Post haste for Parasol’s paperless scheme

Posted on 15 November 2007

Employment services provider, Parasol, has brought forward the launch of a new scheme to help safeguard freelancers, contractors and employment agencies from future turbulence in postal services.

Parasol’s new ‘Master Agreements Initiative’ will remove the need for agencies to produce multiple paper contracts for the contractors who use its services.

“The paper-heavy system currently used by the industry is inefficient and unnecessary,” said Paul Shrimpton, sales and marketing director at Parasol.

The initiative means that once a hard copy master agreement has been signed by an employment agency, authorising Parasol to take care of the administration and tax requirements of a contractor, all further legal agreements for the same purpose can be dealt with electronically.

“The concept is simple but it’s amazing how many agencies are still using the paper system when there’s no legal reason for it,” added Shrimpton.

“Last week’s disruption caused problems for some agencies and their contractors.  With further turbulence in the postal market anticipated, we want to make sure this situation doesn’t affect the lives of the contractors we employ.

“As well as reducing our reliance on traditional postal services, the new service will also reduce administrative costs of producing, delivering and storing hard copy agreements, increase productivity, get contractors up and running more quickly and reduce the industry’s carbon footprint.”


Parasol provides accountancy and payroll services to the contractor and freelance communities.  For a weekly or monthly fee, the company takes care of their administrative and tax requirements.  Services include a package of insurance products as well as traditional payroll services such as PAYE and general expenses processing.

The new initiative will interface closely with Parasol’s online contracts portal which allows agencies to upload individual contractor information directly onto Parasol’s systems.

Press enquiries to: Susan Tonge, Smith & Smith PR, tel: 0161 236 5560 / mobile 07985 991 130; e-mail: susan@smithandsmithpr.co.uk.

Hi-res jpeg images are available from Smith & Smith PR.

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