Payroll

Submit an Employment Payment Summary (EPS) to show no payment due and reclaim CIS deductions

If no payment is due and Construction Industry Scheme (CIS) deductions are suffered in the same period, you must inform HMRC and submit an employer payment summary. (EPS).

HMRC can only accept a single submission which includes both no payment and the CIS amount.

Submit an EPS

You can send  an EPS to notify HMRC that no payment is due, if you have also suffered CIS deductions in the same period.

1. Click e-submissions, then click Employer Payment Summary.
2. Select the statement You have suffered CIS deductions.
3. Click Next, check the tax month is correct, then click Next.
4. Verify your statutory payment recovered values and NIC compensation amounts.
5. Use your P32 to check that the values are correct. If you need to change the values, you can change then here.
6. The EPS contains cumulative year to date figures.
7. Once the figures are correct, click Next.
8. Enter both the value of CIS deductions suffered and your Corporation Tax Reference.

Note: You must enter you 10-diget Corporation Tax Reference, also known as your Unique Tax Payer Reference, before you can send CIS deductions suffered on an EPS.

9. You can not calculate this value in Sage 50 Payroll, you must enter it manually based on your external records.
10. If there is no payment due to HMRC, select the No payment is due for tax month check box.
11. Click Next, then click Finish.
12. Complete the Internet Submissions wizard.

If you need help sending a nil payment EPS or reclaiming CIS if you are a Limited company or need any other help or advice with your payroll, please contact us

We can also provide a remote access service where we can link into your computer to help you resolve your Sage Accounts or Payroll problems.

Accounts

Clear Audit Trail

Once you have run the year end routine and archived the data, it can be a good idea to clear the audit trail depending on the number of transactions you have.  Clearing the Audit Trail removes transactions which meets a specific criteria.  An opening balance journal is posted that stands for the balance of the removed transactions. The audit trail history holds the details of the removed transactions.

Criteria

Clear Audit Trail removes all transactions that meet the following criteria:

• Date on or before the date you specify.
• Date must be before your current financial year.
• Fully paid.
• VAT reconciled, if applicable.
• Bank reconciled, if applicable.
• CIS reconciled, if applicable.
• If the transaction is allocated, the linked transactions must also meet all of the above criteria.

Any transaction that does not meet all of the above criteria are not cleared from the audit trail.

Memo – We recommend running Clear Audit Trail routine on the computer that holds your accounts data. This routine might take some time.

Clearing the Audit Trail affects retrospective reports that use transactional data, we recommend running any important reports before clearing the transactional history, remember you can always go into your archive data to run reports.

To Clear Audit Trail

1. Click Tools then click Period End and Clear Audit Trail.
2. Enter the date you want to clear transactions up to and click Clear audit trail.
3. Create a backup, click Browse and select the required folder for the backup and click OK, then click OK and click OK.
4. To view the removed transactions, click OK then click Close and click Close.

Postings

When you run a Clear Audit Trail, an opening balance journal posts to your nominal codes to replace the removed transactions.

You can then remove old, unused records, invoices and orders and then compress your data, see earlier articles on how to do this.

If you would like help on Clearing the Audit Trail or removing old records, invoices and orders and compressing your data or need any other help with your Sage Accounts, please contact us

Payroll 

Payroll New Year

1. Check you’ re using the correct version.

Before you start processing the new tax year, you must have installed the update for the 2024/25 tax year, V30.00.226.

2.     Update your NI rates.

The spring Budget 2024 announcement included a reduction in the main rate of employees’ National Insurance for the 2024/25 tax year.

You must update your NI rates in Sage 50 Payroll V30, before you process a 2024/25 payroll.

3. Update your employees’ tax codes.

For the 2024/25 tax year, the personal allowance and emergency tax code remains the same at £12,570 and 1257L. This means you do not need to change your employees’ tax codes unless informed by HMRC.

You do however need to remove the week 1 / month 1 flag on any employees’ tax codes before processing in the new tax year.

4. Small employers’ relief

If you are eligible for Small Employers’ Relief (SER) (previous years gross National Insurance must be less than £45,000), you need to set your Sage Payroll to calculate and claim it.

5. Apply for Employment Allowance

TIP: make sure your process date is set to 6/04/2024 before completing this.

In the 2024/25 tax year the employment allowance allows eligible employers to reduce their annual Employers National Insurance liability by up to £5,000.

Submit the Employer Payment Summary (EPS) for Employment Allowance

1. Click Company, then click Settings.
2. Click the Apply for EA
3. From the State Aid drop-down menu, select one of the following options:

• Applicable
• Not Applicable

If State Aid is applicable, select the relevant State Aid Sector. For more information on State aid, visit Gov.uk.

4. Click Submit then click Continue, then click Submit then Submit

At this stage, HMRC receives an EPS with Employment Allowance application.

• If your application is unsuccessful, you receive a notification in your IR Secure Mailbox within five working days.
• If you don’t hear back from HMRC, then your application has been successful, and you can then select the Eligible for Employment Allowance check box within Company then Settings. Once you select this check box, your software is set up to calculate Employer Allowance.

Memo

If you select the Eligible for Employment Allowance check box after you have already processed one or more tax months, you must re-run your P32 for each month of the tax year starting from month 1. Sage 50 Payroll then calculated the Employment Allowance due in each period and records these values in Company Settings > HMRC Payments of your software.

6. Pensions Data Exchange

If you use the Pensions Data Exchange (PDX) to send data to your provider, there are some additional steps to complete at the start of the tax year.

If you need help running your payroll year end routine or setting up for the new Payroll year or need any other help or advice with your payroll, please contact us

We can also provide a remote access service where we can link into your computer to help you resolve your Sage Accounts or Payroll problems.

Accounts

Running a year end routine

Once you have passed your accounts year end and you have check you are ready to run a year end routine, please see last month’s newsletter on what to do, you are ready to run your yearend accounts routine.

The year end routine does several different things.

1. It advances your accounts year by one, letting you run profit and loss reports for the current year etc.
2. Each nominal code that is included as part of the Profit and Loss in the Chart of Accounts is zeroed and a revering figured entered and the difference is posted to the Retain Profit nominal code e.g. 3200 Profit and Loss
3. Archive’s your data.
4. You can also set nominal and stock budgets if required.

Running the yearend routine

1. Click Tools, point to Period End, and then click Year End.
2. Click Check Data – caution any errors etc need to be corrected before continuing.
3. Have zero errors? Click Close.
4. Click Check COA, then click OK, receive an error, this needs to be corrected before you go any further.
5. Click Backup, select the files you want to be included in the backup. We recommend changing the name of the Sage backup to include the year end date e.g. VitalsupportYE 31.03.24.001, this backup needs to be retained and stored in a safe place. You might want to take more than one backup.
6. To Archive your company data, select the Archive check box (archiving your data lets you create a copy of your data which you can access to run reports for previous years and view data which you might have cleared down).
7. Confirm the details on the Archive Company Window.
8. To set up budgets for your new financial year, select the Budgets check box and choose your budget options.
9. Check the date is in the year you are closing and, enter a lock date to prevent postings before a certain date, this stops people from accidently posting back into last year after you have run the year end routine.
10. Click Run Year End then click Yes and click OK.
11. Select how you want to output the report, click OK, then click OK

Memo – We recommend running the year end routine on the computer that holds your accounts data. The year end procedure might take some time. If the software freezes when running the year end, do not close it, as the year end procedure may still be running.

If you would like help checking your accounts or correcting items before running the year end or would like help running your yearend routine or need any other help with your Sage Accounts, please contact us