Table of contents
1. Introduction
An employer operating PAYE as part of their payroll, must complete certain Real Time Information (RTI) tasks during each tax month. Tax months run from the 6th of one month to the 5th of the next. These tasks will include submitting a Full Payment Submission (FPS), every time you pay your employees, and can often require a submission of an Employer Payment Summary (EPS).
Running payroll (from HMRC)
2. Employer Details
Before you can file RTI submissions from Clear Books you need to enter your correct PAYE reference and Accounts office reference. This will allow you submit FPS, which generate each time payroll is calculated for an employee, and EPS, which will allow you to recover statutory pay.
Head to Employer > Details and update the PAYE reference and Accounts office reference.
The accounts office reference is of 13 digits' length, in the format 123AB12345678. The PAYE reference is somewhat shorter, but has no defined format. These references can be obtained from correspondence with HMRC.
3. Pay Day
The date you pay your employees is important for FPS as this must be submitted on or before every pay day. Head to the Settings > General menu.
Toggle on/off the payroll frequencies as appropriate to you using the radio buttons and then update the payday for each payroll frequencies you operate.
For weekly, fortnightly, four-weekly, quarterly and annual frequencies, the first day is the first day of the tax year i.e the 6th April and whichever day of the week that lands on in the year.
If you pay employees on no fixed day of the month, you will need to enter the payment date manually when processing the payroll for each employee, editing the payment date field.
4. Employees
To be able to submit FPS successfully, you must make sure the details of your employees are up to date and accurate.
Head to Employees > View and click on the employee name to edit or create a new employee if appropriate.
Run through the check list below to make sure all employee details are up to date:
- Check the spelling of names against official documentation such as a passport, driving licenses, birth certificates, deed polls, or HMRC correspondence.
- Only first two forenames are submitted to HMRC (Clear Books doesn't support the use of initials)
- National insurance number.
- Gender.
- Date of birth - check against official documentation.
- Working hours.
- Irregular employment indicator.
4.1 Submitting FPS
An FPS is generated each time you process payroll and needs to be submitted on or before every pay day.
Running Payroll:Reporting to HMRC:FPS
You can only submit the FPS of one period at a time e.g you cannot process April and May and submit the outstanding FPS in May. You must process April and submit the outstanding FPS and then process May and submit the outstanding FPS separately.Processing Payroll
Any starter and leaver information will be automatically picked up based on the start or end date entered for the employee - you can change the leaving and starting date at this stage by clicking on the link.
You should carefully review all information before clicking on the Send to HMRC button.
You will be notified if there are any errors which have led to your submission being rejected. You can check the submission on the Payroll > RTI > Submission menu.
If you have made a mistake and need to re-submit an FPS, the new submission for the period will supersede your previous submission.
How to correct mistakes in previous pay-runs
If you submit a late FPS, you will need to provide a late submission reason on the submission review screen. The deadline for all FPS submissions for the tax year is the 19th April.
Late FPS Submission
When you are submitting your final FPS of the year, make sure to tick the appropriate checkbox.
How to process payroll at year end
4.2 Submitting EPS
EPS are submitted from the Payroll> RTI > File EPS menu. You can submit an EPS for different tax years using the 'Submission tax year' drop down field.
An Employer Payment Summary allows you to reclaim statutory maternity, paternity, adoption or shared parental payments, Employment Allowance, Construction Industry Scheme (CIS) deductions as a limited company. You must also report any periods of inactivity.
The date at which you submit an EPS is determined by HMRC for example, to be entitled to employment allowance you must submit an EPS at the start of the tax year whereas for things like statutory pay the deadline is the 19th of the following tax month.
Send an EPS instead of an FPS if you’ve not paid any employees in a tax month.Running payroll: Reporting to HMRC:EPS
