UK · Payroll & compliance
UK Review Moneysoft
Moneysoft Payroll Manager has a loyal following among UK accountants and payroll bureaux who have run client payrolls on it for years. It is not glamorous. It has not launched a cloud product.
It does not integrate with Xero or push journals automatically. What it does is process HMRC-compliant payroll for multiple clients, including CIS and P11D, at a flat annual price that tops out at £285+VAT for any number of clients regardless of headcount.
It does that without breaking or requiring an annual migration. The trade-off is that none of that reliability lives in the cloud.
In 2026 that proposition is under pressure from two directions. BrightPay has completed its cloud transition and is actively upgrading its bureau feature set. And Moneysoft’s desktop-only architecture means every user is now dependent on a supported Windows 11 machine.
Windows 10 compatibility ended April 2026.
If your practice has not addressed that yet, it affects your payroll compliance position. This review covers what the Moneysoft product page assumes you already know.
Should you choose Moneysoft?
Pricing and features reviewed April 2026
What is Moneysoft Payroll Manager?
Moneysoft Payroll Manager is a Windows desktop payroll application designed for UK small businesses, accountants, payroll agents, and CIS contractors.
It has been on the HMRC-recognised payroll software list since the RTI era (Real Time Information, the system of reporting pay to HMRC on or before each payday) began in 2013, and the product has accumulated a large base of bureau and practice users who have run it without incident for years.
The software covers the full UK payroll compliance stack: Real Time Information submissions to HMRC, auto-enrolment pension processing, Construction Industry Scheme returns, P11D expenses and benefits reporting, and statutory payment calculations.
CIS and P11D are included in the multi-company licences at no extra cost, a meaningful distinction from competitors who either price these as add-ons or simply do not support them at this tier.
What Moneysoft is not: a cloud product, a multi-user platform, or a system with accounting integrations. You run it on a Windows machine, one user at a time, and you export data manually if your accounting system needs it.
That architecture has defined both its appeal and its ceiling for two decades.
Who is Moneysoft best for?
The product’s strongest fit is with two buyer types, and the line between them is drawn at the PM100 tier.
Small accountancy practices and payroll bureaux processing payroll for multiple SME clients are Moneysoft’s core market.
The PM100 and PM250 licences (£190 and £285+VAT per year) allow unlimited client companies with no per-client charge.
If you are running 20 client payrolls, the maths is stark: £190 per year versus Sage’s per-employer or per-employee subscription model.
AccountingWEB practitioners cite Moneysoft regularly as the most cost-efficient route for bureau work, with some stating it outperforms Sage and Pegasus on functionality per pound.
Small employers with 1–20 employees who want HMRC-compliant payroll at the lowest annual cost. The PM20 licence at £95+VAT per year covers one company with up to 20 employees, including all compliance updates.
If your headcount is stable and your Finance team does not expect integrated reporting dashboards, this is a hard-to-beat entry point.
CIS contractors and subcontractors running the Construction Industry Scheme represent a third distinct buyer.
Moneysoft’s CIS features (subcontractor verification, CIS 300 monthly returns, payment certificates) are built in rather than bolted on, which matters when you are filing monthly returns and issuing certificates across multiple subbies.
Our Construction Industry Scheme guide covers the compliance obligations this software addresses.
Who should avoid Moneysoft?
Four situations turn Moneysoft from a bargain into a daily friction. If any of these describes your practice, the savings will not hold.
If your practice or team needs remote access to payroll data, Moneysoft cannot provide it natively. The software is installed on a single Windows machine and does not have a browser-based version.
Some users work around this via Dropbox or remote desktop tools, but that is a workaround, not a supported architecture.
If your team has staff working remotely on payroll processing, you will hit this ceiling within weeks.
If your clients or employer HR team expects employee self-service (payslip portal, leave requests, document access), Moneysoft does not offer this at any tier. BrightPay Cloud, Sage Payroll, and Xero Payroll all provide employee-facing portals.
For employers whose staff expect digital payslip access as standard, the absence of a self-service module is increasingly difficult to justify.
If your practice uses Xero or QuickBooks for client accounting and wants automatic journal posting, Moneysoft has no integration pathway. You will export data and import it manually. At low client volumes this is manageable.
