Mar 2013
19
BrightPay 13/14 is Now Available
We are delighted to announce that BrightPay 13/14 has obtained full HMRC recognition for RTI submissions and is now available to download.
Preparing for RTI
From 6th April, all payments to employees must be reported to HMRC using RTI. Although we have worked hard to make your RTI experience with BrightPay as painless as possible, there are a few things you need to do before your first 13/14 payroll run to ensure that it all runs smoothly.
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Make sure that all employees are included in your payroll before you send your first RTI submission.
- If you run payroll for both weekly and monthly employees, your first weekly FPS submission will include the employment details for the monthly staff, even if they have not yet been paid.
- If you have imported from BrightPay 12/13 and an employee joins in 12/13 after the import, make sure you add this employee to your 13/14 payroll.
- Unlike previous years, you must include all employees, including nannies and domestic staff, casual employees, part-time staff, students working in their vacation and those below the Lower Earnings Limit.
- Make sure you know your Accounts Office Reference as HMRC requires this to be included in RTI submissions. If you have your yellow Employer Payment Booklet issued by HMRC, the Accounts Office Reference will be on the front cover in the top right hand corner. Here is a useful link on the HMRC website to help you find your Accounts Office Reference.
- In so far as possible, try to ensure that the information you have entered in BrightPay for each of your employees is accurate. To help with this, we have created a Request Form that you can have your employees complete and return to you.
RTI Examples
It is important that you understand how BrightPay handles Full Payment Submissions (FPS) and in particular your first FPS which acts as an alignment submission. This understanding is best served by a couple of examples.
Example 1
You process your first week's payroll before the start of the 13/14 tax year, just to have it ready to go. You will notice after finalising the first week in BrightPay that an FPS has been automatically prepared for you and is awaiting submission. If your first payday is Thursday 11th April, then the FPS must be submitted on or before 11th April. (HMRC will not accept an RTI submission prior to 6th April).
One of the really nice things about BrightPay is that until an RTI submission is sent, it will be automatically updated with any changes you make to employer, employee or payment details. Let's say you only add your monthly paid employees in BrightPay after already finalising your first week. In this case, the pending first FPS will be automatically updated to include the details for the monthly employees. Similarly, if you discover that the NINO for one of your employees is incorrect, you can simply correct the employee record and the pending FPS will be automatically updated with the correct NINO. You do not have to process the payroll again or prepare the FPS again for these changes to be made.
Example 2
You process your first week's payroll before the start of the 13/14 tax year, just to have it ready to go. An FPS is automatically prepared and is awaiting submission. You then notice that you forgot to include overtime and so you re-open the payslips for all or some of your employees and finalise them again. In this case, the pending FPS will be automatically updated with the adjustments that you made.
The same automatic updating applies to other RTI submission types as well (EAS, NVR and EPS). Once they are created and until they are sent, any changes you make to employer or employee information will be automatically applied.
Reporting and Paying HMRC in Real Time: Getting it Right
HMRC have published a useful one page leaflet entitled "Reporting and paying HMRC in real time: getting it right". Download it here.
Any Questions?
We will be delighted to help you with any questions you may have. You can call us on 0845 3004304.
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