Sage Blog

The end of the tax year is a busy period for all employers and we constantly work to improve our payroll software and the support service, SageCover, we provide to make this time of year as simple and as painless as possible for our customers. One of the key things an employer needed to do was to send their payroll information to HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC), by the 18^th May.

Gary Ging, Sage Payroll Team (enjoying a Newcastle summer)

Online filing

This used to be a laborious task of having to produce two copies of the P14 form for every employee who worked for you during the year and the P35, which summarises all of the information on the P14s. This was all mailed in the post to HMRC (at the employer’s cost) or you went to your local tax office to deliver it personally. And don’t forget that you also have to give a P60, on paper, to all of your employees still employed by you at the end of the year.

The introduction of online filing has changed the way in which employers can send this information to HMRC and this year was the first year in which all employers, with a few exceptions, were required to submit their year end information online. Not only is this much easier than printing lots of paper work (it’s now just a couple of mouse clicks) but it gives you an immediate response from HMRC to tell you that they have received the information and if everything was ok or not.

How did we do?

We recently received our annual Vendor Report from HMRC detailing how our payroll products performed over the 2009/10 on-line filing period and we were once again very happy with the figures – 436,104 successful employer submissions for a total of 7,218,432 P14s.

Since the introduction of on-line filing we have always exceeded the previous year figures but the most pleasing aspect of the latest report is that it’s not just about the quantity of submissions but also the quality.

The Vendor Report doesn’t just tell us how many successful submissions were made using Sage Payroll software but also how many were unsuccessful, and this year there were 661. No, that isn’t a typo – out of 436,765 submission attempts there were only 661 failures.

This gives us a 99.85% success rate, which I think is pretty phenomenal considering the number of submissions made. And whilst 661 submission attempts were unsuccessful, this does not mean that 661 employers who use our products were not able to submit at all – our submission data shows that these employers did make a successful submission after correcting the original problem.

And I don’t refer to the number of failed submissions as ‘only 661’. We believe that this number is too high and so we have already set ourselves a target of improving these numbers for next year – not only on the number of submissions but we’re going for a 100% first time success rate.

On a final note, HMRC have changed their regulations and so from the 2010/11 year end it will be possible to give your employees their P60 electronically. Within Sage Payroll this will mean that you can either continue to print them on paper or email them directly to your employees, complete with password protection.

Gary Ging, Sage Payroll Team

It’s Payroll Year End and it seems to come round faster every year.  This is my 7th year end now working in the Sage Technical Support team supporting our SageCover customers, and apart from Internet submissions not a lot else has changed.  I thought it might be nice to let you hear about Payroll Year End from my point of view.

Andrew Redhead, Sage Payroll Support Team

For those of you that don’t know, Payroll Year End is an annual event where everyone who processes payroll has to send their P35 and P14 reports to the HMRC to show what they have deducted from all employees over the previous year.  All reports have to be received by the 19th of May or they will kindly send you a fine for every day it is late.

Days at Payroll Year End are much like any other except they start earlier, end later and are very busy.  Due to the longer opening hours we have people in the office from 8 in the morning till 7 at night to answer calls.  It’s very intensive, and I need a high level of concentration to make sure we support our customers to the high standards they expect and deserve.

Calls from our customers can range from an installation of the new version to make sure they are all ready for the new year or a problem with a P35 not balancing and needing to find out why.  We will also receive calls about the more standard issues for payroll like statutory maternity pay and holidays.

Throughout the day there are various things Sage do to make it go as smoothly as possible.  If we work half lunches we get a free sandwich delivered to our desk.  There is chocolate passed around to keep our energy up and the coffee machine is free for part of the day.  They may sound like little things but they all add up to make the day go smoother.

With a job based on the phone though the biggest thing that effects your day is the customers you speak to.  It’s a stressful time of year for our Sage Payroll customers and you’d expect some of them to be frustrated and annoyed, they are however not.  They are very nice to speak to and although they may mention how busy we are they seem to understand why we are so busy.  Depending on the type of call there may be time to talk about things outside of payroll.  This is always a nice change of pace and can make the day go much quicker.  On other calls there is no time for conversation so it’s just a case of entering the notes then onto the next customer.

