April 2024 news

Changes to the NMW rates – From 1st April 2024 the national minimum wage (NMW) rates are increasing, also the age bands have changed, there is no longer a band aged 21 to 22, this has now been merged into the National Living Wage, the rates are shown below.

NMW rate from 1st April 2024 Rates
National Living Wages (21 and over) £11.44
18–20-Year-Old Rate £8.60
16–17-Year-Old Rate £6.40
Apprentice Rate £6.40

These are the minimum rates of pay most employees are entitled to. You can use the minimum wage check option to check you are paying your employees the correct rates, make sure that you check your employees on a regular basis because after their birthday they could be due a higher rate of pay.

Important Dates

• 5th April 2024 – Tax year ends
• 19th April 2024 – Final submission of 2023/24 tax year deadline.
• 31st May 2024 – P60s must be distributed to employees by this date.

Sage 50 Accounts V30
Sage 50 Accounts v30 is currently being released and has a host of new features and enhancements to make life easier.

If you would like any more information on the new Sage 50 Accounts v30 and how it can help your business or need help installing it or if you would like to purchase an upgrade or need any other help, please contact us

Payroll

Sage 50 Payroll V30 New Features

New Home Page

The new Home Page is an easy way to keep informed on features, access support videos and webinars etc, ensuring you are always up to date.  In V30 the Home Page openings by default when you log into a company, but you can easily change view to process the wages, and if you prefer you can go into defaults and set the Employee list to be your default.

Legislation for 2023/2024

Sage 50 Payroll V30 includes the latest legislation for the new tax year.

Key Changes

  • Statutory Paternity Pay – deals with the changes to Statutory Paternity Pay (SPP) and Statutory PP Adoption Pay (SPPA).
  • Statutory Maternity Pay – from the 24/25 tax year, in line with HMRC guidance, SMP can be processed when the gender is set o female or male in an employee record.
  • NHS pension scheme – changes to the NHS Pension tiers from April 2024.
  • Investment Zone National Insurance categories

P45 Values

When you enter a new employee’s P45 values you must only enter values for the tax year you are processing.

For the V30, the P45 year to date fields are not available when you should not enter them.  This occurs when the date left previous employment is not in the same tax year as your Process Date in Sage 50 Payroll.

Pension Data Exchange (PDX) error improvements

Sage have added clickable links within the most common errors in PDX.  These links will take you straight to the relevant support guide for these errors, helping you to process the pensions quicker.

If you need help installing Sage 50 V30 Payroll or need help running your payroll yearend routine or need any other help or advice with your payroll, please contact us

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

Accounts

Prepare for year end

At the end of your financial year, you need to run the year end routine in Sage 50 Accounts before you can close your current financial year.

Before you do this, it is advisable to do few basic checks to ensure your yearend runs smoothly.

Enter all transactions

Make sure you have posted all transactions for the financial year you’re closing.

These may include:

  • Checking that all bank accounts are reconciled, and all unpresented items checked to make sure they are valid.
  • Aged Debtors reports checked; any bad debts written off etc.
  • Aged Creditor reports checked, any missing invoices or credit notes added etc.
  • VAT return run and submitted if VAT quarter coincides with yearend.
  • Enter any adjustments from your accountant. These would normally be posted as a journal.
  • Run month end routine for depreciation, prepayments and accruals.
  • Enter closing and opening stock postings if required.

Check you chart of accounts

The chart of accounts defines which category each nominal code falls.

When the year end is run, the chart of accounts decides which nominal codes to clear down, and which balances to carry forward.  It is therefore important to check the chart of accounts.

To check

  1. Click Nominal codes then click Chart of accounts.
  2. Select the chart of accounts you want to view and then click Edit.
  3. To check for any duplicated or missing nominal codes or if any ranges overlap click Check.
  4. If the following message appears “No errors found in this chart of accounts”, you chart of accounts is complete and you are good to carry on.

If prompted to print a Chart of Accounts Error report, you have problems which need to be fixed before you can run the year end.

