It’s Monday morning. Your bureau’s central inbox contains 47 new messages. Scattered among the meeting requests, supplier invoices, and team updates are eight emails containing payroll data:
- A spreadsheet with 150 employees’ salaries and NI numbers
- A PDF scan of P45 forms (client forgot to redact home addresses)
- Pension contribution changes in the body of the email
- An attachment labelled “URGENT starters, this is the right file ignore the other one”
- Three follow-up emails because the first attachment was corrupted
- A forwarded chain from 2022 because “the details are somewhere in here”
Every single one of these emails is a GDPR incident waiting to happen. Every attachment is sitting in multiple inboxes, on backup servers, in sent folders, and potentially forwarded to personal accounts.
Your Data Protection Officer knows this is a problem. Your bureau insurance knows this is a problem. But email is just so convenient.
Until it isn’t.
The hidden risks of email-based data exchange
Email wasn’t designed for sensitive data transfer. It was designed for convenience, not security. Yet it’s become the default way clients share payroll information with their bureaus. The consequences are more serious than most people realise:
GDPR and ISO 27701 compliance exposure
Email is fundamentally insecure for personal data. Messages pass through multiple servers and sit in sent folders indefinitely. They’re forwarded, archived, and backed up to personal devices.
Under GDPR Article 32, you must implement “appropriate technical and organisational measures” to protect personal data. Email doesn’t qualify.
ISO 27701, the international privacy information management standard, extends these requirements further. It demands documented controls for personal data processing, transfer, and retention. Email workflows fail these tests comprehensively — they lack structured consent tracking, defined retention controls, and auditable processing records.
When the ICO investigates a data breach, one of the first questions is: “How was this data being transmitted?” If your answer is “email”, you’ve immediately demonstrated inadequate controls. The fine isn’t for the breach itself — it’s for the systematic failure to protect data properly.
Unstructured and chaotic
Email threads become black holes where information disappears into the void. “Which version did they send?” “Was that change confirmed?” “What was the final decision?” Information lives scattered across multiple messages, with no clear structure or versioning. Your team wastes hours navigating through inbox space debris, trying to piece together the actual current state.
Files arrive with names like “final.xlsx”, “final_v2.xlsx”, “final_ACTUAL.xlsx”. Which one did you process? Can you prove it? When a payroll query arises six months later, can you reconstruct what data you received and when?
Lost context and audit trail
Email conversations fork, merge, and disappear. Someone replies without including the original attachment. Another person joins the thread halfway through. The client asks a question in one email and sends the data in another. Three months later, you need to understand why a decision was made, but the context is fragmented across a dozen messages.
HMRC asks about a specific pay calculation from April. You find the email thread. But the attachment is missing — someone’s mailbox was cleaned up. Or the thread references “the file we discussed on the phone”. What file? What discussion? You’re reconstructing decisions from incomplete evidence.
Security incidents waiting to happen
The bureau processes the data securely, stores it correctly, and implements proper access controls. But then a client emails payroll data to their personal Gmail account because they’re working from home. Or forwards your reply (with sensitive attachments) to their external accountant. Or sends data to the wrong bureau because they have multiple providers.
You have no visibility into these risks and no control over data handling once it hits email. There is no way to revoke access if something goes wrong. The data is simply out there, outside your security perimeter, outside GDPR compliance.
The inbox burden
Your team spends significant time managing email-based data exchange.
- Downloading attachments.
- Filing them manually.
- Confirming receipt.
- Asking for missing information.
- Chasing clients when files don’t arrive.
- Sorting through unstructured conversations to extract the actual requirements.
This isn’t value-added payroll work. It’s administrative overhead created by using the wrong tool for the job.
What if the secure path was also the easy path?
Improving security does not have to add complexity and difficulty to your processes. Imagine this. Your client needs to send payroll data for this month’s processing. Instead of composing an email, attaching files, and hoping everything arrives intact, they:
1. Log into LunaBase
2. Navigate to the current pay period
3. Upload their files directly to a secure, structured location
4. Add a message in the period-specific thread: “Starters and pension changes attached”
The files land exactly where they need to be. The bureau receives an instant notification, and the data is filed automatically against the correct period. In addition, the conversation is threaded and persistent, with everything logged, timestamped, and traceable.
- No inbox searching.
- No manual filing.
- No “which version?” confusion.
- No GDPR exposure.
For your client, it’s actually easier than email, and for the bureau, it’s incomparably more secure and efficient.
This is a secure data exchange.
