holiday requests, checking them against the rota, flagging anything odd and chasing missing submissions. In the demo, Claude prepares a draft pay run for a human to review and approve. The final check and submission stay with you or your bookkeeper.

Give staff one simple way to submit from their phone, then pull everything into one place. The free route is a Google Form or Microsoft Form feeding a spreadsheet, with a reminder sent a few days before the deadline. Rota and time-tracking apps like Deputy, Rotaready, Planday or BrightHR have clock-in and timesheets built in. The demo adds a layer on top: Claude compares each submission with the rota, flags overlaps or unusual mileage, and drafts reminders for anyone missing. The key is one deadline, one form and one place the manager checks.

It works with any payroll software that can import pay data, usually as a CSV file. The demo creates a draft pay run in Xero Payroll. BrightPay, Sage, IRIS and most other UK payroll tools accept imports, though the column layout differs, so the export needs to match your software's template. Zapier and Make can move data into some payroll tools directly. For others, a correctly formatted CSV that your bookkeeper imports is simpler and easier to check.

The cheapest version uses free tools: a Google Form for submissions, a spreadsheet with formulas to total hours and mileage, and a calendar reminder. Adding Claude to check submissions against the rota and write the reminders usually means Claude Pro at around £20 a month. A staff portal like the demo, with logins and a manager view, is a small custom build and depends on how many staff and pay rules you have. Your payroll software's own cost stays the same. Setup usually takes a week or two, mostly agreeing the rules.

It can be, with the right set-up. Pay, hours, bank details and holiday are personal data under UK GDPR, and any health notes are special category data, so limit who and what can see them. Each carer should only see their own submissions, and the manager view should be limited to the people who run payroll. Use business accounts with a data processing agreement, keep bank details inside your payroll software rather than the portal, and only pass Claude the fields it needs to check, such as hours and mileage.

The most useful checks are the boring ones: shifts that overlap, hours that do not match the rota, mileage far above someone's usual, holiday that exceeds what is left, and people who have not submitted at all. For care and cleaning businesses, travel time between visits matters too, because it can affect whether pay meets the National Minimum Wage. Mileage should be checked against the rates you have agreed, often HMRC's approved mileage rates. AI flags the oddities, but a person decides what is correct, and your accountant should confirm the rules.

Yes. My 1:1 AI implementation is done-with-you support over six weeks: we build the timesheet and payroll workflow together around the tools you already use, so you understand every step and can keep it running without me. It is not a done-for-you service, and it suits people who want to learn the skill rather than hand it off. If you would rather go it alone, the answers on this page are enough to get a first version working, and starting small is the right call either way.