Pento

Pento is the modern challenger in UK payroll. Where BrightPay and IRIS grew up serving bureaus, Pento is built for the in house finance or people team at a growing company that wants payroll to feel like the rest of their software stack: automated, integrated and pleasant to use. That framing is the key to whether it fits you.

What it does well

Automation is the pitch and it largely delivers. Calculations, submissions and payments are designed to run with minimal manual intervention, which suits a team that wants to approve a pay run rather than assemble one. For a company scaling past the point where a spreadsheet and good intentions work, that is the right direction.

Integrations are a genuine strength. Clean connections into accounting tools and HR systems mean payroll data flows rather than gets rekeyed, and the general ledger posting is handled properly. For a finance team this removes a recurring monthly chore.

The interface is modern and clear, which sounds trivial until you compare it with the older payroll tools. Onboarding a new team member is faster when the software explains itself.

Where it falls short

It is newer and less battle tested than the incumbents. The decades of edge case handling that a BrightPay or an IRIS has accumulated take time to build, and a payroll product is judged partly on how it handles the unusual cases rather than the common ones. Trial it against your own awkward scenarios.

Pricing is quoted rather than published, so comparison takes a conversation. It is also positioned for growing companies rather than the smallest businesses, so a micro employer may find it more than they need.

It is payroll focused, not a full HR suite, so people management sits in a separate tool.

The UK detail that matters

Pento is built for UK payroll: RTI submissions, automatic enrolment, and the statutory calculations that change each April. The automation and integration story is the differentiator rather than the compliance, which is table stakes. Confirm the specifics of any complex arrangement you run during the trial.

Who should buy it

Growing UK companies with an in house finance or people team that wants modern, automated, well integrated payroll and is happy to pay for it. Bureaus and micro employers are better served elsewhere, the former by BrightPay and the latter by a simple cloud payroll or bundled accounting.