I am using SAGE 50 payroll, a member of staff is on maternity and questioned her pay for last month, apparently her line manager who processes the time sheets did not pass on the fact she was absent through sickness through part of July and August, the new information means the employee's last day at work before starting maternity leave was a sick day. This was not processed due to me not being informed. I am currently processing the September payroll and want to pay the missing SSP, so I was intending to just add the period of SSP with the dates from July to August in with September's pay run. If I add the dates to this pay period, Sage does give the message that "the employee has been paid more than one statutory payment for this period" plus paying all the backdated SSP and current SMP in one period takes the employee above the LEL for NI. Is including it all in this pay period the correct way to do this or will this cause problems and is there a better way to process this?
Hi Kat
You need to roll back and re-do the previous period. You should always do this if correcting an earlier error otherwise it can for some cases impact on tax and NI so staff pay more than they should. I dont use sage payroll so cant tell you how to do so specifically on that piece of software - some allow roll back just for one staff member, some re-report the whole lot. Anyway - upshot is you need to re-do the last month , adjust her pay, re-issue the payslip, pay her the extra, report the error to HMRC via your software and then you can do this month.
Sage payroll will have helpfiles that can talk you through this if no-one on here can help with specifics, or you can phone them as you have auto cover with the product I believe.
Have you considered a different payroll package? Only asking as Sage is v expensive. Moneysoft is great, used a lot by people on here and a LOT cheaper! Just a thought.
__________________
Joanne
Winner of Bookkeeper of the Year 2015, 2016 & 2017
Thoughts are my own/not to be regarded as official advice,which should be sought from a suitably qualified Accountant.
You should check out answers with reference to the legal position
How many weeks pregnant was she & was the sickness pregnany related?
If she was sick with a pregnancy related illness in the last four weeks before her EDD then the company can choose to trigger an early start to heer maternity leave.
Otherwise yes, you need to roll back. I personally would only roll back her. You need to highlight her name on your list of emplyees in Sage then follow the roll back instructions process which will include reprinting her payslip and re submitting an amended FPS.
Thank you for the help. I did wonder if I would need to roll back but was hoping to avoid it, it is possible to roll back one employee on sage so it will be pretty straightforward. The illness wasn't pregnancy related and not within four weeks of her EDD so won't affect the SSP.
Would the best way be to roll back July and August and then process July and send an FPS then process August and send an FPS?
Sage wouldn't be my software of choice for Payroll either but the managing director won't be swayed to change to anything else, even though they aren't the one using it. I'd rather use Moneysoft or Iris but unfortunately not my call.
