BACS deadline warning for accountants
Accountants running payroll bureaux must tell BACS of plans to migrate to new internet-based system
Payroll bureaux have until the end of June to prove that they are planning
the switch to the new internet-based BACS system, known as BACSTEL-IP, or face
the wrath of their sponsor bank.
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deadline fears for BACSTEL-IP
The stark warning was given yesterday by Mike Hutchinson, BACSTEL-IP
marketing manager, at an event in Central London organised by software company
Eiger.
Bureaux must show ‘solid plans’ to migrate to the new system by 30 June, or
face increasing pressure from their sponsor bank to plan for the migration.
He told Accountancy Age that although it was unlikely for any
bureaux to fail to complete its migration by the final deadline on 31 December,
when the old system is switched off, those that failed to do so could find
themselves out of business.
One of the main reasons behind the switch to the new internet-based system
was that the old BACS technology could not deal with the ever-increasing number
of transactions that ran through it.
Hutchinson predicted that the number of transactions BACS dealt with would
increase from four billion transactions to five billion within two years.
He warned that it had taken 18 months to migrate over 100,000 BACS users to
the new systems, and getting the last 67,000 to migrate was ‘a challenge’.
‘Everybody is gearing up for the migrations,’ said Hutchinson. ‘Software
companies have taken on resources to deal with it.’