How Luna eliminates email risk
Luna replaces email-based data exchange with purpose-built secure transfer and communication:
Secure Upload Zones
Each pay period has its own secure upload area in LunaBase. Clients drop files directly into the right context. No emailing attachments to generic inboxes for manual filing by your team. The files arrive where they belong and are automatically associated with the correct period and client.
Upload security is built in: encryption in transit and at rest. Luna includes access controls based on roles, automatic virus scanning, and audit logging of every file movement.
Period-specific threaded messaging
With Luna, communication happens in context, not in disconnected email chains. Each pay period has its own persistent message thread. Clients can ask questions, share information, and discuss changes — all in one place, all permanently linked to that period’s data.
Three months later, when you need to understand why a decision was made, you open that period and see the entire conversation. Context is preserved automatically with no need for inbox explorations.
Automatic audit trail
With so many processes and interactions involved in processing payroll, the fact that with Luna, every action is logged is a major benefit.
- Who uploaded what, when, with what message?
- Who downloaded it, when?
- Who responded, what they said.
- If a file is replaced, the system knows.
- If a conversation references a decision, it’s timestamped and traceable.
This isn’t something your team has to remember to document. It’s automatic, comprehensive, and admissible, and if HMRC or your auditor asks about data handling, you can easily export a complete, structured record with a few clicks.
Bureau notifications
When a client uploads data or sends a message, your bureau team receives an in-platform notification. So there is no need to monitor email and no risk of messages getting buried. Your team knows immediately when action is required, and they can respond in the same secure environment.
But that’s not all. In Luna, notifications are intelligent: they aggregate by priority, they link directly to the relevant period, and they don’t create noise. Your team stays informed without being overwhelmed.
Version control
Every file upload is versioned automatically. If a client uploads “starters.xlsx”, then uploads it again with corrections, both versions are preserved. You can always see what changed, when, and who made the change.
No more “final_v2_ACTUAL.xlsx” confusion. No more “I think we processed the old file” panic. The system manages versioning, so you always know exactly what data you’re working with.
The business case for secure exchange
Moving away from email-based data transfer delivers measurable benefits:
Reduced GDPR risk
Secure, audited data exchange demonstrates compliance with GDPR Article 32. You’re implementing appropriate technical measures, and you can prove it. If the ICO ever investigates, you show them a secure platform with full audit trails, not an inbox full of sensitive emails.
This isn’t just about avoiding fines. It’s about protecting your clients’ employees, maintaining trust, and demonstrating professional data handling.
Cleaner workflows
When data arrives in the right place automatically, your team stops wasting time on administrative filing. No more downloading attachments and manually organising files. No more hunting through emails to find the latest version.
Your bureau team focuses on payroll processing, not inbox management. That’s operational efficiency with security built in.
Instant traceability
When questions arise, you have complete, immediate answers. “What data did the client send for April?” Open the April period. See every file, every message, every action.
This isn’t reconstructed from emails and memory. It’s structured, searchable, and complete. Audit time drops dramatically. HMRC queries are answered in minutes. Internal reviews become straightforward data exports.
Better client experience
What is better for your business is also a better experience for your clients. They get a simpler, clearer way to share data. They’re not composing emails, wondering if attachments arrived, or digging through sent folders to find previous conversations.
They log in, upload to the current period, and move on. It’s intuitive, secure, and purpose-built for payroll data exchange. That’s the kind of professional service that will differentiate your bureau.
Peace of mind
All this added security and visibility gives everyone better peace of mind. Your DPO can sleep better. Your insurance provider sees lower risk. Your leadership team knows that data handling meets modern security standards. You’re not hoping email is secure enough — you’re using a platform designed for secure data
exchange.
Keep sensitive data out of inboxes
The payroll industry has accepted email as “good enough” for too long. It may be convenient, but it’s also insecure, unstructured, and incompatible with serious data protection obligations.
GDPR has been in force since 2018, and since then, the ICO has issued hundreds of millions in fines. Most data breaches involve human error and inadequate controls. Email is both.
Luna makes the safe path the easy path. Secure uploads aren’t harder than email attachments — they’re simpler, clearer, and better organised. Threaded messaging isn’t more complicated than email chains; it’s more focused, persistent, and traceable.
This isn’t about working harder. It’s about replacing an insecure tool with a secure one that also happens to be more efficient. See how Luna operationalises ISO 27001 principles across daily bureau operations.
When clients stop emailing payroll data and start using secure exchange, everyone wins. Less risk, cleaner workflows, instant traceability, and compliance that’s automatic rather than aspirational.
That’s security by design, simple by default. That’s Luna.
Secure by design, simple by default.
Ready to see how Luna eliminates email risk and creates secure, auditable data exchange? Let’s show you how secure upload zones and threaded messaging transform your client communication.