Frontier Payroll Review: Is it Right for Your Business?

Frontier is a highly customisable payroll solution for UK businesses with international employees. This cloud-based payroll software helps your business pay employees and stay in compliance across 26 countries.

With Frontier, you can customise your payroll process with approval workflows and expense reimbursements. The platform includes detailed reports and a self-service portal for employees. However, keep in mind that Frontier doesn’t have an API, so it can be challenging to develop integrations with your existing business software.

Keep reading our Frontier payroll review to find out if this platform is right for your business.

What Is Frontier Payroll?

Frontier is a payroll and HR company founded in 1983. The company operates in 26 countries, including the UK, Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, Malaysia, and many other Commonwealth countries.

Businesses can manage payroll on their own using Frontier’s cloud-based payroll solution. The company also offers payroll outsourcing, HR software, and workforce management tools.

How Much Does Frontier Payroll Cost?

Frontier offers bespoke pricing for its payroll software. The company customises its platform to suit your business’s needs. 

Pricing will vary based on the following factors:

• The number of employees
• The countries your business operates in
• The integrations required for existing software
• Whether you need features like approval workflows and expense reimbursement
• The level of training and support your payroll team needs

Frontier can be pricey compared to solutions with standard pricing tiers, like Iris or ADP. However, if you have employees in multiple countries, Frontier provides better compliance support and multi-currency payment options than many of its competitors.

Frontier Payroll Features

Frontier offers a comprehensive selection of payroll features, which will be more than enough to satisfy the vast majority of businesses.

To start, the software supports multiple payment options, multiple currencies, and all standard and custom payroll schedules. It integrates with time and attendance tools to automatically calculate pay, including overtime and leave pay. Frontier also makes it easy to define multiple pay rates for each employee, add one-time payments or deductions, and pay benefits such as pensions.

One especially helpful feature Frontier offers is payroll verification. You can create custom approval workflows with one or more approvers. This helps ensure there are no mistakes in your payslips, as errors can result in expensive payroll reruns. While Frontier competitors like ADP and MHR also offer approval workflows, Frontier supports more customisation options. For example, you can add multiple approval levels to a workflow.

Frontier also offers a module for expense management and reimbursement. You can set up custom rules governing what documentation employees must submit for expense reimbursement and the approval process. Plus, you can pay reimbursements in any currency.

Employees can monitor their pay and download electronic payslips using a self-service portal. If you don’t have integrated time and attendance software, employees can also use the portal to submit timesheets and leave requests.

Frontier helps you monitor all your payroll data with a variety of standard reports, including reports for gross and net pay, overtime pay, tax payments, expense reimbursements, gender pay gaps, and more. Plus, it’s easy to create custom reports to gain further insights into your company’s payroll, which is one of the main ways Frontier stands out from competitors like Iris.

Frontier Payroll Security

Frontier uses encryption to secure all your payroll data, including employees’ payment information. You can set up access to data within Frontier on a department-wide basis or by individual employees, enabling you to tightly control who in your business has access to sensitive employee data.

All logins and data entries in Frontier are recorded in an audit log. So, it’s easy to see who has accessed what data and track changes to payslips.

One thing to note is that Frontier doesn’t support single sign-on, which competitors like ADP do. This can potentially leave your business more vulnerable to password theft.

Frontier Payroll Support Resources

How much support you get from Frontier depends on your contract. The company offers a basic onboarding for all customers that includes a software demo and access to customer support. Frontier offers live training and partially managed payroll solutions for companies that need extra support administering payroll.

Frontier doesn’t have an online knowledge base or video tutorials for its payroll software. However, this is also the case for several major payroll platforms, including Iris and MHR.

Frontier does have on-demand webinars that teach your payroll team about the latest trends in payroll administration and highlight updates to Frontier’s software.

Frontier Payroll Scalability

Frontier is a highly scalable software that can support your business as it grows. There’s no limit to the number of employees you can add to your plan. Frontier’s tools for creating approval workflows, managing expense reimbursements, and controlling user permissions all make it easy to stay organised as your business’s headcount increases.

A key aspect of Frontier’s scalability is that the platform supports payroll in 26 countries and multiple currencies. Relatively few other payroll providers operate in some of the countries where Frontier does, such as island nations like Samoa, Fiji, Kiribati, and Vanuatu. So, it’s a great choice for companies looking to grow internationally.

Frontier has integrations for many widely used time and attendance and HR software platforms that you can add to your plan as your business grows. However, note that Frontier doesn’t offer an API, so it’s very difficult to create your own custom integrations. Frontier may be able to help you develop a custom integration, but you’ll need to discuss this with the company’s support team.

Frontier Payroll Customer Support

Frontier offers customer support by phone and email. The company has support centres in the UK, Australia, New Zealand, Malaysia, and Singapore, so help is available nearly 24/5. In our experience, the UK support centre was very responsive and helpful.

The only drawback to Frontier’s customer support is there’s no live chat option. However, relatively few of Frontier’s competitors offer chat support either. For example, there’s no live chat support at Iris, ADP, or Advanced.

How We Reviewed Frontier Payroll

We conducted an independent evaluation of Frontier’s cloud payroll software to determine what types of businesses it’s best suited for and whether it provides good value relative to its competitors. Our review focused on six key areas:

• Payroll features: Features such as benefits administration, approval workflows, expense management, international compliance, and more.
• Customisability: How well Frontier’s platform can be customised to your business’s needs through integrations, custom reports, modifiable data fields, and more.
• Scalability: How well Frontier handles additional employees, payroll administrators, or complex needs such as international growth.
• Security: Whether sensitive employee data is safe with Frontier. Security measures we examine include encryption, user access control, multi-factor authentication, and integration security.
• Support: The support resources Frontier customers have access to, including online documentation, training, and live support.
• Value: Whether Frontier provides good value for money compared to competing payroll solutions.