I've read through RTI information on the HMRC website. I have the sage payroll disc to update for RTI but I'm still in a panic as time is running out and I still have no idea where to start in terms of explaining to clients what will change and what I will need.
Is there a check list somewhere that would help? Such as waht information I will need and for when. Or letter templates to explain it as simple as possible to clients?
Although I have read through over the past few months it is still not sinking in and I am finding it hard to understand what exactly it will be like and what I and the clients need to do.
thanks for the link Tim looking up now I have sent lots of information to my clients on the RTI and stress it is for them to ensure pay is correct etc. whether they have read it is another matter.
the hmrc website was good - lots of youtube for it
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Donna Curling - Complete Book-Keeping Ltd (CBKLtd) - 07939 101900
I've had a good read through today and its gradually sinking in.
I have started to write a letter for each client to notify them of the changes and enclosed a 2 page summary of RTI that I have written up and a data collection sheet for each employee for them to fill in and send back to me by 28th February.
Each of our payroll clients are different in terms that some of them email me each week with hours and alot don't contact us for months and we just process the same hours each week/month and let them know how much PAYE they need to pay. So at present for some of them they aren't pestered by me and they like it this way but I'm thinking about sending out a timesheet by post or email that they can photocopy and send to us or email to us each week/month by a certain deadline to ensure that all information is accurate.
A client told us this month that someone went on leave in November and haven't worked since then yet I have processed the payroll as normal as I wasn't told. Or they will have someone that has left and forget to tell us.
If anyone has some ideas whereby I can prompt our clients to get into a regular routine each payroll period and make sure they are giving me information correctly and on time that would be great.
How do others get information such as hours etc from clients? And do you give them a deadline for giving you this information and if so what happens if they fail to tell you before the deadline?
-- Edited by Noola on Wednesday 30th of January 2013 01:58:48 PM
I will organise a meeting with my boss to talk about new fees and engagement letters before sending anything out. Thanks for reminding me of this!
I've read that we will need to submit the employees pay to HMRC before they are paid. Does anyone have any idea how long before we need to send this? Is the pay date the same as the payroll processing date?
Also, how would I work out for weekly, four weekly and monthly payrolls, a deadline for giving me information each period for hours etc? So for monthly payrolls there could be a deadline of 22nd of the month?
At the moment for monthly payrolls I process some as early as 22nd and some as late as 5th depending on how quickly they get the information to me. When RTI comes in, will there be a deadline for processing the payroll and if so what deadline should I give the client for letting me know of any changes before I process the payroll?
Sorry if that makes no sense.
The deadline is really, really simple. Forget "processing dates", and "payroll dates" and "PAYE dates" and "PAYE Month end" and any other dates that are confusing you. The key point is that you must file RTI *on or before* the date on which employees are actually paid. ie the date when they receive the money as a cheque or cash or in their bank account. That is the beginning and the end of it. If you don't currently know when they're paid you need to find out, so that you can do the RTI filing before pay day. All the other dates used when payroll processing have no relevance to this requirement.
-- Edited by Tom McClelland on Wednesday 30th of January 2013 03:34:20 PM
You've hit the nail on the head as to why it seems that almost all Payroll service providers are basically doubling their fee's from April.
Business is going to have more red tape, higher costs and a greater likelihood of fines (although that last one is at least deferred for a year).
Make sure that you give clients grief for every late update that you receive during the amnesty period as it will benefit them from next April when HMRC are likely to be looking forwards to bolstering their retirement kitty with fines.
When you send out the information sheets you might also want to change your fee's and update your engagement letters to emphasise your lack of responsibility for late returns from the client. In itself that may wake them up to what's happening.
kind regards,
Shaun.
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Shaun
Responses are not meant as a substitute for professional advice. Answers are intended as outline only the advice of a qualified professional with access to all relevant information should be sought before acting on any response given.
I will organise a meeting with my boss to talk about new fees and engagement letters before sending anything out. Thanks for reminding me of this!
I've read that we will need to submit the employees pay to HMRC before they are paid. Does anyone have any idea how long before we need to send this? Is the pay date the same as the payroll processing date?
Also, how would I work out for weekly, four weekly and monthly payrolls, a deadline for giving me information each period for hours etc? So for monthly payrolls there could be a deadline of 22nd of the month?
At the moment for monthly payrolls I process some as early as 22nd and some as late as 5th depending on how quickly they get the information to me. When RTI comes in, will there be a deadline for processing the payroll and if so what deadline should I give the client for letting me know of any changes before I process the payroll?
I agree. I'm not expecting the HMRC/UC/BACS systems to work. It will be a pleasant surprise if they do.
