The monthly payroll scramble: How to end it

Payroll happens every month, whether you're ready for it or not. Your team needs to get paid. But to your banking app, payroll is just a series of random transfers. Your bank has no idea you're paying your team. It doesn't know this happens monthly. It doesn't know it's time-sensitive. It isn’t designed to support payroll, so you end up doing it manually.

We built payroll into Seapoint because your business account should be able to handle the regular financial processes you actually need to run, not just store money.

Sound familiar? How most founders run payroll

Your accountant does the hard part. They handle all the gross-to-net calculations, all the edge cases - someone wants bike-to-work, another person's on maternity leave, pension contributions change, tax codes adjust. They send you a PDF with the final numbers.

Then it's your turn. You manually pay each person: copy the amount from the PDF, paste into your banking app, verify with 2FA, next person.

Thirty minutes later, if you're lucky, you're done.

One founder described their setup: "Sales commission data feeds from one spreadsheet into a commission report, which gets manually transferred into the payroll Excel sheet. That gets sent to the accountant, who processes it and sends back a bank file. Then I upload that to my business account for bulk payment." Their verdict? "It's very convoluted. It's bonkers to me."

And you do this every month.

The real cost

The time adds up. But the real cost is the context switch.

Most banks won't let you schedule these payments ahead. You have to do it on the day. So you set a calendar reminder. You might be in a product meeting or on a customer call, but whatever you're doing has to stop.

Then there's the anxiety of hitting limits. One founder told us about constantly requesting temporary payment increases for payroll, increases that can take days to approve. Another described hitting their monthly outflow limit on payroll day, unable to reach a person to help resolve it. Your team is waiting to get paid, and you're stuck.

New employee joined mid-month, did the accountant include them? Someone left, did you remove them? Expense reimbursements need adding, where's that sheet?

It's extremely boring and stressful.

Why payroll software doesn't help

Platforms like BrightPay and Sage pitch self-service payroll - you can handle it yourself, no accountant needed.

These tools work fine when everything is typical. But as soon as there's an edge case, e.g. someone goes on maternity leave, wants to adjust their pension, or has a tax code change, you're digging through the software trying to figure it out.

You've removed the human expert from the loop - your accountant. It all falls on you. Get it wrong, and you're explaining to your team why their payslip is incorrect. That's scary.

Accountants charge under €100/month for payroll. It's a loss-leader to get your accounting business. Every founder I’ve encountered wants that safety blanket.

How Seapoint automates the execution layer

Seapoint is not trying to replace your accountant. Here's what we realised: payroll is a three-party process. Your employee needs to get paid. Your accountant needs to calculate it. You need to approve and execute it. But everyone's working in isolation - spreadsheets, email, PDFs flying back and forth. You become the integration layer, manually stitching it all together.

Seapoint is the collaboration space that should have always existed.

Employees onboard themselves. When someone joins your company, they log into Seapoint and provide everything needed for payroll - IBAN, tax details, birthday, address. They're onboarded to payroll without the founder collecting information through email or Google Forms.

Accountants are first-class citizens. Your accountant logs into Seapoint, sees up-to-date information for everyone, runs the payroll calculations, uploads the payslips, and sends them to the founder for approval. No more emailing PDFs. No more hoping the information is current.

Founders review and schedule. You see the payroll your accountant prepared, review it, approve it, and schedule it to run on the 26th (or whenever). Weekend or bank holiday? Seapoint adjusts to the preceding weekday automatically. You can be on a flight and payroll still runs. You don't have to remember. You don't have to be available. It just happens.

Employees get their payslips instantly. Everyone logs in, sees their payslip, knows they're getting paid. No more forwarding PDFs. No more "did you get it?" messages.

Three minutes instead of thirty. No spreadsheets. No email ping-pong. No manual copying. Just a collaboration space where everyone has their role and the process actually works.

One Seapoint customer put it: "Importing our payees was super straightforward, and now that everything's set up, running weekly payroll is much quicker and easier."

Before and after

Before:

• Accountant emails PDF on the 24th
• Set reminder for the 26th
• On the 26th, drop everything
• Manually enter each payment for 30 minutes
• Hope you don't hit a payment limit
• Hope nothing breaks

With Seapoint:

• Employee onboards themselves when they join
• Accountant prepares payroll in Seapoint with current info
• Founder reviews and schedules in 3 minutes
• Payments go out automatically on schedule
• Everyone gets their payslip instantly

The same workflow handles contractor invoices, employer-of-record bills from Remote or Deel, and vendor payments. Upload, review, schedule, done.

As another founder said: "I'm excited. It feels like I have a bird's-eye view of everything, along with some controls and actions I can take. When it comes to paying bills and payroll, this is immediately going to be a big win."

We're rolling out the full collaboration features over the next few months. The foundation - AI payroll processing, bulk payments, and scheduling - is live today.

If you're tired of being the integration layer between your team, your accountant, and your bank, open a Seapoint account.

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