Umbrella company compliance software for agencies

The liability is absolute

Joint and several liability for umbrella payroll failures means exactly what it says: HMRC does not have to chase the umbrella first, prove your fault, or apportion the bill. If a company in your chain fails on PAYE, the agency that supplied through it can be pursued for the lot FA 2026 s.24.

What that changes is the meaning of due diligence. A folder of accreditation certificates collected at onboarding is not a defence; what stands up is evidence of ongoing assessment: that you knew which umbrellas your workers were paid through, held current evidence on each, and reacted when a file went stale.

And the ground moves again in 2027

Umbrella regulation under the Employment Rights Act 2025 is expected from April 2027, with agencies answering for the umbrella companies they pay through. The direction of travel is one-way: the umbrella chain stops being someone else’s problem. An agency whose records already treat each umbrella as a first-class file, evidence, expiries, linked placements, meets that date as an administrative change.

What the software has to do

• A register, not a folder. Every umbrella in the chain as a record, with the evidence held against it and expiry dates that chase themselves.
• The join to placements. Which workers, on which placements, are being paid through which umbrella, right now. This is the question the liability turns on, and it must be one click, not a reconciliation.
• The red flag. Live placements through an umbrella whose file has gone stale must be loud, on the first screen someone opens in the morning.
• Proof it was watched. Evidence added, checks recorded, all on an audit trail that shows assessment was ongoing, not annual.