At 40+ clients it becomes a recurring time cost that erodes the licensing savings.
Finally, if you are still running Windows 10 machines in your practice, Moneysoft will not support RTI submissions beyond April 2026 on that OS. Upgrading to Windows 11 before the next payroll run is not optional.
It is a compliance prerequisite.
How much does Moneysoft Payroll Manager cost?
Moneysoft uses a three-tier model with no hidden add-ons for core functionality, which means the headline price is the price you pay. All prices are annual licences excluding VAT.
| Tier | Annual price (ex. VAT) | Companies | Employees per company |
|---|---|---|---|
| Payroll Manager 20 | £95 | 1 | Up to 20 |
| Payroll Manager 100 | £180 | Unlimited | Up to 100 per company |
| Payroll Manager 250 | £285 | Unlimited | Up to 250 per company |
Source: Moneysoft.co.uk pricing page, verified April 2026. Annual licences excluding VAT. Includes all updates and email support.
The pricing model does not fluctuate with headcount. If you are an accountant managing 15 clients each with 10 employees, your cost is £190 per year whether those clients have 8 employees or 80.
That predictability is rare in this market, and it is the single strongest argument for Moneysoft in a Finance conversation where you need to defend software spend.
One genuine friction point: the annual model is inflexible in the other direction too. If you buy a PM100 licence and your largest client has 95 employees at the start of the year, you are priced correctly.
But if you need to onboard a new client mid-year with 110 employees, you must upgrade to PM250 immediately and pay the difference.
Moneysoft does not refund unused months when you upgrade, and leavers counted during the tax year cannot reduce your licence tier until the following year.
Is Moneysoft affordable compared to competitors?
At the bureau level, comfortably so.
PM100 at £190/year is materially cheaper than BrightPay Cloud’s bureau pricing (which requires the interactive calculator to quote but has moved away from the flat-annual model), and dramatically cheaper than Sage’s per-employer subscription at this scale.
For a practice processing 20–30 client payrolls, the annual saving over Sage can easily exceed £1,000. The caveat is that you are accepting desktop-only, no integrations, and no employee portal as part of that deal.
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Moneysoft’s pricing model is genuinely different from everything else in the market. £190 for unlimited clients, all at a flat annual rate, with CIS and P11D included, is an offer that has no direct equivalent.
The question is whether the operational constraints that come with it (desktop-only, single-user, no integrations) are constraints your practice can absorb or constraints that will create pain within 12 months.
For practices with a stable Windows 11 workstation, a single payroll operator, and clients who do not expect employee self-service, those constraints are manageable.
For practices growing toward remote working, multi-staff payroll processing, or client portals, the cost savings will be offset by workarounds before long.
What does Moneysoft give you at each tier?
Moneysoft’s feature set is narrower than BrightPay or Sage but deeper in specific areas, particularly CIS and P11D, than most similarly priced tools. Here is what each tier actually delivers.
RTI submissions and HMRC compliance
RTI submissions to HMRC (Full Payment Submissions and Employer Payment Summaries) are handled directly within the software. All three tiers support RTI filing for their licensed companies.
The PM100 and PM250 tiers add bulk RTI filing for agents: you can file across multiple client companies in a single batch run rather than processing each submission individually.
For a bureau running 20 client payrolls on weekly or monthly schedules, that batch capability saves material time at each pay cycle.
Moneysoft consistently updates the software ahead of each tax year. The 2026/27 version was available in advance of April 6 with SSP changes from April 2026 already incorporated.
If you have been burned by a competitor releasing late tax year updates in the first week of April, Moneysoft’s track record on this is solid.
Construction Industry Scheme
CIS support is a genuine differentiator.
Moneysoft handles the full CIS workflow: online subcontractor verification requests to HMRC, automatic CIS deduction calculations based on verification status, VAT and material cost recording, monthly CIS 300 returns filed electronically, and payment certificates issued to subcontractors.
These are standard features in the multi-company licences, not add-ons.
BrightPay Cloud’s CIS functionality was being built out during the 2025/26 transition year. Moneysoft’s CIS has been live and tested for years. For accountants running CIS-heavy construction sector clients, that maturity difference is not trivial.
