Payday is a date on the calendar. Getting there can eat half the week. In a historical Moorepay case study, residential-care operator Withins described a payroll routine stretching from Monday morning to Wednesday lunchtime: calculations, reports, checking, corrections, another round of reports. The company put the total at 22 hours. After moving to Moorepay, it reported three.
That difference is a useful introduction to Moorepay, a British payroll and HR provider whose business sits between software and the people who operate it. Employees see a payslip. Behind it, employers must collect changes, resolve exceptions and get the right information into the right hands. Moorepay sells ways to shorten that journey.
The Withins account is a supplier-published customer story, not a controlled trial. Still, its appeal is wonderfully concrete. Owner Sam Shahbazi wanted more time for residents and staff. The reported improvement followed frustration with errors and unfamiliar advisers at earlier providers. Control, accessible reporting and ease of use helped persuade him to switch. Read the Withins account.
Approximately 86% less time. Historical Withins customer report; results are specific to that business.
The work hiding between two systems
A second customer makes the point from a factory floor. PP Control and Automation, a manufacturing business listed with 250 employees in its testimonial, had used an outsourced finance team alongside Sage software. It moved payroll, HR, expenses, benefits and analytics into a Moorepay solution. The attraction was less re-entry and easier access to management information.
Finance director Stewart Robertson estimated the saving at roughly one person’s working day each week, or 48 working days a year. He described using that capacity for working-capital improvements and other efficiency initiatives. Those are customer estimates, but they show how payroll spending can be judged against the cost of administrative labour. See the manufacturer’s account.
“We’ve happily saved 48 working days a year thanks to switching to Moorepay.”
Stewart Robertson
Finance Director, PP Control and Automation
The transferable lesson is to count handoffs. How often does someone copy a salary change? Who checks it? What happens when a report comes back wrong? A faster calculation helps, but removing a round of correspondence can matter just as much. That is a better starting point for a buying decision than the number of tiles on a dashboard.
A payroll engine with people attached
Moorepay offers employers software to operate themselves and a managed service that takes on processing work. In the outsourced version, customers supply information such as starters, leavers, bonuses and salary changes. Moorepay validates data and calculates pay; the customer reviews and authorises the payroll before the remaining outputs and payment steps proceed.
This division of labour matters. A managed service still needs an employer who knows what has changed and can approve the result. Moorepay’s offer includes payslips, reporting and support around payroll payments and documents. It gives a smaller organisation access to a specialist operating team without requiring it to build that entire capability internally. Explore managed payroll.
- 01Employer supplies changes
- 02Moorepay validates and calculates
- 03Employer reviews and authorises
- 04Payroll outputs and payments follow
Alongside pay, the HR suite covers employee records, onboarding, leave and workflows. Recruitment, performance, expenses and analytics extend its reach across the working year. Employees can deal with routine requests themselves, while managers get approvals and information in one place. The practical promise is fewer separate records to maintain when the same person appears in several processes. Explore the HR suite.
The human service extends beyond payroll. Moorepay advertises fixed-fee HR and employment-law support, a round-the-clock advice line, documentation and tribunal assistance. That gives its commercial offer a different texture from a software subscription alone. A manager facing a difficult employee situation may need a conversation as urgently as a form. The precise services belong in the agreed package. See the service scope.
The £7.6 million route to more HR
Moorepay began in 1966 as Douglas Moore Ltd in Surbiton. Its history includes the addition of HR and employment-law services through First Business Support and the 2012 launch of the cloud-based Moorepayhr product. Payroll was the starting point; the surrounding work gradually became part of the business. Explore Moorepay’s history.
The Natural HR acquisition made that expansion more tangible. Zellis Holdings’ 2023 accounts record Moorepay buying the business on March 8 for £7.6 million: £5.7 million in cash and £1.9 million of estimated contingent consideration. That accounting figure should not be mistaken for an all-cash payment on completion.
The accounts describe a combination of complementary capabilities: Moorepay’s payroll technology, managed processing and advice with Natural HR’s HR software. This was a purchase of product breadth. Bringing more employee administration into the same offering also gave Moorepay more to sell to an employer already relying on it for payday. The transaction is recorded in the group accounts.
