Audience research
Payroll software survey tools in England: question sets and the systems they cover
Build a payroll software survey in England: the question set, the official sources to check, the payroll systems to name and the pilot that picks the tool.
If you are gathering evidence about payroll software in England — which systems employers run, how they file Real Time Information returns, what breaks at year end — the survey tools you choose decide what you can prove. This article covers the payroll software survey tools in England that matter: the collection platforms that record answers, the official sources that keep the questions honest, the named payroll systems a sample frame should include, the question set worth reusing, and the pilot that settles the choice.
It quotes no prices and publishes no ranking. Licence level, sample size and the contract terms you sign settle both, and a borrowed list price would not.
What counts as a payroll software survey tool
Three things do the work, and mixing them up is the commonest mistake.
- The instrument.The questionnaire itself: wording, order, answer scales, routing and the way it handles "don't know".
- The collection platform.The service that hosts the form, stores responses and exports them — Microsoft Forms, Google Forms, SurveyMonkey or Jisc Online Surveys.
- The reference sources.The registers and guidance you check answers against, so a respondent's claim is tested rather than believed.
A survey that names no payroll products produces opinions, not evidence. Answers also depend on how an employer buys and supports its system, so the commercial model behind a payroll product belongs in the design rather than in background reading.
The official sources that keep questions honest
HMRC publishes the list of payroll software recognised for Real Time Information. It is the first source to check, and the survey should ask whether the employer's product appears on it: recognition is about a product's ability to send returns, not about its quality. HMRC's own Basic PAYE Tools, free and intended for employers with nine or fewer employees, belongs in the sample frame as a category in its own right.
Automatic enrolment sits with The Pensions Regulator. Employers assess their workers, put eligible jobholders into a pension scheme and send a declaration of compliance, so the questionnaire should ask about assessment, contribution files and that declaration.
Data protection sits with the Information Commissioner's Office, under the UK GDPR and the Data Protection Act 2018, which apply across the United Kingdom. Record a lawful basis before the first response, tell participants what will happen to their answers, and run a data protection impact assessment where the processing is likely to be high risk. Absence data that reveals illness is health data, so it counts as special category data and needs a further condition for processing. Qualifying breaches must be reported to the ICO, so put that route in the project plan.
GOV.UK carries the operational detail the questions will lean on — Full Payment Submissions, Employer Payment Summaries, P60s, P45s and P11D benefit reporting. Government service research guidance is consistent that the method follows the research question and that survey work generally needs far more participants than a small interview round.
Before answers go into a table, fix the payroll metrics you intend to compare, so the form collects them in a usable shape.
The payroll systems a sample frame should name
A payroll survey in England is only as good as the list it samples from. The products below span in-house software, cloud accounting with payroll attached, bureau and managed services, and HMRC's free tool. Each row shows the question that product should trigger.
| Product | What it is | Question it should trigger |
|---|---|---|
| Sage Payroll | Long-established UK payroll software | Run in-house, or through an accountant or bureau? |
| IRIS | Payroll software and services for employers and practices | Who holds the payroll licence — employer or agent? |
| Xero Payroll | Payroll inside a cloud accounting platform | Is payroll part of the accounting subscription? |
| QuickBooks payroll | Payroll inside a cloud accounting platform | One system for accounts and payroll, or two? |
| BrightPay | Payroll software used by small employers and bureaux | A single employer, or many payrolls? |
| Moneysoft Payroll Manager | Desktop payroll for small employers and bureaux | Desktop, and who applies the updates? |
| MHR | HR and payroll software, plus managed payroll | Which modules are live, and who runs them? |
| Moorepay | Payroll software and managed payroll services | What stays in-house? |
| ADP | Outsourced payroll and HR services | Which payroll tasks remain with the employer? |
| HMRC Basic PAYE Tools | HMRC's free payroll tool for very small employers | Used alone, or alongside paid software? |
If the results will feed a payroll software comparison, fix the product list before the form is built. Otherwise respondents name whatever comes to mind and the answers cannot be tabulated.
The question set worth reusing
A questionnaire built for payroll research in England should carry at least these questions.
- Which payroll product and which version or release channel does the employer run?
- Is payroll handled in-house, shared with HR or finance, or outsourced to a bureau or agent?
