Services · Mobile app development · Payroll apps
We take on payroll software development for Manchester employers whose people do not fit a neat monthly salary: hospitality staff on changing rotas, students working term-time hours, airport and warehouse crews on shift premiums, and production teams mixing employees with freelancers around Salford Quays. Codeeo builds the system that turns approved hours into correct pay, files RTI returns to HMRC, runs pension assessment, produces BACS files and gives every worker a clear payslip on their phone.
Codeeo has no Manchester office. A team of 80+ in Dubai, Riyadh and Karachi works remotely with Greater Manchester employers, and requirements sessions, design reviews and test sign-off all take place by video call. The same team has delivered 200+ projects across the UAE and the US and is rated 4.7 from 23 Google reviews.
200+ companies servedFrom a first store to an ADX listed developer
Features we build
Much of Manchester's workforce is paid by the hour or by the shift. Bars and restaurants in the Northern Quarter and Deansgate staff up for weekends and match days, hotels flex around conferences, and the city's large student population fills part-time roles that shrink in the holidays. Around the airport and the logistics parks to the south, shift patterns bring nights, weekends and overtime at different rates. In Salford, broadcasters and independent producers hire crew by the project, some on payroll and some through their own companies.
That mix puts pressure on three points: getting hours into payroll without rekeying, calculating holiday pay correctly for people with irregular hours, and deciding who belongs on payroll at all. The features below start with those three, then cover filing, pensions, payments and the employee side. We build only the parts your business needs, and we connect to the attendance or rota system you already use rather than replacing it.
Hours, shifts and premiums come in from your rota, clocking or attendance system once a manager approves them. The software maps each shift type to a pay element, catches missing approvals and duplicate punches, and shows the payroll team what changed since the last import, so nothing is typed twice between a Manchester venue and head office.
Payroll starts from verified hours, not a spreadsheet emailed on Monday.
For irregular-hours and part-year workers, the system supports holiday accrual based on hours worked and, where you choose it, rolled-up holiday pay shown as a separate line on each payslip, under the rules that apply to leave years beginning on or after 1 April 2024. Regular staff keep their usual entitlement method.
Students and casual staff are paid holiday correctly and can see it.
Production companies and agencies record each engagement, the status determination you have made and the reasons behind it. Where the off-payroll working rules put the deemed employment on your side, payments run through PAYE with the right deductions; where they do not, the engagement is kept out of payroll with the evidence attached. Workers can be told the outcome and the reasons, which the rules expect.
Status decisions are documented before the first invoice arrives.
Employers that pay the real Living Wage, including members of the Greater Manchester Good Employment Charter, load the rate they have committed to and the software checks every hourly worker against it each run. It also checks pay against the statutory minimum for each age band, counting deductions that reduce minimum wage pay.
Pay commitments are tested every period, not once a year.
Tax, National Insurance and student loan deductions are calculated from the codes and notices HMRC sends, including S codes for Scottish taxpayers who have moved south for work. Full Payment Submissions go on or before payday, and corrections are made in the next submission with a record of why.
Every run files cleanly with HMRC from inside the system.
Because hourly earnings move week to week, workers drift in and out of eligibility. The system reassesses everyone each pay period, enrols those who qualify, records opt-ins and opt-outs, and sends contributions to your scheme in its file format or through its API.
Variable earners are assessed correctly without manual tracking.
Statutory sick pay, maternity, paternity, adoption, shared parental, bereavement and neonatal care pay are worked out from average weekly earnings over the right reference period, which matters when hours vary. Recoverable amounts feed the Employer Payment Summary.
Statutory payments hold up even for staff with uneven earnings.
Weekly paid shift workers and monthly salaried office staff can sit in the same company on separate calendars. Each approved run produces its own BACS file, and urgent payments for leavers or missed shifts can go as a separate run.
Different pay frequencies stop needing different tools.
