With over nine years experience and over 32,000 satisfied employees at Parasol, we’ve got to know what people expect from a PAYE umbrella company.

Here are some of the questions we’re asked on a daily basis, to which we can answer, hand-on-heart, YES, YES and YES again. So, if you’re considering signing up with any other UK umbrella company, it might be worth asking them these same questions first:

  • Do you offer a service with no set-up fee, no exit fee, and no minimum terms?
  • Are tax deductible weekly management fees payable only when I’m working?
  • Are travel, meals and accommodation expenses reimbursed to me tax free within HMRC guidelines?
  • Do you have real live people at the end of a phone, available to help me 24/7?
  • Do I get insurance cover up to £23million?
  • Do you offer fast online set-up, where I can register in minutes?
  • Do you have an industry leading online portal that lets me accept contracts, enter timesheets, claim expenses, track my invoices and pay online?
  • Can you offer same day CHAPS payments, meaning I get my money as quickly as possible?
  • Can you help me work even more tax efficiently by discussing my pension options with a specialist Independent Financial Adviser?
  • Is payment guaranteed within 48 hours of you receiving it from my agency or end client?
  • Will you ensure all my expense claims are fully legit, so I can sleep at night knowing the taxman won’t be on my case?

Our security is top notch

Our security is top notch

Parasol is not only ISO 9001 quality assured but also takes the security of personal information very seriously.  Our secure online portal 'My Parasol' has the same security features as online banking (for techies, we use RC4 128 Bit High Grade encryption). Our dedicated web servers are all located separetely from our offices and use dedicated hardware firewalls in world class data centres with mirrored operations (courtesy of Rackspace) and a 100% uptime guarantee.  We also have a full guaranteed business continuity plan (tested twice a year with Sunguard) so in the highly unlikely event of a disaster, the whole Parasol operation would continue unhindered.

Part of the Parasol family