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RTI INSTRUCTIONS

1. You will move to RTI on 6th April 2013 unless HMRC advise you of a later date. The first task is to make an Employer Alignment Submission (EAS) which is used by HMRC to compare with their records and ensure they hold the same Employee details as you. The full procedures are at Section B.

2. The moment the EAS is submitted successfully, you operate PAYE under the RTI rules. This is true even if HMRC subsequently request a new submission.

3. All RTI submissions are for the entire PAYE registration. This is no change from the old End of Year submission and affects those who have a number of Accu-Man Payrolls that link together under the one PAYE Registration.

PAY RUN PROCEDURES

4. The Pay Run cycle is:
a. [1.1] Set up new Employees and adjust standing data on existing Employees.
b. [1.1] Enter Leaving Dates for those leaving after this pay run [NEW]
c. [1.4.1] Enter timesheet data for the current Pay Period.
d. [1.4.5] Calculate Pay, print the paperwork & close the period.
e. [1.4.6] Submit BACS payment.
f. [1.4.7] Send to Accounts.
g. Repeat with all linked Payrolls (if applicable)
h. [1.4.8] Make Full Payment Submission (FPS) to HMRC. [NEW]
i. [4.1] Print Leaver P45 forms (if applicable)
5. Items 4(e) & 4(f) may be done in either order.

CLOSE MONTH PROCEDURES

6. This is the equivalent of the old P32 yellow booklet process and returns the Tax & NI figures to HMRC. The PAYE Month must be closed before any pay runs may be performed for the new month. For Weekly Payrolls, therefore, it must be done quite soon after the last FPS and not at the same time as the payment is made to HMRC (due 18th month following).The
steps are: -

a. [3.4] Calculate any reclaim of SSP under the 13% rule. For linked
Payrolls, the figures must be summed and manually calculated.
b. [1.2.2] Enter SSP Claim, NI Holiday, Advances. If linked, only enter them into the master Payroll.
c. [1.5] Close the Month
7. Closing the month may or may not involve a submission, called the Employer Payment Summary (EPS). Accu-Man Payroll makes the decision on whether to submit based on the following:
a. Have there been no Pay Runs in the month?
b. Are any of SMP/OSPP,ASPP/SAP or compensation on NI been claimed this year?
c. Has the User entered SSP Claim, NI Holiday or Advances this year?
d. Has the Payroll ceased?
e. Are we closing Month 12 (Answer P35 questions such as paying School Fees)?

MAIN CHANGES TO ACCU-MAN PAYROLL

8. There are some fundamental changes to Accu-Man Payroll behind the scenes:

a. Directors. A Director who is paid less than GBP7,600 a month pays no NI until his pay-to-date reaches GBP7,600 when he pays all his NI in one hit.
Although in cash flow terms this benefits the Director, it can be a shock to discover in June (say) that you have had NI deducted for April, May & June. HMRC always permitted the Director to choose to pay his NI more evenly and in the past this was achieved by setting him to being an Employee - and remembering to set him back to Director before the final pay period of the year. In future, under [1.1-F] you may set his status to "M" for Director on Monthly NI tables and then revert it to "D" for Director on annual NI tables.

b. Leavers. The system now allows for payments to a Leaver after he has left. You must use the rules regarding tax & NI for further payments after employment.

c. Foreign Employees. On the File card [1.1.F], there is a new field to record UK or non-UK. If UK, the final line of the Employee address is "Post Code"; if non-UK, the final line of the address is "Country" which is a text field. On these occasions, it is recommended you record the Employee Passport Number under the HR section [1.1.R] as it is then submitted to HMRC in the FPS.

d. Additional Statutory Paternity Pay (ASPP). This is paid to a father who claims ASPP when the mother has not taken her full allowance of SMP or SAP. HMRC require information about the mother so that they can match up the two claims. You enter the Mother's details under the HR section [1.1.R] against the reserved HR headings [ASPPNINO], [ASPPFORE] & [ASPPSUR ]. The FPS submission will fail without this data. [NINO stands for National Insurance Number.]

e. Pay Frequencies. In the past, there have been options for Weekly, Fortnightly, 4-Weekly & Monthly pay periods. Accu-Man Payroll now handles Quarterly, Bi-annual & annual pay periods. These are included in the relevant monthly runs. The difference is the tax & NI are calculated for the full period being covered (3, 6 or 12 months).

f. Change of Employee Code. Having moved to RTI and having paid an Employee, it is then impossible to change his Employee Code (Pay ID). The reason is HMRC would look upon him as a separate Employee. There are two occasions when a change is permitted. In both cases, you must enter the old ID in the HR Records for that Employee under [1.1.R].

(1) Move to Accu-Man from another system that was running RTI.
(2) Move an Employee from one Payroll to another in a linked system.

g. Hours Worked. HMRC require you to tell them the number of hours worked per week every Pay period. The standard Average Hours/Week is set up on the File Card [1.1-P] and this may be overwritten each Pay Run when entering Timesheets [1.4.1]. There are 4 bands:

A Less than 16 hours
B Less than 30 hours
C 30+ hours
D Other (Follow HMRC guidance; an example is sick leave)

h. Irregular Payment Pattern. Payroll systems are geared to make regular payments to Employees (Weekly, Monthly etc). If an Employee comes and goes (such as a Harvest Worker, Beater or Pub Worker), you may set him as a Starter at the outset but do not set him as a Leaver until you are satisfied that he wil not be paid again. This may be because the harvest season has ended or that he has left the area. What you must do is set his Payment Pattern as 'Irregular' on the File Card [1.1-F]. If an Employee's payment frequency is set to Quarterly, bi-annual or annual,  the system will automatically send the Irregular Payment Pattern flag. See Para 15 below.