Our CIS compliance guide covers the monthly return obligations this feature addresses.
P11D and expenses
P11D Expenses and Benefits reporting is included at no extra cost in PM100 and PM250. This covers Class 1A NIC calculations, car benefit calculations, P46-Car submissions, and online P11D(b) filing.
Most payroll-only tools either omit P11D entirely or price it as a separate module.
Moneysoft’s inclusion of P11D in the bureau licences means a practice handling both payroll and benefits-in-kind reporting for clients does not need a separate system for either. For a practice billing benefits-in-kind work each summer, that is one fewer licence to buy and one fewer system to reconcile.
Auto-enrolment
The auto-enrolment workflow covers eligibility assessment, contribution calculations, postponement notices, employee communications, and pension provider submissions for NEST, The People’s Pension, and Smart Pension. Re-enrolment triggers are handled within the system.
For a practice managing clients at different stages of their re-enrolment cycle, the tracking tools reduce the risk of missed staging dates that can result in regulatory penalties.
Payroll year-end
P60 production, final FPS submissions, employer payment summaries, and payroll year-end filings are handled within the software.
The system maintains payroll history by employee, which matters for the kind of edge cases that accountants encounter regularly with legacy clients: backdated pay awards, statutory payment calculations spanning two tax years.
What Moneysoft does not have
No cloud access. No multi-user logins. No employee self-service portal.
No payslip distribution by email from within the system (you generate PDFs and send them yourself). No integration with Xero, Sage, QuickBooks, or any other accounting platform. No live chat support.
Phone support exists (08456 444 555, 9am-4pm Mon-Fri) but is scoped to program issues only. Licensing, HMRC credentials, and backup queries are email-only. Response times during peak periods are a recurring concern in user reviews.
Feature comparison
Moneysoft PM100 vs BrightPay Cloud bureau (April 2026)
Moneysoft includes: CIS 300 returns, P11D filing, bulk RTI, unlimited clients. Price: £190+VAT/year. BrightPay Cloud includes: employee self-service portal, cloud access, Xero/Sage/QuickBooks integrations, multi-user.
Price: calculator-based, varies by employer and employee count.
For practices where CIS and P11D are routine and remote access is not required, Moneysoft’s £190 flat rate is the harder number to argue against.
For practices where remote working, employee portals, or accounting integrations are already in scope, BrightPay Cloud’s pricing needs to be computed specifically.
It may still be justified.
Is Moneysoft trustworthy?
For HMRC compliance purposes, Moneysoft has a long track record. It has been on the HMRC recognised payroll software list throughout the RTI era and has consistently released tax year updates ahead of April 6.
There are no known compliance failures or regulatory incidents on record from our research. On the regulator-facing question, then, Moneysoft is a safe pair of hands. The risk sits elsewhere.
The Windows dependency risk
The most concrete trust issue is operational rather than regulatory. Moneysoft’s RTI submissions depend on HMRC’s server security configuration accepting connections from the underlying Windows environment.
When HMRC updated its security ciphers in May 2024, users running Windows 8 found their submissions blocked overnight. Microsoft ended Windows 10 mainstream support in October 2025.
Moneysoft has confirmed that Payroll Manager will not support RTI submissions on Windows 10 after April 2026.
If your practice machines are running Windows 11, this risk is currently managed. If any machine is still on Windows 10, you are running a compliance exposure that could block a Friday submission with no immediate fix available. This is not theoretical.
It is the same failure mode that caught Windows 8 users in 2024.
Data residency and backup
Because Moneysoft is desktop-based, payroll data lives on your own hardware, or wherever you store your files. There is no cloud backup built in. Practices using Moneysoft need their own backup regime.
This is actually an advantage for some procurement functions: payroll data never leaves your own infrastructure.
For most buyers the operational risk of a local backup failure outweighs the data sovereignty benefit, but for clients with strict data residency requirements, the on-premise model is genuinely preferable.
Support quality
Phone support is available on 08456 444 555 (9am-4pm Mon-Fri) but is limited to program issues. Licensing, HMRC credentials, and backup queries are handled by email only. User reviews are split. Long-term users report prompt, knowledgeable responses.
Others describe slow turnaround during busy periods and describe the support experience as below expectations for software handling regulated compliance work.