UC is only one driver for RTI. At least as significant (and we're already seeing this with employers on the pilot) is that HMRC is getting real-time knowledge of monthly amounts due from employers. And the third leg is faster tax code corrections for employees with multiple employments, in an attempt to control the ESC A19 fiasco.
If we're not expecting much more accuracy on UC
Small employers don't owe very much each month
There are few employees to monitor their tax codings,
.....then there is a case for a de-minimis exemption from RTI for small employers - and this was pretty much accepted by the two MP's that replied to me.
Just thinking out loud.
Tim
lol Neill
Lord knows, I wish RTI didn't exist, but...
Millions of people are employed by businesses with fewer than 10 employees. There are over a million employers in the UK and only a few tens of thousands of those employers have more than 50 employees. The overwhelming majority are at the 10 or fewer end of things. Many of the small employers have employees with more than 1 job and therefore split tax codes. I suspect that you'd also find that the small employers are those *most* likely to use PAYE to boost their cashflow under the old system of once a year reporting. Big businesses found that very hard to get away with because they're easy and worthwhile to check the moment anyone at HMRC notices an odd monthly payment profile.
My criticism of RTI is the over the top nature of the design and implementation. They've thrown the kitchen sink at the data requirements, whereas they could have started with just collecting the same data as they already collect on P14, but every month rather than annually. That would have been a far smaller system change for everyone
-- Edited by Tom McClelland on Thursday 31st of January 2013 03:00:24 PM
Whats confusing me a bit too is that I plan to send out timesheets to each employer to send back to me each time I process the payroll as there is no consistency at present. But for those that are on a yearly salary would I send out a timesheet for these people? As it would help knowing how many hours they have worked in the month and on which days they usually work.
I am used to working from timesheets in payroll however the lady that did the payroll here at the Accountants before me never sent out or received any timesheets. The employers either email a list of hours or don't contact us at all and the payroll is ran the same as the previous months.
Could someone point me in the direction of a timesheet template. One that would benefit people that work weekly/monthly/paid a yearly salary etc please.
Appreciate what Tom is saying there from an RTI perspective but as the primary driver for RTI seems to be Universal Credits I foresee problems in that if the link to a week or month end lost by being replaced by the actual date of payment then will not this result in the incorrect calculation of tax credits or even some months people not receiving tax credits.
I can fully appreciate what the government is attempting to achieve in moving the population away from a welfare dependency culture that was a lifestyle choice under the previous administration to an attitude of responsibility for one's own financial affairs (#1). But the way that it is being done seems to move the onus of blame for potentially extreme family hardship from themselves to the people preparing the payroll in that the issue will be one of documentation being filed at the wrong time rather than the issue being with a fundamental change to the system.
Much as I would like to be proven wrong I foresee serious issues here.
Shaun.
#1 the argument as to whether this is the right time, right economic climate and right speed of change is a completely separate argument. Despite being conservative my personal view is that they are playing with fireworks in a gunpowder factory but doing everything in such a way that there is always someone else to blame and in the case of the interaction between RTI and Universal Credits it will be us.
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Shaun
Responses are not meant as a substitute for professional advice. Answers are intended as outline only the advice of a qualified professional with access to all relevant information should be sought before acting on any response given.
Appreciate what Tom is saying there from an RTI perspective but as the primary driver for RTI seems to be Universal Credits I foresee problems in that if the link to a week or month end lost by being replaced by the actual date of payment then will not this result in the incorrect calculation of tax credits or even some months people not receiving tax credits.
The point is that UC is geared to actual receipt of cash by the claimant, not when they worked. Hence the importance of payment date, which is on the RTI filing. PAYE weeks and PAYE months have no significance in UC I believe. So they don't care about that at all. They just care about knowing when the claimants got money in their pockets from their employer.
I agree. I'm not expecting the HMRC/UC/BACS systems to work. It will be a pleasant surprise if they do.
UC is only one driver for RTI. At least as significant (and we're already seeing this with employers on the pilot) is that HMRC is getting real-time knowledge of monthly amounts due from employers. And the third leg is faster tax code corrections for employees with multiple employments, in an attempt to control the ESC A19 fiasco.
Might be worth suggesting to your clients the use of an Excel spreadsheet that the office manager is responsible for.
The way that I've seen that working in the past is that everyone fills in their actual hours by Friday. The full timesheet was approved by the manager or deputised manager by 10 a.m. on Monday and sent for processing.
Problems that I have seen with that system :
1) Only one person can use the sheet at a time
2) People open the sheet then go away from their desks locking everyone else out of it.
