Success story
How Penfold helped Metcalf’s Accountancy Services save their clients money
“Moving to Penfold involved a couple of Zoom meetings. Then, after everything was all set up, if I ever face issues, I email my account manager and almost always get a response within the hour.”
- Caroline Metcalf, Director at Metcalf’s Accountancy Services
Inspired by Caroline's journey with Penfold? Your path to efficient and hassle-free payroll begins with a single click: Speak to our team!
Meet Metcalf’s Accountancy Services
Metcalf’s handles payroll, VAT, bookkeeping, and year-end accounts for small businesses, sole traders, and contractors in the North East. They aim to remove the stress clients feel at the end of every tax year by offering clear, cost-effective tax return and payroll services. To do this, Metcalf’s relies on partners that help simplify their own process.
After struggling to justify Smart Pension’s monthly fee for employers to her clients, Metcalf's Accountancy Services partnered with Penfold, who never charge employer fees. We spoke to Caroline Metcalf, Director at Metcalf’s Accountancy Services, about her experience switching pension providers.
The issue
Since Caroline started to work with Smart Pension, the provider has introduced employer fees for her clients, and more recently, raised them again.
Caroline found these fees difficult to justify to her portfolio of clients and began to struggle with Smart Pension’s approach to communication, too. Whenever issues came up, or clarifications were needed, Smart Pension took a long time to respond. Caroline explained,
“I’d email them, and then they email back in a couple of days, and then I’d click on a link, and then I’d have to sign in to read their reply. It was a bit of a nightmare.”
Enter Penfold
Caroline was initially attracted to Penfold because there was no monthly fee for her clients. But aside from Penfold’s fee-free promise, communicating with Penfold was a breeze from the start:
“Moving to Penfold involved a couple of Zoom meetings. Then, after everything was all set up, if I ever face issues, I email my account manager and almost always get a response within the hour.”
She continued,
“With Smart, there was barely any support with onboarding. I remember setting it up online and connecting it to my payroll software without speaking to anyone. When I wanted to move the pension scheme, I had to fill out a form. It would have been nice if somebody contacted me, but it seemed like they were too big to care.”
Benefits
One unexpected benefit Caroline experienced was the quality of service Penfold’s team offers. These reminders from Penfold go above and beyond to make Caroline’s life easier and help make sure nothing gets missed:
“They send reminders for overdue actions and ensure everything's submitted on time. For instance, I was swamped last week and forgot to process wages – I just completely forgot. Penfold actually emailed me about the missing pension contribution files and saved me from forgetting to issue wages.”
She also found Penfold's platform to be very intuitive:
“The platform gives me easy access to all my clients – then I can process their pension contributions right there. That's really easy and straightforward from my point of view.”
This helps her clients’ employees actively track their pensions, a feature she has noticed has become much more popular:
“People are more involved with their pensions nowadays. When I was younger, none of my friends even thought about it. But today, if you’re fresh out of college and starting your first job, you’re eager to understand your pension's growth over your working years.”
Results
Switching to Penfold has made pensions simpler to manage and more affordable for Caroline’s firm and her clients. She knows that her clients aren’t paying over the odds for their pension scheme, and that they receive the support they need from Penfold directly.
Meanwhile, Penfold’s user-friendly platform and quick communication help Caroline spend less time on admin and more time on high-value tasks, like ensuring her clients’ employees get paid quickly.
Ready to transform your payroll experience and offer a more enhanced pension service like Metcalf did with Penfold? Speak to our team and explore how Penfold can elevate your pension offerings.
