Draft — not yet verified. Details about Payflow on this page are provisional and have not been confirmed against their published materials. This page is excluded from search engines until it is.
BureauFlow vs Payflow
Payflow is built for scale — BDO, Forvis Mazars and an 85-person payroll team at Liberata. BureauFlow is built for the other end of the market: start free today, see the price before you talk to anyone, and get the commercial picture of your own bureau.
Neither BureauFlow nor the products on this page calculate payroll or file with HMRC. Both sit alongside the payroll engine you already run. This comparison is about how you run the practice around it — not about which one does your RTI.
The short version
BureauFlow
- Free forever for up to 50 active payrolls
- Published pricing — £19/user/mo billed annually
- Sign up today; no demo, no rates-on-request
- Penny, an AI assistant across your whole book
Payflow
If payroll is what you do, Payflow is how you do it.
- Rates on request — no price published
- Billed monthly in arrears on the month’s peak user count
- Engage Portal for client tasks, files and messaging
- Built for BPOs, shared service centres and large firms
Three reasons bureaus pick BureauFlow
Purpose-built as a payroll CRM for UK bureaus — the practice layer, not the payroll engine.
Free to start, and it stays free
Unlimited clients and up to 50 active payrolls at £0, with no card, no trial clock and no onboarding call. You can have your book loaded and your first deadlines tracked in the time it takes to get a demo in the diary.
Ask Penny, don’t go digging
“Which clients are due this week?” in plain English, answered across your whole book. Available on Unlimited and above — no report builder, no export to a spreadsheet to find out what you already half-knew.
The commercials, not just the workflow
MRR, revenue per payroll, capacity and client health on the Bureau plan. Churn-risk scoring, revenue forecasting and peer benchmarking on Enterprise. Most tools in this category tell you what’s late. We also tell you what it’s worth.
Feature comparison
Everything below comes from each company’s own published material. Sources are listed at the foot of the page.
| Feature | BureauFlow | Payflow |
|---|---|---|
| Category & fit | ||
| Calculates payroll / files RTI with HMRC Both products are practice layers, not payroll engines. | ✕ | ✕ |
| Sits alongside your existing payroll software | ✓ | ✓ |
| Works with any payroll engine (Sage, BrightPay, IRIS…) | ✓ | ✓ |
| Built for UK payroll bureaus | ✓ | Also BPOs, shared service centres and in-house teams |
| Getting started & what it costs | ||
| Free plan | Free forever, up to 50 active payrolls | Not stated |
| Free trial | Not needed — the free plan has no time limit | Not stated |
| Sign up without talking to sales | ✓ | Sales-led — rates on request |
| Pricing published on the website | All tiers except Enterprise | ✕ |
| Entry paid plan, per user, billed annually | £19/user/mo | On request |
| Unlimited clients | ✓ | ✓ |
| AI | ||
| Natural-language assistant across your whole book BureauFlow calls this Penny. | Unlimited plan and above | Not stated |
| Bureau commercials | ||
| MRR & revenue per payroll | Bureau plan and above | Not stated |
| Churn-risk scoring | Enterprise plan | Not stated |
| Revenue forecasting | Enterprise plan | Not stated |
| Peer benchmarking against other bureaus | Enterprise plan | Not stated |
| Client-health insights | Bureau plan and above | Not stated |
| Client invoicing & billing | Not stated | Not stated |
| Running the practice | ||
| Client & payroll register | ✓ | Not stated |
| HMRC deadline tracking & alerts | ✓ | Not stated |
| Pension declarations | ✓ | Not stated |
| Payroll checklists | ✓ | ✓ |
| CSV import & export | ✓ | Not stated |
| Automated email reminders | Unlimited plan and above | Not stated |
| Real-time status across every payroll | ✓ | ✓ |
| Team dashboard & workload view | Bureau plan and above | MyPeople — per-person reporting |
| Capacity & service-delivery insights | Bureau plan and above | ✓ |
| Data reporting | ✓ | ✓ |
| Audit trail | Basic on Free, full on Unlimited and above | Task timeline with timestamps |
| Cut-off & pay-cycle scheduling | Not stated | Pay-date rules generate future schedules |
| Workflow & task management | Not stated | ✓ |
| Prioritised work queue across all payrolls | Not stated | ✓ |
| Structured payroll change capture | Not stated | Not stated |
| Document storage | Not stated | Not stated |
| Payroll manuals / process documentation | Not stated | Not stated |
| Client contact directory | Not stated | Not stated |
| Working with your clients | ||
| Client portal for submitting changes | Not stated | Engage Portal |
| Client helpdesk / query ticketing | Not stated | Not stated |
| Two-way client messaging | Not stated | ✓ |
| White-labelling | Planned — Enterprise | Not stated |
| Client feedback / reviews | Planned — client surveys & NPS | Not stated |
| Integrations | ||
| Integrations with payroll systems | Not stated | ✓ |
| API access | Not stated | ✓ |
| Transparency | ||
| Public product roadmap | ✓ | Not stated |
| Public pricing page | ✓ | Not stated |
✓ offered · ✕ not offered · “Not stated” means we could not verify it from Payflow’s public materials on 7 August 2026 — it does not mean it is unavailable.