At the end of the day it’s a case of finishing the call you are currently on before you go home.  It might be time to go home, but it’s not a matter of passing the call to colleague to finish it or ringing the customer back the next day; what matters is taking the time to help the customer no matter how long it takes.  Once you’re done and it’s off home to relax and enjoy the evening before getting up to do it all again.

For our customers I’d say don’t worry if things aren’t going smoothly for you. The important thing about Payroll Year End is to just not let it get on top of you.  Yes you’re busy, yes it can get stressful, but if you do have a problem there is someone like me at the end of the phone to help you.

Useful links:

• Visit our Payroll Year End website for updates and information
• You can find P60s, Payroll Year End training and Payroll software at the Sage Store

Andrew Redhead, Payroll Software Support Team

What’s best for you? Payroll software or outsourcing your payroll

At some time, all businesses, whatever their size, have posed this question and tried to deal with the reality of the answer.

Many businesses feel that the right option is to invest in payroll software and staff to manage the payroll in house, but many others feel that the better option is to outsource their payroll.

What are the key considerations?

Time:  Does your business have the time and expertise to take their focus away from their business so that they can deal with payroll weekly or monthly?  Payroll is a task that has natural peaks and troughs throughout the month – will filling this role internally be cost effective for your business?

Reliability: It goes without saying that your staff will require payment on time, every time.  The payroll must be accurate and must be processed when it is due regardless of holiday, sickness or any other unforeseen circumstances

Confidentiality: Payroll is probably the most sensitive subject within a business – an indiscretion can cause huge upset – can the organization be sure that sensitive information is kept confidential?

Flexibility: Changes may need to be made to payroll at any time – will the in house resource always be available to make last minute changes?

Cost: Last but by no means least, cost is a major consideration for businesses when considering outsourcing.  While it may be advantageous to have in house staff available ‘on tap’ as it were, there are costs involved in staffing this role, eg holiday/absence cover, on going training (payroll is an area that is guaranteed to have annual changes – and that’s before whoever is sitting in No 11 decides to be imaginative (remember the computer incentive scheme!), not forgetting the cost of the payroll software, support and annual updates.

We know that different customers have different needs, which is why we offer both payroll outsourcing and payroll software, so take your time to work out what solution suits you and your business the best.

Alison Godwin, Sage Outsource

Senior Business Analyst, Gary Ging, is one the many people behind our Sage 50 Payroll and Sage 50 HR software. Here he talks about the role of customer feedback in getting the product right.

Gary Ging enjoying a well earned break

By the time you are reading this our new Payroll and HR 2010 products will have just been released and the R&D team will be all sitting around and relaxing with our feet up. Actually, that won’t be true because as soon as those products are released focus switches to our Payroll Year End project – there’s no time to rest for us…

But I digress, what I wanted to talk about was a couple of new features we’ve put into our 2010 products that I think a lot of people will benefit from.

One area we’ve looked at in our Payroll product is how you deal with the statutory payments for employees, such as sick pay, maternity and paternity pay. In Payroll 2010 it’s now a simple matter of entering one or two dates and the program will immediately tell you whether or not the employee is entitled to a payment, and if so, how much, and more importantly, if they aren’t entitled then why. Our Customer Services team say that processing statutory payments is a common theme on the helpline and they think that the improvements we have made will help a lot of our customers.

One of the many new features in HR 2010 is the ability to record employee holidays as a number of hours, as opposed to days. It’s a simple, straight forward, feature but this was the number one item on our customer wishlist and improves what, I think, is an already great product.

 We really do listen to and appreciate your feedback and suggestions and while there are a lot more great new features in both products please keep on telling us what you want to see in future versions, or, and this is just as important to me, what you don’t like in the current products – just because something is the way it is now doesn’t mean we can’t change it in the future if it means it will make better.