Payroll

Paying your employees at Christmas

You may need to pay your employees on a different date to normal over the Christmas break due to holidays.  If you pay early or late, it is important that you submit the correct process date on your FPS.

Paying Early

If you are paying your employees early due to a bank holiday or Christmas, HMRC’s advice is to use your normal pay day as your process date.  This also applies if you are advancing pay over Christmas.

For example, if your normal pay day is the 25^th of the month but in December you are going to pay your employees early on the 22^nd of December.  You must use your normal process date of 25/12/2022, send the employees their pay on 22nd December and submit your full payment submission (FPS) on or before 25^th December 2024.

Doing this helps to protect your employees’ eligibility for Universal Credit, as reporting the payday in as the payment date can affect entitlements.

Paying Late

If you are going to Pay your employees on the first day after the holidays, you should still process your payroll using your normal process date.

In the situation, HMRC recommend you send your FPS early, but if you send your FPS on a later date than your regular payday, you must select code G: Reasonable excuse as the reason the FPS is late.

If you need help with paying your employees early or later 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

Add a Festive message to your invoices etc

You might want to add a festive message to your invoices or inform customers of your Christmas and New Year opening hours etc, this can be done easily by using Report Designer.

Open and rename the report in Report Designer

1. Click Invoices and Credits, then select any invoice.
2. On the top menu, click Print, then click Layouts.
3. Select the layout you want to add the festive message to and click Edit.
4. On the menu bar click Report, click Report Properties.
5. Enter a new report Name and description, then click OK.

Add your festive message

1. On the menu bar click Toolbox, then click Add Text.
2. Click once where you want the text to appear.
3. Enter the text you want, then click a blank area.
4. If required, click, and drag to move or resize the text box.

Add a personal touch and make your message match your company brand by customising the text, define with a line or box and you can also add a festive image.

Save your layout

1. On the menu bar click File, click Save As.
2. Enter a new file name then click
3. On the menu bar click File, then click Exit.

To preview the new layout, simply click an invoice click print then select your festive layout and click Preview.

Tip

You can add a festive message to any layout such as Statements, Letters and Remittances.

If you would like help adding a festive message to any layout or need any help amending or creating a new invoice, statement or remittance layout or need any other help with your Sage Accounts, please contact us