If you're looking for something which delivers ease of use for payroll services, ADP is always there as one of the top options.
Tim Moyce,
Head of Corporate FR&A and Finance Transformation
Purplebricks
Challenges
- Existing payroll provider struggled with payroll error management and cash tracking.
- Commission could not be clearly displayed, itemised, or broken down on employee payslips.
- HR teams spent significant time manually entering data into payroll spreadsheets.
- Slow reporting processes created delays in responding to employee and HMRC queries.
- Heavy reliance on manual checks and communication with the payroll provider increased administrative workload.
How ADP Helped
- Implemented ADP iHCM payroll solution with accurate commission calculation and itemised payslips.
- Enabled a digital-first, self-service payroll experience for employees and administrators.
- Provided real-time payroll visibility, eliminating reliance on delayed PDF reports.
- Reduced manual payroll administration, allowing HR and finance teams to save time and reduce payroll-related workload.
- Improved payroll accuracy, reporting speed, and employee confidence through timely and transparent payments.
ADP Solutions
Putting Purplebricks payroll on firm foundations
Founded in 2012 and publicly launched onto the marketplace in 2014, Purplebricks is a low-cost digital or online estate agency designed to rival the traditional or ‘high street’ agents. The company delivers a commission-free, hybrid agency business model that’s disrupted the UK residential property market.
Purplebricks combines the use of an online platform and local property agents. Without its own agency network, the lower operating costs are passed onto clients who are charged a fixed fee, rather than the usual commission based on the sale price.
Today, Purplebricks is a nationally well-known name in estate agency. To date, the company has arranged the sale of property worth over £84 billion and helped around 327,000 movers to sell their homes.
Change of ownership leads to payroll rethink
In May 2023, Purplebricks was purchased by Strike, the company started by the renowned entrepreneur and Carphone Warehouse founder, Charles Dunstone.
Tim Moyce, Head of Corporate FR&A and Finance Transformation says, “As part of our due diligence following the purchase of the Purplebricks business, we looked carefully at all the company’s suppliers, including the incumbent payroll provider. We put together a business case for a change and presented it to the Chief Finance Officer (CFO), who agreed that change was needed. ADP was a good fit as Strike was already using their payroll services.”
“As a result, it was easy to get internal consensus and acceptance of the change to ADP. In addition, I’d worked with ADP in previous roles, so there was familiarity all round.”
Coping with commission
Tim and his team were experiencing a range of challenges with their previous payroll provider, which made the move to ADP more pressing. These included error management, cash tracking and, crucially, the inability of the old system to display and breakdown commission on payslips.
An estate agency is a sales orientated business where many members of staff earn both salary and commission. So, not being able to record, show and pay their commission separately, accurately and on time was a major issue. ADP’s iHCM2 Standard payroll solution enables commission to be itemised and paid correctly.
A digital solution for the digital estate agents
As one of the UK’s first and most disruptive online estate agents to fully utilise digital technology, it made sense for Purplebricks new payroll system to support their digital-first approach.
As Tim says, “ADP’s payroll solution aligns with what we’re trying to do as a business, which is to keep everything digital and available — in your hand or pocket via a mobile phone, or on your digital device or laptop. It means that both our payroll team and our employees can essentially self-serve. With the right security protocols in place, they can access the information they want and undertake the tasks they need to complete.”
“ADP gives us complete ease of use for both our internal finance team and for all our people out in the field. We get audit accountability while ultimately employee engagement gets a boost. These are the factors I have to consider alongside the cost of the solution and service.”
HR and finance teams feel the benefits of the ADP solution
Prior to implementing the new ADP solution, the Purplebricks HR team spent a significant amount of time manually inputting data into a master payroll spreadsheet. There would be a lot of back and forth with the old payroll provider.
Tim says, “Now my HR team barely have to look at payroll. There’s not that level of checking they were once required to do. And then they have a live,
real-time view of payroll they can check if they need to — there’s no waiting around for a set of PDF reports to be produced as with our previous payroll provider.”
The finance team at Purplebricks have also gained precious time thanks to the ADP solution. These time savings revolve around ease of access to, and the availability of, reports. Whether there’s a query from His Majesty’s Revenue & Customs (HMRC) or from an employee, the client team knows the reports they need and how to access them. This reinforces Tim’s earlier comment about having a payroll system that essentially empowers his team and the Purplebricks staff to self-serve.
For example, a report that might have previously taken a week to turnaround can now be done the same day and sent out to the enquirer.
As a result, Tim’s HR and finance teams have been able to reduce the headcount working on payroll, as they’re no longer wasting time on manual data entry, endless double-checking, answering queries and producing reports.
Accuracy, speed and ease have all helped to boost the employee experience
Tim sees the employee experience as vitally important, “Our people need to be able to trust what they read on their payslip. I don’t see our employees as numbers but as individuals who contribute to the success of our business. So, if we can pay them timely and accurately — with commission broken out clearly and precisely — we create a happy workforce that delivers our strategic objective of being the best estate agency in the UK.”
“ADP is always there as one of the top options …”
Tim has this advice for his peers seeking a similar solution to meet their payroll problems, “If you’re looking for something which delivers ease of use for payroll services, ADP is always there as one of the top options. Its strengths are the good quality of service and quick response times.”
“ADP are great people to work with and many of them have been with the business for a long time — that builds trust and consistency. Plus, you’ve got a small, dedicated team that are going to work with you through your challenges and know your business.”
“So, I know that if I was to be hit by bus, there’s a team that knows what we’ve been doing, knows how we work and could support anyone that comes in to fill my space.”