- Does the product appear on HMRC's list of software recognised for Real Time Information?
- How are Full Payment Submissions and Employer Payment Summaries sent, and who checks HMRC's responses?
- How are corrections, amended submissions and prior-year errors handled?
- How is automatic enrolment assessed, and how are contribution files sent to the pension provider?
- Which statutory payments are processedsick pay, maternity, paternity, shared parental, adoption and parental bereavement pay?
- What happens at year endP60s, P45s and P11D benefit reporting?
- What changed in the last software migration, and what broke?
- Who supports payroll on a pay run day, and how quickly does a response arrive?
Keep closed questions closed, separate what a respondent knows from what they believe about their own system, and never put the expected answer inside the question.
Recording the answers: four collection platforms
Microsoft Forms comes with a work or school Microsoft 365 subscription and is not sold on its own, so the licence, storage and retention you get are those of the tenancy you already run. Group-form results can be opened in Excel from the owning team site. Verify the licence level, form ownership, retention and tenant configuration before collecting anything.
Microsoft Forms governance checks
- Verify organisation's licence
- Check respondent access
- Confirm retention settings
- Review tenant configuration
- Confirm payroll research use approved
Google Forms is free with a personal Google account and is included with Google Workspace, where the management controls live. Responses can be read inside the form or collected into a linked Google Sheet, which keeps the analysis in a spreadsheet most payroll teams already use. Check the account type, ownership, whether external responses are allowed, where data is stored and what happens to the form when its owner leaves.
Google Forms setup checks
- Check account type
- Confirm ownership
- Review external-response settings
- Verify data location requirements
- Plan offboarding
SurveyMonkey is an independent subscription service with a free plan and paid tiers. Question logic, routing, export rights, response caps and team permissions are set by plan, so read the current plan comparison on SurveyMonkey's own site, and keep the right to view responses separate from the right to export them.
Jisc Online Surveys is run by Jisc, the UK body for technology in education and research. Jisc decides which organisations receive free access and what other bodies pay, so confirm eligibility and current terms with Jisc directly. It suits structured research programmes that need respondent lists, controlled invitations and statistical exports.
Whichever platform you pick, the quality checks used for payroll software apply to a questionnaire too: accessible labels, predictable navigation, honest wording and an export that reproduces the totals the tool displays.
Run the pilot that decides
Build the same short version of the questionnaire in every shortlisted platform and complete it yourself with dummy data — never live payroll records.
- Test keyboard navigation, screen-reader labels, mobile layout, branching and required fields.
- Check the withdrawal wording and how partial responses appear.
- Export the results and confirm your analysis reproduces the totals the tool displays.
- Note how deleted responses, duplicate submissions and missing values are recorded.
- Ask the data protection and security owners to review the configured service rather than a marketing page, and date their sign-off.
Invite colleagues for mechanical testing only. Their answers are not study data, and they are no substitute for real payroll users. The pilot is also where you learn whether the instrument can carry a comparison at all, which is the same discipline set out in payroll software review methods.
Before you act
- Confirm the research question and the number of responses you need.
- Check the product list against HMRC's software recognition list.
- Record the lawful basis, retention period and who may see the responses.
- Note the licence, ownership, storage location and export route for each platform.
- Run the same test survey in every option, with dummy data.
- Log what breaks and date the decision sheet.
Common questions
Do I need the ICO's approval to survey payroll teams?
No. The ICO does not approve surveys. You need a lawful basis under the UK GDPR, a clear privacy notice, and a data protection impact assessment where the processing is likely to be high risk.
Which collection platform should a payroll software review use?
It depends on the study and the tenancy. Microsoft Forms suits organisations already inside a Microsoft 365 tenancy, Google Forms suits simple collaborative questionnaires, SurveyMonkey's paid plans add routing for larger studies, and Jisc Online Surveys suits research teams that need respondent lists and controlled invitations.
Can a free survey tool be used for payroll research?
Yes, if it meets your governance requirements. Free access does not remove the lawful basis, retention or security duties, and free plans often restrict export, logic or team access, so test the free plan with dummy data first.
What must never go into a pilot survey?
Live payroll records and other real employee data. Test the mechanics with dummy answers, then keep the same discipline in the live study: collect only what the research question needs.