3) The manager and deputy manager are missing on Monday morning
4) Staff not in on Friday due to illness will not have completed their weekly Timesheet (The manager generally overrides the hours in that instance)
Hints on use of that system.
1) Every staff member has access to their own sheet only (worksheet level passwords)
2) Only the manager has write access to the totals spreadsheet.
As a more robust sollution than developing your own Excel spreadsheet sollution (which is easy but as noted above has flaws) there are timesheet packages out there. The one's that I've used have been bespoke agency one's where you complete a timesheet online (I think all agencies use some variance of those now don't they?).
I don't have the name of any retail timesheet package offering though but sure that others on the site will know some alternatives (maybe Tom knows of a package that will feed into 12pay to save some retyping?).
kind regards,
Shaun.
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Shaun
Responses are not meant as a substitute for professional advice. Answers are intended as outline only the advice of a qualified professional with access to all relevant information should be sought before acting on any response given.
Appreciate what Tom is saying there from an RTI perspective but as the primary driver for RTI seems to be Universal Credits I foresee problems in that if the link to a week or month end lost by being replaced by the actual date of payment then will not this result in the incorrect calculation of tax credits or even some months people not receiving tax credits.
The point is that UC is geared to actual receipt of cash by the claimant, not when they worked. Hence the importance of payment date, which is on the RTI filing. PAYE weeks and PAYE months have no significance in UC I believe. So they don't care about that at all. They just care about knowing when the claimants got money in their pockets from their employer.
I agree. I'm not expecting the HMRC/UC/BACS systems to work. It will be a pleasant surprise if they do.
UC is only one driver for RTI. At least as significant (and we're already seeing this with employers on the pilot) is that HMRC is getting real-time knowledge of monthly amounts due from employers. And the third leg is faster tax code corrections for employees with multiple employments, in an attempt to control the ESC A19 fiasco.
Cheers for the clarification Tom,
I'm perhaps overthinking things and looking at timings in that there must be a cutoff for a taxpayer to receive a tax credit in a month and if that cutoff is missed then there will be resultant genuine hardship.
I hope that I am wrong an that the tax credits system if flexible enough to handle everything thrown at it.
Maybe I'm just a bit jaundiced in my opinions of Government projects from working so often with their prefered IT partner who also dip their fingers into banking systems as well... And not wishing to get sued I'll say nothing at all about that.
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Shaun
Responses are not meant as a substitute for professional advice. Answers are intended as outline only the advice of a qualified professional with access to all relevant information should be sought before acting on any response given.
Am I right in thinking that if the deadline has been missed one month that an employee won't receive UC/Tac credits as technically there has been no pay for that month?
Am I right in thinking that if the deadline has been missed one month that an employee won't receive UC/Tac credits as technically there has been no pay for that month?
I think you could only answer that question with detailed knowledge of the rules for UC, which is way beyond the scope of our responsibilities. However it seems at least possible that a claimant might actually get *more* money if no income is recorded...
I agree. I'm not expecting the HMRC/UC/BACS systems to work. It will be a pleasant surprise if they do.
UC is only one driver for RTI. At least as significant (and we're already seeing this with employers on the pilot) is that HMRC is getting real-time knowledge of monthly amounts due from employers. And the third leg is faster tax code corrections for employees with multiple employments, in an attempt to control the ESC A19 fiasco.
If we're not expecting much more accuracy on UC
Small employers don't owe very much each month
There are few employees to monitor their tax codings,
.....then there is a case for a de-minimis exemption from RTI for small employers - and this was pretty much accepted by the two MP's that replied to me.
And of course the end of end of year procedures is a myth.
we still need to produce P60's so not quite the fundamental move away from the existing criteria that initial announcements led us to believe... Thankfully... I started to get a little worried about the feeders into self assessment.
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Shaun
Responses are not meant as a substitute for professional advice. Answers are intended as outline only the advice of a qualified professional with access to all relevant information should be sought before acting on any response given.
Thanks both! Are the webinars free Julie? We have an Accountants club membership number not sure if this would allow us free access?
Yes it is free to members, it was very good and the letters have been excellent.
The ICB said in the December newsletter they will be holding some but no mention in todays, but a few branch meetings covering the topic but none in my area at all.
I think it will be a pain for those employees in seasonal trades, for example hotels and pubs as the key for benefits is the hours worked, they could be under the hours in a pay period but over in another.
Another area is HMRC website I do not think it will cope, it has already announced it will be shut for usual in April when most weekly paid staff are due to send a return.
I am concerned that employee change of circumstances have to be reported to HMRC by the employees themselves, I cannot see millions of people waiting on the phone lines to do this.
