Best HMRC-Integrated Payroll Software

The short answer

The best HMRC-integrated payroll software submits Real Time Information — the Full Payment Submission and Employer Payment Summary — directly to HMRC, rather than routing you to a separate tool or leaving you to key figures into the Government Gateway by hand. Mellow submits RTI directly to HMRC via GovTalk XML, with payroll included from £8 per employee per month.

What "HMRC-integrated" should mean

Every UK employer has to report payroll to HMRC in real time. Real Time Information means that each time you pay employees, you submit a Full Payment Submission (FPS), and where relevant an Employer Payment Summary (EPS).

There are three levels of "HMRC integration" software might offer, and they are not equal:

1. No integration — the software calculates payroll but you submit to HMRC separately, often by re-entering figures. Error-prone.

2. Partial integration — the software produces files or routes you to a separate payroll product to submit.

3. Direct submission — the software submits the FPS and EPS to HMRC itself, electronically, as part of the pay run.

The best HMRC-integrated payroll software does the third.

How Mellow integrates with HMRC

Mellow calculates UK payroll natively — PAYE, National Insurance, student loans, pension auto-enrolment — and submits Real Time Information directly to HMRC via GovTalk XML. The Full Payment Submission and Employer Payment Summary are generated and sent as part of the payroll process, not as a separate manual chore.

Because the calculation and the submission are the same system, the figures HMRC receives are exactly the figures the software calculated. There is no re-keying and no reconciliation gap.

What else to look for

Beyond RTI, good UK payroll software should produce P60s, P45s, and P11Ds, generate BACS files for payment, handle pension auto-enrolment, and keep an audit trail of every pay run — payroll records have to be retained for HMRC purposes.

In context

Mellow includes UK payroll with direct HMRC RTI submission in its Professional tier at £8 per employee per month, alongside the rest of the HR platform. For UK employers, direct RTI submission is the feature that separates genuinely HMRC-integrated payroll software from software that merely calculates payroll.

See Mellow pricing or the Mellow vs Deel comparison for UK employers.