Payroll News

Payroll update May 2011

ABC6 Payroll 2011-12 A2 available May 2011. Includes a fix for very long employee surnames not printing properly on payslips or audit trail. Also the Holidays and Overtime fields now allow fractions of a day or hour to be stored. If you also have ABC6 Accounts with AUTO-UPDATE turned ON, you will have received this payroll update automatically.

Payroll update ABC April 2011

You need new Payroll software for use after 6 April 2011.

More than one Company?

You only need to update once; even if you have several different Company Payrolls set up on your ABC5 Accounts.

Network version?

ABC Payroll is single-user only.

Payroll Parameters

If you want to check the parameters that ABC Payroll is using to calculate PAYE and NI (eg. a visiting tax inspector may ask for this information) you can print the Payroll report LIST PARAMETERS.

General Notes

The National Insurance for Directors is calculated on the year as a whole, and if they are paid monthly this can lead to very uneven N.I. deductions (eg. nothing for the first few months, a large deduction for the next few months, and small amounts towards the end of the year). The Inland Revenue allows you to make the N.I. deductions more regular. With ABC Payroll the easiest way to do this is temporarily change the Director to be a normal employee for the first few months of the year (untick the Director box on their employee record). About halfway through the year you can put the tick the box again, and the Payroll will correctly calculate their N.I. for the year as a whole.

(With the old ABC5, instead of ticking a box, you put a D into the Options Field on their employee record.)

It is not important exactly when you tick the Director box, as long as you do it before the last Pay Run of the Year, so the Payroll can calculate their NI as a Director for the whole of the Year. We suggest Christmas is a good time to do it.

If an employee only becomes a Director partway through a Year, you need to keep the two parts of the year separate. You should therefore create a new Record Card for the person when they become a Director (and fill in the Director Start Week on the Record Card). At the end of the year they will get two P14s.

N.I.Adjustments/corrections

The ABC Payroll allows you to enter up to three corrections or adjustments to N.I. for each employee, in a year. You specify the Amount, give a note to explain the adjustment, and specify the Week Number in which this adjustment is to be applied. YOU MUST ENSURE that the Week Number you specify is going to be used by this employee in the future.

eg. if you specify Week 15, and employee is paid monthly on the last week of each month (eg. Week 8, Week 13, Week 17) then because they are not paid in Week 15 the NI Adjustment will not be activated.

To make it easy, we suggest you wait until you are just about to do a Pay Run (eg. for week 20), and then enter the N.I.Adjustment and specify this Week Number (ie. 20).

After-Tax Adjustments

ABC Payroll treats all After-Tax Adjustments as being between the Employee and the Employer, because this is what is shown on the Payslip.

If money is deducted/paid to the Employee for some outside purpose -- eg a court order on earnings -- then you must treat it as having first been deducted by the Employer, and then later the Employer can pay it out to the external agency (from Heading 9221) -- but this payment to the external agency is not done through the payroll.

Electronic return of PAYE forms

The ABC Payroll allows you to file your End of Year Return electronically. The program that performs the electronic submission requires that you are running Windows 98/XP/2000/Vista/7 and that you are connected to the internet.

However, even if you are not connected to the Internet, you can still send your End Of Year Return electronically -- contact us for more details.

Inland Revenue Helpline and website

The government has provided a telephone Helpline for general enquiries about Tax and National Insurance. Available 8.30 to 5pm, Monday to Friday.
Charged at local call rate: The number is: 0345 143 143

There is also a website at www.hmrc.gov.uk/employers/