The End of Payroll Year End?

HMRC have announced a new way of reporting PAYE: Real Time Information or RTI.

What this means is that information about payroll payments will be submitted throughout the year, rather than waiting until the end of the payroll year, in April.

The statement from HMRC is "Most employers will be legally required to use RTI from April 2013 and all employers will be required to by October 2013."

What this means for business who run their own payroll is the end of the stressful end-of-year payroll submissions. For my business, it means the loss of some business at the end of the year, helping small business deal with this stress!

For businesses with Sage Payroll, Sage are currently piloting the changes required - see www.sage.co.uk/rti so it's a bit, watch this space!

As more businesses will be submitting data more frequently, the potential for problems does increase somewhat. So the advice now is to make sure that your Sage Payroll data is up to date and correct. Here are some do's and don'ts from Sage:

Some simple Do’s and Don’ts of recording employee names

• DO – enter the employee’s full forename and surname.
• DO – enter a double barrelled forename or surname in full.
• DON’T – use known as, for example, if HMRC know the employee as ‘Robert’ don’t use ‘Bob’.
• DON’T – enter an initial in either the Forename or Surname boxes.

Some simple Do’s and Don’ts of recording employee dates of birth

• DO – enter the correct date of birth and ensure it’s in the format DD/MM/YYYY, for example 05/05/1985.
• DON’T – enter a default date of birth, such as 01/01/1901, or make one up.

Some simple DO’s and Don’ts of recording employee NI numbers

• DO – only enter an employee’s correct National Insurance number.
• DON’T – make up an employee’s National Insurance number.

All of the don't can make the payroll submission fail, not just once, but potentially 52 times!

And, if you do want help with your last payroll year end, do let me know - 0770 3321215 or email bob.earnshaw@bplus.co.uk

HMRC information:

Main RTI website: http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/rti/index.htm

Improving your payroll data: http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/rti/dip/index.htm

Sage Payroll Year End: http://pye.sage.co.uk/