Workers see their payslip, hours paid, holiday balance and year end documents on their phone, and raise a query against a specific shift or deduction. For a workforce that rarely sits at a desk, this replaces printed payslips and phone calls to the office.
Queries arrive with the detail payroll needs to answer them.
Gross pay, employer National Insurance, pension contributions and holiday accrual are reported by venue, department or production, so operations managers across Greater Manchester can compare what each location costs to staff.
Site managers see their labour cost without waiting for finance.
Who this is for
We are a payroll software development company Manchester employers can bring in when their current product handles the office but not the floor. The common thread across our Greater Manchester conversations is variability: hours that change, roles that come and go with projects, and workers who move between employed and self-employed status. These four situations come up most often, and each points to a slightly different first release. In every case we ask to see a few recent payslips, the rota or timesheet export and the list of manual adjustments made last month, because those adjustments show where a custom build will save the most time.
Crew join for a series and leave when it wraps. Some are employees, some are freelancers through their own companies, and the line between them needs a recorded decision. We build payroll that handles short contracts, project cost codes and status records together, so your production accountant can see who is paid through PAYE, who invoices, and why. Engagements can be reported by production for budget holders, and short engagements that cross a tax year end are handled without a separate manual process.
Status decisions stay yours; the system records and applies them.
Venues in the Northern Quarter, Spinningfields and around Piccadilly run weekly rotas with many part-time staff, a lot of them students. Payroll has to pull approved hours, apply the right holiday method, check minimum and Living Wage rates, and allocate tips under your written policy. A payslip app cuts the volume of questions on payday.
Ground handling, warehousing and distribution around the airport and the M60 corridor run twenty-four hour patterns with night, weekend and overtime premiums. We map each shift rule to a pay element, connect to your clocking system and run weekly payroll with clear reporting by site and shift. Agency workers supplied through a third party stay out of your payroll, but their hours can still be recorded for cost reporting so you see the full picture of each site.
Law, accountancy and consulting firms in Spinningfields and around St Peter's Square sometimes outsource payroll for years, then want direct control as they grow. We build a system your own team can run, with clean data migration from the bureau, parallel runs to prove the numbers, and links to your HR and finance tools. Partners and fee earners on profit share or bonus arrangements can be handled as separate pay groups with their own approval steps.
Migration includes year-to-date figures so the tax year stays continuous.
Working together
A fixed scope first release suits most Manchester clients: one workforce group or one entity, proven in parallel and then extended. Businesses with seasonal peaks or frequent rule changes often add a retainer so updates arrive before each new tax year and before busy periods. Larger employers can take a dedicated team that works alongside their own IT and payroll staff. Whichever model you choose, scope and acceptance tests are agreed in writing, and all collaboration runs remotely by video call and shared project tools. You get a named lead who knows your pay rules, so you do not have to explain your business again each time a new release starts.
A defined build with a deadline
We agree what the product has to do, write it down with a price and a date, and build exactly that. Changes are priced before they are made, not discovered on the invoice.
A product that keeps evolving
Named engineers who work your hours, join your standups and stay on the codebase. You direct the backlog; we own the quality of what ships.
Something live that needs looking after
A monthly block of hours for improvements, fixes and the small requests that otherwise wait months. Unused hours carry for a quarter.
Technology
We choose languages, databases and hosting that suit high-volume weekly runs, careful audit logging and the people who will support the system after launch. Data hosting is agreed with you to fit UK GDPR, and access is split so a venue manager approves hours but never sees bank details or salaries beyond their own team.
01Mobile
02Data and cloud
03Marketing and tracking
The number of workforce groups, pay rules and connected systems.
A single company paying weekly hourly staff from one rota system is a smaller build than a group with weekly and monthly calendars, freelancers, tips and several pension schemes. Data migration from an existing bureau, the number of parallel runs and whether you want an employee app in the first release also move the estimate. We explain each driver after discovery and agree the scope before quoting, so you know what is in the first release and what can wait for a later phase.
Schedule a free consultation and get a written recommendation, with costs, before you commit to anything.
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