For any practice where a payroll query on a pay-run day needs a same-hour resolution, the limited phone scope and email-only fallback is a real operational risk. Build a fallback plan before you need it.
What do Moneysoft customers actually say?
Reviews are polarised between two groups who have very different experiences of the same product. That split is worth understanding before you rely on an aggregate score.
What customers like
The strongest praise comes from accountants and bureau operators who have used Moneysoft for multiple years. They cite clean interface logic (despite the dated visual design), reliable RTI submission, low annual cost, and the inclusion of CIS and P11D without additional licence fees.
AccountingWEB contributors have described it as functionally superior to Sage and Pegasus for bureau payroll, a claim grounded in workflow efficiency rather than features on a checklist.
Value for money is the most consistent theme across Capterra reviews. Users regularly describe Moneysoft as saving them several hundred to several thousand pounds per year versus alternatives they had previously used.
The low price does not appear to come at the cost of core payroll accuracy for those buyers.
Common complaints
Support quality is the most frequent complaint. Some reviewers describe support as slow to respond and unhelpful when the issue was not resolved by standard documentation.
Given that phone support is scoped to program issues and many queries fall back to email, this is a structural limitation rather than an anomaly.
If your contract renewal involves a checklist that includes “24/7 phone support”, Moneysoft will not pass it.
The annual pricing model draws complaints about inflexibility: buying a licence for a headcount that is projected rather than confirmed, inability to downgrade mid-year, and no refund for employee leavers counted against the annual limit. This is not unique to Moneysoft.
Most annual software licences work this way.
But the lack of monthly billing as an alternative makes it harder to manage for practices with fluctuating client rosters.
Capterra summary
Capterra reviews for Payroll Manager show a clear split: users who have grown the product into their practice workflow rate it highly on value and functionality; users who encountered the desktop limitations or support delays rate it poorly.
The volume of reviews is lower than BrightPay (which has 700+ verified reviews).
That smaller dataset means aggregate scores should be read with more caution than the qualitative themes behind them.
What should you switch to if Moneysoft falls short?
Moneysoft’s buyer profile is specific enough that the right alternative depends entirely on which limitation is prompting the switch.
If you need cloud access and employee self-service: BrightPay Cloud is the closest equivalent for bureau operators. It is further through its cloud transition, includes an employee portal and multi-user access, and integrates with Xero, Sage, and QuickBooks.
Bureau pricing is now calculator-based rather than flat-rate, which makes direct comparison harder.
For practices where remote access has become non-negotiable, BrightPay Cloud is the natural migration path from Moneysoft.
If you need HR alongside payroll: Sage Payroll combined with Sage HR gives you an integrated platform with absence management, expenses processing, and performance features. Sage costs significantly more than Moneysoft at any scale.
But if your practice has clients who are asking for HR functionality alongside payroll, Sage avoids the cost and integration complexity of running Moneysoft next to a separate HR tool.
If you use Xero for client accounting: Xero Payroll posts journals directly into the accounting ledger without any manual export step.
The payroll-to-accounts reconciliation that Moneysoft requires you to do manually is eliminated.
Xero Payroll is not available standalone. It sits within the Xero accounting subscription, so the economics only work if you are already paying for Xero or willing to.
For a side-by-side view of the full UK payroll software market, our UK payroll software guide covers eight tools across compliance, bureau support, integrations, and price.
Is Moneysoft worth it in 2026?
For practices already running Moneysoft on Windows 11 with a stable client base and no pressure to move to cloud: yes, renewing is reasonable.
The core product delivers everything HMRC requires, CIS and P11D are mature and included in the price, and you will not find a cheaper bureau payroll licence in the market.
For practices evaluating Moneysoft as a new purchase in 2026: the calculation is more complicated.
You are buying a product that has not announced a cloud roadmap, has no employee self-service, and whose operating system dependency is a live compliance risk.
You will be cheaper than any alternative for the first year.
Whether you are still cheaper in year three, after absorbing Windows upgrade costs, manual integration workarounds, and possibly a platform migration, depends on your specific setup.
The honest framing is this: Moneysoft is the right choice if desktop-first payroll processing is a feature, not a limitation, for your practice. If you are already wondering whether you need cloud access, the answer is probably yes.