Run year end reports

Print any management reports you required such as

  • Trial Balance
  • Profit and Loss
  • Balance Sheet

There are various other various other reports you can run, and it is up to you what information you want.  All these reports can be run again from the Archive data once you have run the year end if need.

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

 

Sage 50 Accounts V30.0 has now been released now, with many new and improved features such as: –

  • Bank Feed Rules Enhancements – in 29.2 a new interface was added for Bank feeds, this has now been extended to fully integrate the creation. approval, and management of Bank feed rules. All the information needed to create a new bank rule is now on one screen. There is a new approve tab, where transactions can be clearly seen before approval or rejection, which can be done on an individually or multiple basis.  The updated Manage rules screen lets you view, edit or delete any rule.
  • 64-bit version – by default Sage 50 Accounts V30 has transitioned to a 64- bit version. This change enables Sage 50 to work seamlessly with Microsoft Office and other third-party applications developed by various people. It also means that it improves memory capabilities, improves performance and less chance of out-of-memory issues etc. A 32bit version will still be available on demand if required.
  • Report Finder – For Cloud users there is a new report finder within the report browser. The report finder allows a natural language search to be entered, which uses AI to understand and find the most suitable report.
  • New Tax Code property for fees – if you receive payments via Stripe a manual change to the VAT return was required to correctly show the reverse charge on the VAT return associated with the fees. In V30 a new check box has been added to the Edit Tax code screen labelled Invoice Payment fees. If this option is selected the reverse charge for the bank payment will be automatically reflected in boxes 1,4, 6 and on the VAT return.
  • Bank defaults for Bank Payments and Receipts – now in V30 the default tax code, department and nominal code can be chosen for Bank Payments and Receipts independently from the Suppliers and Customers defaults.
  • Miscellaneous updates Reports – the number of reports within Sage 50 V30 has been reduced by removing redundant reports and consolidating multiple reports into one eg instead of 7 detailed day books reports for suppliers there is one report where the desired transaction type can be selected within the criteria screen.

 

If you would any more information on the new Sage 50 Accounts v30.0 and how it can help your business or need help installing it or if you would like to purchase an upgrade or need any other help or anything else, please contact us

 

Payroll

Set up and maintain your users

You can easily set up access rights on your software so that different users can log in and help process your payroll.  You can also restrict access to certain areas of the software.

Before any users are set up, there are a few things you need to check:

  • You need to log into your payroll with a username that has access to the Access Rights option. The MANAGER username has access by default.
  • You can create multiple users by following these steps, however your software licence decides how many users can log in at any one time. In your software click Help, then About to check your user limit.

To set up a new user

Make sure you are logged in as manager.

  1. On the menu bar, click Tasks, the click Security.
  2. Click Access Rights.
  3. In the Users section, click Add.
  4. Enter a Logon name and password for the new user.
  5. Click

Now you want to give you user specific access rights.  In the table below we have listed the post popular ways to do this.  One you have finished. Click OK.

Restrict access to certain areas of the software – In Allow Access To These Areas: check the boxes for the areas you would like the user to have access to.  Alternatively, click Select All and just de-select the areas you do not want them to access.

Give the user full access rights – In Employee Record Access, select all check boxes, set the access Level to 9 and check the box to Include lower levels.  Then in Allow Access To These Areas, click Select All.

Access to only certain Pay frequency employees – In the Employee Access section, select the required pay element check boxes e.g. Four Weekly

Give the user access based on employee access levels – In Employee Access Level, choose the relevant level up to which the user can access.  The access level is located in the Analysis field of each employee’s record.  By default, each employee’s record has an access level of zero, except for directors who have a level of 9.

For example, if you set the username as level 6, that user can access and process any employees on that level.  If you also select the ‘Include lower levels’ checkbox, this user can access records from level 0 through 6, but not 7 to 9.

Suppress Non-Essential Messaging – select the checkboxes in this section as required to hide non essential messaging for this user.  Leave the checkboxes clear to keep this messaging active.

Login with a different Username

Once you have set up your user, you can easily switch from the current user to a different user.

Simply click File, then click Logout & login with a different username and enter the required username and password, then click OK.

 

If need help setting up different users or need any other help or advice with your payroll, please contact us

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

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