The business case

What portal payslips cost a workforce that never logs in

Drivers, site crews, shop floors and kitchens don't have a desk, a work email or ten minutes for a password reset. Every unread payslip becomes a payday question, a late correction, an off-cycle payment or a leaver. Put your own numbers in below.

ROI calculator

Pick your sector and enter your headcount — everything else is pre-filled with industry norms for construction, logistics, retail and other frontline employers. Open the assumptions if you want to use your own numbers. The conservative view counts direct cash only; the full case adds risk, retention and workforce time. Netto is costed the way you buy it: pay-as-you-go credits at 1 credit per payslip delivered — no contract, no seat licence.

Your payroll

Everything else is pre-filled from construction benchmarks: paid weekly, self-service portal today, 85% frontline, 30% raising a payslip question each run.

Your first 12 months

400 employees paid weekly, on self-service portal today. Direct cash, plus risk, retention and workforce time.

Net benefit / year
£157,478
4.4× return on every credit spent
First pay run
£3,028
£3,928 saved vs £900 of credits used — pay-as-you-go, no lock-in
Credit cost per payslip
£2.25
Returns £9.82 of value per payslip sent
Payroll hours returned
1,420 hrs
22.4 query hours back every run, plus 255 admin hrs/yr
Payslips actually read
27% → 95%
272 more people see their pay, with nothing to install or log into
Off-cycle payments avoided
364
Errors found while the run can still be fixed
Direct cash costs
Self-service portal replaced (20,800 payslips)£6,720
Query handling time avoided£39,603
Errors caught in-cycle, off-cycle runs avoided£40,222
Payslip admin removed£8,663
Direct subtotal£95,208
Risk, retention and workforce time
Pay-dispute and audit exposure reduced£22,750
Regretted leavers avoided (3.2)£20,800
Employee time returned£65,520
Risk subtotal£109,070
Total annual benefit£204,278
Netto credits (20,800 payslips × £2.25)− £46,800
Net benefit£157,478
Per employee, per year£393.70

On direct cash lines alone — the portal or email delivery you stop paying for, the query time you get back, the off-cycle runs you avoid and the admin that becomes self-serve — Netto is £48,408 ahead before a single risk or retention assumption is counted. There is nothing to roll out: no app, no logins, no training, no HR drop-in sessions. With 85% of your workforce frontline, the payslip stops being something they chase and becomes a message they read — which is what makes pay feel fair. Earned wage access, savings, income protection and pension nudges then run on the same channel at no extra platform fee. Prices exclude VAT / sales tax.

Where the numbers come from

Delivery you already pay for

A self-service payslip module is licensed per employee, per month, whether or not anyone opens it. Netto replaces that line — and the resets and reissues it generates.

Payday questions

On variable hours, a quarter to a third of employees query a payslip every run — and each one costs 10–15 minutes of a fully-loaded payroll or supervisor hour. Netto answers the routine ones instantly, cited to the source line, and hands the rest to you with context attached.

Errors found in-cycle

An error spotted on payday is a same-cycle fix. Spotted a week later it's an off-cycle payment: a bank charge, a second approval, a reconciliation and an audit note.

Admin that disappears

Historic copies, mortgage letters, P60 and W-2 requests, leaver chasing. Employees pull their own from the same chat thread instead of emailing payroll.

Built for people who don't sit at a desk

Portals assume time, a device and a login. Frontline teams have none of the three — which is why portal open rates for deskless workers sit around a fifth of the workforce. WhatsApp needs no rollout at all: no app to install, no credentials to issue, no training, no HR drop-in sessions.

~22%
of frontline staff open a portal payslip
95%
open a WhatsApp message
0
apps, logins or training sessions to roll out

The culture effect is the part that doesn't fit in a spreadsheet. When someone can ask "why is this less than last month?" and get a straight, cited answer in seconds, pay stops feeling like something done to them. Trust in payroll is trust in the employer.

Risk and compliance

Proof of delivery

Every payslip is timestamped and delivery-confirmed per employee, satisfying the obligation to issue a written itemised statement — and evidencing it later.

An auditable answer trail

Every question and every answer is logged with the payslip lines it cited. A pay dispute starts from a record, not from recollection.

Explains, never calculates

Netto reads your payroll output and explains it. It never recomputes a figure, so it cannot introduce a discrepancy between what you paid and what an employee is told.

And then the channel keeps paying

One payroll integration lands a verified, opted-in workforce on a channel they already read. Earned wage access, payday savings, income protection and pension nudges run on top of it at no extra platform cost to the employer.