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