What each one costs
BureauFlow
Free £0 forever (unlimited clients, up to 50 active payrolls) · Unlimited £24/user/mo (£19 billed annually) · Bureau £35/user/mo (£29 annually) · Enterprise on application. Prices exclude VAT.
Payflow
Rates on request. Billed monthly in arrears, per user licence, in pounds sterling excluding VAT. The monthly charge is based on the highest number of users at any point in that month, so adding a user mid-month charges that user for the whole month.
From Payflow’s published terms of service. No numerical price appears in their public material, so there is nothing to compare in cash terms.
Where Payflow is strong
We’d rather you picked the right tool than the one with the louder page.
- They operate at a scale we don’t. Public customers include BDO, All3Media, Forvis Mazars and BNP Paribas Real Estate, and their Liberata case study describes 200+ payrolls and 1.1 million payslips a year across an 85-person payroll team.
- Their scheduling model is more sophisticated than ours. Pay-date rules (“last Friday unless bank holiday”) generate future work automatically, and the system presents it as one prioritised queue across every payroll rather than payroll by payroll.
- Workload forecasting is a first-class feature — future task volumes expose peaks and resourcing collisions, which is exactly what you need when you’re planning holiday cover across a large team.
- They’ve been in this category since at least 2016, when they were a finalist for Payroll Software Product of the Year, and the Engage Portal gives clients their own tasks, deadlines and secure file exchange.
Who each one suits
Choose BureauFlow if…
- You want to know the price without booking a call
- You’re a solo consultant or small bureau, not a BPO
- You want to start free today and decide later
- You want bureau commercials — MRR, churn risk, revenue forecasting
- You’d use an AI assistant to answer questions across your book
Choose Payflow if…
- You’re a BPO, shared service centre or large accountancy firm
- You run a big enough team that workload forecasting drives your staffing
- You want automatic task generation from pay-date rules across many payrolls
- You need per-person management information on who did what and when
- You want clients holding their own tasks and deadlines in a portal
Moving to BureauFlow
No migration project, no cutover weekend.
Keep your payroll software
Nothing to rip out. BureauFlow runs the practice around whatever engine you already file with, so there’s no parallel run and no cutover weekend.
Bring your book across
Import clients and payrolls by CSV, or add them by hand if you’d rather. Deadlines generate themselves once the payrolls are in.
Run both for as long as you like
The free tier covers up to 50 active payrolls indefinitely, so you can run BureauFlow alongside your current setup with no clock ticking and no pressure to decide.
Common questions
Do I have to stop using my payroll software?▾
No. Neither BureauFlow nor Payflow calculates payroll or files with HMRC. Both sit alongside the engine you already run, and both are deliberately payroll-system agnostic.
What does Payflow cost?▾
Payflow don’t publish a price. Their terms of service state that subscription rates are provided on request, quoted in pounds sterling excluding VAT, and billed monthly in arrears — with the monthly charge based on the highest number of users at any point during that month. BureauFlow publishes every tier except Enterprise, and starts at £0.
Can I try BureauFlow without a demo call?▾
Yes. The Free plan covers unlimited clients and up to 50 active payrolls, forever, with no card required. You can sign up and import your book without speaking to anyone.
Is Payflow a better fit for a large operation?▾
Quite possibly. Their published customers include BDO and Forvis Mazars, and their Liberata case study describes an 85-person payroll team running 200+ payrolls. If you’re operating at that scale — particularly if workload forecasting and per-person management information drive your staffing decisions — they’re built for it in a way we currently aren’t.
What does BureauFlow cost?▾
Free £0 forever (unlimited clients, up to 50 active payrolls) · Unlimited £24/user/mo (£19 billed annually) · Bureau £35/user/mo (£29 annually) · Enterprise on application. Prices exclude VAT.
How did you put this comparison together?▾
From publicly available information on each company’s own website, on the date shown at the top of the page. Where their material doesn’t establish something either way, we mark it “Not stated” rather than guessing — so a blank is a gap in our research, not a claim about their product. If we’ve got something wrong, email support@bureauflow.co.uk and we’ll correct it.
How we compiled this
Facts checked: 7 August 2026
Information about Payflow is taken from their own publicly available material and was checked on 7 August 2026. Where their material does not establish something either way, we mark it “Not stated” rather than guessing. Products change — please check with Payflow directly before making a decision.
Sources
- Payflow — Homepage — accessed 7 August 2026
- Payflow — Terms of service (PDF) — accessed 7 August 2026
- Payflow — Payroll: the right tool for the job — accessed 7 August 2026
- Payflow — Why, how and what — accessed 7 August 2026
- Payflow — 5 ways to optimise payroll — accessed 7 August 2026
- Payflow — Payroll management for shared service centres — accessed 7 August 2026
- Payflow — Liberata case study (PDF) — accessed 7 August 2026
- Payflow — Awards — accessed 7 August 2026
Think we’ve got something wrong or out of date? Email us and we’ll correct it. support@bureauflow.co.uk
All product names, trade marks and company names are the property of their respective owners and are used here for identification purposes only. BureauFlow is not affiliated with, endorsed by or sponsored by any company named on this page.
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