Week 53

[dazedandconfused]

Every year the Payroll week moves forward by one day. Does ABC automatically insert a week 53 every 7 years? If so, when is the next one due? If not, can this be done manually?

[abctech]

It depends which day you normally do the PayRun (ie. what you define as your "Pay Day". And if you do the PayRun a day or two before you actually pay the employees, then it is the earlier PayRun date that applies).

This year if you do the PayRun on Friday 4th April or Saturday 5th April then this will be in week 53. (The PAYE Year 07-08 is a leap year).

Weekly paid employees actually benefit if they get paid in Week 53, as they get an extra week of tax free allowance in that year. Monthly paid staff are not affected as they only get 12 payments a year anyway.

ABC takes care of all the calculations, but you need to decide whether to continue into week 53, or start a new PAYE year (at week 1), based on the day of your normal PayRun. If your PayRun day falls on 6th April or later, then you do not have Week 53 this year.

In real life I have never heard of anyone getting into trouble if they get it wrong

[dazedandconfused]

We do our weekly payroll on Thursdays, and Friday is pay day. After running the Payroll on Thursday 29.3.08, ABC was showing:
Current PAYE week number 52
(This is last week of Month 12)
Therefore on Thursday, 3.4.08, I started the new Payroll year with week 1. Can I insert a Week 53 at the beginning of April next year, as my Payroll weeks are not completely in line with the tax year?

[abctech]

No you cannot insert a week 53 at the start of the year.
You should have done last week (3rd April?) as Week 53.

If you don't have too many employees, the best (nicest, tidiest) solution is to go back to Previous Year payroll in ABC and run Week 53.
Then compare the payslips for week 53 with the ones you did earlier at Week 1, and make a note of any adjustments necessary to the Net Pay for each employee. (likely to very small amounts).

Then do the Year Start again on This Year Payroll. On 11th april (?) you can do Week 1 of the new year. Those adjustments for each employee can be entered as Pre-Tax Adjustment on their payslips.

If possible, get the employees to give you back those "wrong" payslips and swap them for the new "correct" ones.

If you had already printed end of year reports, destroy those and print the reports again after doing week 53. ABC allows you to do this.
If you have already submitted your Year End stuff to the Inland Revenue, then of course you can't do any of the above

[dazedandconfused]

Brilliant. Thanks. That worked perfectly.

I put off doing it until I had plucked up enough courage. I hate fiddling with Payroll, in case anything goes wrong. The new week 53 was £9 more than week 1, but all in employees' favour. So they were all very pleased to be issued with a new Payslip and a couple of extra pounds.

In future, when there is a Week 53 option, would it be possible to show that Week 52 is NOT the end of Month 12? That is what had put me wrong in the first place.

[abctech]

In future, when there is a Week 53 option, would it be possible to show that Week 52 is NOT the end of Month 12?

We will have a look and see if this can be done. Good idea. Thanks for the comments.