Moneysoft will not solve that, regardless of how good the PAYE processing is.
See our ranked shortlist of providers, scored for HMRC submission reliability, statutory-pay handling, and pricing transparency. Updated for 2026.
View the shortlist →Moneysoft FAQs
Frequently asked questions
How much does Moneysoft Payroll Manager cost?
Moneysoft Payroll Manager costs £95+VAT per year for the single-company PM20 licence (up to 20 employees), £190+VAT for PM100 (unlimited companies, up to 100 employees each), and £285+VAT for PM250 (unlimited companies, up to 250 employees each).
All tiers include a 12-month licence, all compliance updates, and email support.
Prices are annual and paid upfront. There is no monthly billing option.
What are the disadvantages of Moneysoft Payroll Manager?
The main limitations are: Windows-only desktop with no cloud version or mobile access single-user only with no multi-user login capability no employee self-service portal no integration with Xero, Sage, or QuickBooks for automatic journal posting
Phone support limited to program issues (9am-4pm Mon-Fri); licensing and HMRC queries are email-only with variable response times. The annual pricing model does not allow mid-year downgrades.
From April 2026, the software will not run on Windows 10 machines.
Practices must be on Windows 11.
Does Moneysoft support CIS payroll?
Yes. Moneysoft Payroll Manager includes full Construction Industry Scheme support in the PM100 and PM250 licences at no extra charge.
This covers online subcontractor verification requests to HMRC, CIS deduction calculations based on verification status, monthly CIS 300 returns filed electronically, and payment certificates issued to subcontractors.
P11D Expenses and Benefits reporting is also included in the bureau licences.
Is Moneysoft good for accountants and payroll bureaux?
For accountants processing payroll for multiple clients from a single Windows workstation, Moneysoft’s bureau licences (PM100 and PM250) offer genuine value: unlimited clients, bulk RTI filing, CIS and P11D included, all for £190–£285 per year.
AccountingWEB practitioners consistently rate it as the most cost-efficient bureau payroll tool in the UK market.
The ceiling is the desktop architecture: no remote access, no multi-user, no client portal. Practices with staff working remotely or clients expecting employee self-service will hit those limits quickly.
Which is better: Moneysoft or BrightPay?
It depends on whether desktop-only is acceptable for your practice. Moneysoft is cheaper (£180 flat versus BrightPay Cloud’s calculator-based bureau pricing), includes CIS and P11D at no extra cost, and has a more mature CIS feature set.
BrightPay Cloud offers cloud access, employee self-service, multi-user logins, and Xero/Sage/QuickBooks integrations that Moneysoft cannot match.
For a practice where the payroll operator works at a fixed Windows 11 machine with no remote access requirement, Moneysoft’s value proposition holds.
For any practice where remote access or client portals are in scope, BrightPay Cloud is the better fit.
Does Moneysoft have a cloud version?
No. As of April 2026, Moneysoft Payroll Manager is a Windows desktop application only.
There is no cloud version and no publicly announced roadmap for one. Some users access Moneysoft remotely via Dropbox file sync or remote desktop tools, but these are user-managed workarounds rather than supported product features.
If cloud access is a requirement for your practice, Moneysoft is not currently the right tool.
How we reviewed Moneysoft
We reviewed Moneysoft Payroll Manager in April 2026 using the following sources: Moneysoft’s published pricing pages and product documentation Moneysoft’s feature pages for CIS, P11D, RTI, and auto-enrolment
AccountingWEB community threads and editorial coverage of Moneysoft in the bureau payroll context Capterra verified user reviews and third-party comparison coverage from payroll software review sites.
We did not test Moneysoft Payroll Manager software directly. Claims about user experience are drawn from aggregated review data and AccountingWEB practitioner commentary rather than first-hand testing.
Where functionality depends on operating system compatibility (Windows 10 end-of-support), we have relied on Moneysoft’s published support documentation and AccountingWEB community reporting.
Whichapp is an independent comparison site. We do not receive payment from Moneysoft or any other provider covered on this page.
If you visit Moneysoft’s website via a link on this page, we may earn a referral fee. This does not affect our editorial assessment. Our UK payroll software guide sets out how we assess and rank UK payroll tools.