Unit4 consultancy services for HR and payroll

Choose the starting point that fits your team.

Read: sizing the work

Free, self-serve, and scored on the page in about two minutes.

The health check asks twelve questions in six pairs, one pair for each of the six criteria the X-Ray assesses.

It is a self-assessment. The browser scores the answers and identifies the highest-scoring areas, including tied scores. If every area scores zero, no weak area is named. Nothing is submitted.

Fee

Freeno email address asked for

Duration

About two minutesself-serve, result on the page

Run the free health check

Further reading: configuration debt in a mature Unit4 system.

Bear Consulting Services examines one defined part of a Unit4 system, such as payroll or absence, against six assessment criteria and delivers a written assessment with a prioritised remediation roadmap.

Fee

£7,000excluding VAT, indicative, subject to scoping

Duration

One week of worksubject to agreed scope

What it assesses

• Configuration drift
• Defect inventory
• Control gaps
• Undocumented architecture
• Capability deficit
• Cloud readiness

Deliverables

• A plain-English executive report
• A technical configuration blueprint the in-house Unit4 team can act on without the consultant
• A sequenced remediation roadmap with effort and risk profile
• The SQL evidence pack and diagnostic queries, handed over at the end for internal reuse

How it runs

• Read-only system access and interviews with the people who run it
• Diagnostic queries and a configuration trace
• The three documents and the SQL evidence pack, handed over together

See the Unit4 X-Ray brief

The package gives the in-house team the written material it needs to run the system without the consultant. Scope is a set of processes agreed before work starts.

Included

• Procedure manuals and standard operating procedures, including the monthly payroll playbook
• Build documentation and a solution design document extracted from the live configuration
• An error catalogue, decision trees and process maps
• Line-manager guides and a support operations manual
• A segregation-of-duties and permission matrix with create, read, update and delete mapping per role, and a task assignment matrix
• Training material for the handover: workbooks, facilitator guides, job aids, slide decks and knowledge checks
• Executive briefings as self-contained HTML documents, readable on any device

Excluded

• Configuration change, defect remediation and system build, which sit under embedded delivery

Written before

• Numerous user manuals for a public sector payroll function, covering personnel, pay elements, payroll processing, absence, pensions, deductions, period end and HMRC, reconciliation and system administration
• A full accounts receivable procedure set, from customer record and sales order through payment allocation, matching, write-off, reminders and reporting
• An HR solution design document built by extracting the live configuration from the production database
• A procurement and purchase order manual covering governance, procure-to-pay, roles and approval limits, supplier setup, receipting, three-way match, contract management and data protection

Fee

Fixedagreed at scoping

Duration

Fixedagreed at scoping

Work instructions for your organisation’s processes, with client-specific training for the people who use them.

Discuss the processes to cover, who needs training and the scope of the work. Scope, fees and delivery arrangements are agreed before work starts.

Discuss work instructions and training

PolicyAI answers staff and line manager policy questions from the organisation's own published policy library and cites the source document for each answer.

PolicyAI is a prototype: a working version was documented in a March 2026 briefing, the governance gates below are proposed and no deployment assessment has yet been completed.

A deployment is scoped by policy tier, with a governance gate on each: general HR policy as standard deployment, operational HR procedure at service director sign-off, and sensitive domains after a data protection impact assessment and service director approval.

Included

• A written quotation for each deployment, covering scope, fees and operating responsibilities
• Policy ownership, query-log handling and deployment rights, set out in the same quotation

Fee

Fixedagreed at scoping

Duration

Fixedagreed at scoping

See PolicyAI

Bear Consulting takes retained, embedded engagements, typically with one or two clients at a time, and the same consultant carries the work from scoping to delivery.

The consultant works inside the client team: at the change board, the systems stand-up, the audit meeting and the executive briefing, with access appropriate to the agreed work.

Terms

• Day rate or fixed scope, inside IR35 where the engagement requires it
• Scope, deliverables and fees set out in a written agreement

Excluded

• A bench. There is no associate network and no second name

What that has looked like

• Payroll parallel-run and acceptance approach for over 2,500 employees, with interim project management. Read the engagement
• A university Unit4 support backlog cut by half, and the team that inherited it upskilled. Read the engagement

Fee

Day rate or fixed scopeagreed in the first call

Duration

Retainedby agreed period

How an engagement runs