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 25th of the month but in December you are going to pay your employees early on the 22nd 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 25th December 2022.
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.
Memo – remember do not advance your employees wages past the 6th of January until you have downloaded Sage Payroll V29.3 update as the changes to the NI rates could cause problems.
If you would like help paying your employees either 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 directly link into your computer to help you resolve your Sage Accounts or Payroll problems.