Recorded consideration
Ownership adds another layer. Apax-advised funds agreed to acquire parent Zellis Group from Bain Capital in April 2024; Moorepay’s history records the acquisition that year. Apax’s investment announcement highlighted recurring revenue and customer retention across the group. Those characteristics help explain investor interest in a service employers need again every pay cycle. Read the acquisition announcement.
Then came Buddy. Reporting on September 3, 2026 said Moorepay had acquired the Malta-founded payroll platform earlier that year, with co-founder Jonathan Mifsud becoming Product Director. Existing customers were described as retaining their software and team under Moorepay branding. Moorepay’s own login page now includes a payroll option labelled “Formerly Buddy.” Read the Buddy report. View the platform choices.
The quote needs a job description
Moorepay’s main pricing page asks buyers for information so it can prepare a tailored offer. A separate HRIS landing page advertises a starting price of £1.90 per employee per month. That is a starting point for HR software, not the price of everything discussed here. Payroll processing, service scope and additional modules need their own commercial detail. Request a scoped quote. See the HRIS starting offer.
For a buyer, the useful calculation is the bill plus the work retained internally. A sensible comparison includes migration effort, training, integrations, approval time and the handling of unusual pay runs. Ask competing providers to quote against the same set of responsibilities. Otherwise, a lower number may simply describe a smaller job.
Moorepay occupies the smaller-employer side of the Zellis portfolio. In June 2025, the group described its core audience as employers with 50 to 1,000 people, while the Zellis business served larger organisations. Moorepay’s own examples also include smaller customers. The bracket is positioning, not a reason to skip a discussion about operational fit. See the group’s market description.
Sage supplies competing UK payroll products across several business sizes, including integrated HR options. Integration itself is therefore no exclusive Moorepay invention. The relevant distinction is the combination being offered: software, managed processing and specialist advice, with a particular implementation team and service agreement behind them. Buyers should compare that complete arrangement. Compare Sage’s payroll range.
Existing systems need attention too. Moorepay’s marketplace lists Microsoft 365, ProMark and Bizimply connections, using APIs or file exchange across its integration offering. A listing is a useful opening question. The demonstration should show which fields move, when they move and how an error is surfaced to the person responsible for fixing it. Browse the integrations.
A new screen still needs a good handover
Moorepay’s current payroll page describes AI-assisted implementation with human final checks, alongside automated calculations and employee self-service. The useful promise is a more manageable migration. Buyers can make that promise testable by bringing representative data and difficult exceptions into the evaluation, then asking who signs off the result. See the current payroll offering.
There is also an instructive detail in an older upgrade guide: it described a changed front-end interface with the payroll engine remaining the same. The guide noted that wider employee use could initially generate more questions. Software adoption has a workload of its own. A prettier screen does not mean everyone immediately knows where to click. Read the upgrade guide.
Recent customer reviews underline the importance of delivery. August 2026 Trustpilot entries include praise for individual support staff alongside complaints about onboarding, communication and billing. Moorepay responded to complaints by asking for details or referring issues internally. These are individual accounts, not a measured failure rate, but they put implementation and escalation firmly on the buyer’s agenda. Read customer feedback.
The company’s recruitment materials emphasise learning, inclusion and teamwork, with flexible benefits and birthdays off. Its commitments page describes two annual volunteering days through the group programme. These are public statements of employment practice; their relevance to customers lies in a straightforward dependency. Expertise has to be developed and kept if the service is to remain useful. Explore careers. See the commitments.
Moorepay’s model is most persuasive where repeated administration and access to expertise are meaningful burdens. If an employer has straightforward needs, little duplicate work and capable internal support, a broad bundle may offer fewer useful savings. If records are unreliable or approvals keep arriving late, new software still needs a better process around it.
The clearest purchasing question returns to those customer stories: what will the people running payroll stop doing, and what will they do with the time? Withins pointed to residents and staff. PP Control and Automation pointed to finance improvements. A convincing answer should be that specific. Payday will come round again soon enough.