10. If a pay run has been closed, it has always been possible with Accu-Man Payroll to undo and re-run the period so long as it is the last run on the system. In other words, if your last Week was W13 and your last month was M2, and you ran the week before the month, you may undo Month 2 but not Week

13. Under RTI, it is still possible to undo the last run - even if it has been submitted to HMRC via an FPS and also even if the PAYE month has been closed with an EPS. Having undone the run, made the changes and re-run, you must re-submit the FPS and re-close the PAYE month. HMRC will accept the repeat submissions and always take the figures from the last submission.

11. Continuing the example above where the weekly run cannot be undone, the procedure to correct the data for the weekly run has not changed:

a. Make the changes in the run for the following week.
b. Calculate the tax & NI effect of the change and edit the Employee card and Sums owing to HMRC to reflect them.

12. There may be occasions when you wish to correct past year RTI records and HMRC have invented yet another submission for this purpose called the Earlier Year Update (EYU). This submits changes on the Employee cards since the final FPS for these Employees. This will not be relevant until the end of the 2013/14 tax year.

13. Please note that, if you run a mix of Weekly to Monthly pay, there is no such thing as an FPS run that includes all Employees because the FPS ties in to the Pay Period & Frequency. The last FPS for a weekly paid Employee will be the FPS for Week 52/53; the last FPS for a monthly paid Employee will be Month 12.

SPECIAL CASES UNDER RTI

14. Directors.
On the File Card, you may set a Director to have his NI calculated on a monthly or annual basis. Only select monthly if (a) the Director wishes it and (b) his monthly salary is less than the annual LEL. You must set him to annual before his last pay run of the year.

15. Daily Casuals (harvest workers, Beaters, Pub Workers etc). The definition of a daily casual is one who is paid in cash at the end of the day and his contract of employment is only for the day. In the past, if the total earnings was less than the annual LEL, he would have been returned on the annual P38 or P38(S) form and omitted from the Payroll. The RTI rules state that all workers must be included in an FPS submission and this must occur 'on or before' the worker is paid. HMRC have now recognised that this is impossible for the daily casual worker and state he must be included on the next weekly FPS. In all other respects, the Daily Casual Worker must comply with the standard PAYE rules which include a field on the File Card to register his payments as 'Irregular'. If he works on & off over a harvest or shooting season, you use the same card and set him to 'Left' at the end of the season. Accu-Man cannot advise on what Tax Code & NI Category to use. There is a 1984 HMRC-NFU Agreement on this question but it the Designers of RTI may not have taken this into account when drawing up the rules.

16. Employees paid at longer intervals than Monthly.  There are now facilities to pay quarterly, bi-annual & annual. Such Employees are automatically included on the relevant monthly pay run and use the tax allowances & NI bands for the pay frequency. This is very useful for the Director who is perhaps only paid in Month 12.

17. Non-UK Workers. There are facilities on the File Card to note that they are non-UK and to record the foreign country. You must also enter the Passport Number into a reserved HR code [PASSPORT]. Note that you do not enter a date as this is entered by the system after a successful submission.

18. ASPP. HMRC wish to tie up the SMP (mother) & ASPP (father) claimants. There are facilities to enter the Forename, Surname & NINO of the mother under reserved HR codes of [ASPPFORE], [ASPPSUR] & [ASPPNINO]. As above, do not enter a date as this is entered by the system after a successful submission.

19. Change of Employee Code (PayId). HMRC use your Employee Code in their records. If you change the code and do not inform them, they will assume it is a new Employee - even though you will not have sent Starter information and there may be Year-to-Date figures. This appears to be muddled logic from HMRC but we have to comply. For this reason, Accu-Man will not allow you to alter an Employee Code once you have started using RTI. The PayId takes the form AA-NNNN (AA refers to the Accu-Man Payroll suffix and NNNN is the four digit Accu-Man Employee Code). There are two occasions when the PayId may change from HMRC's perspective:

a. The Payroll is moved to Accu-Man from another system that was already on RTI. They wish to cross-refer the Employee Code on the old system to Accu-Man's code.
b. You run two or more Accu-Man Payrolls that are all under the one PAYE registration. This is called a linked system. The PayId changes if you move an Employee from one linked Accu-Man Payroll to another. In either of the above circumstances, you must enter the old Employee Code against the reserved HR code [OLDCODE]. This is then submitted to HMRC.

20. Payments to Employees after they have left. First Scenario: Error on the last Pay Run. You have closed the Pay Run and submitted the FPS (which includes the Leaver information) and then discover you missed off some pay. If you have not handed the P45 to the Employee, you may undo the run, re-close and re-submit the FPS. If you have handed the P45 to the Employee or run another pay frequency (so you cannot undo the run), follow the second Scenario rules below.
Second Scenario: 'Post-Leaving' Pay. Print the P45 then set the Employee for 'Post-Leaving' pay on the File Card and follow HMRC guidance on the Tax & NI rates to apply. You must not print a revised P45 and Accu-Man will prevent this.