The end of the year can be a very hectic time for those who work in Payroll, especially without proper planning. There are several ways that you can prepare in advance for year-end and the year-begin tasks within Workday Payroll. Here is a checklist of steps that can be taken at different points throughout the year to ensure you are ready to successfully finish the payroll year.
Ongoing Reporting
Reporting and auditing your year-to-date payroll data is crucial to ensuring a smooth end to the year. Full Payment Submission and Employer Payment Summary are run with each payroll and will also need to be run for the last payroll in the year, with a ‘Final’ mark. A robust process of monthly FPS and EPS reconciliation helps in making sure that total figures are correct and agree to each month’s payroll totals. It is recommended to always run:
- ‘FPS exceptions’
- ‘View UK RTI EPS data’
- ‘View UK Apprenticeship Levy.
On top of that the first submission should be run in test mode. The live submission should only be made when no errors are returned from HMRC gateway.
Annual Maintenance
There are several tasks that you think of at year-end, however, they can be completed at any time, in preparation. The list below outlines the regular maintenance activities you will want to perform in your tenant.
- Create Year End Project Plan
- Request employees to update contact information if P60s are being mailed
- Update Payroll Period Schedules, make sure you take BACS processing calendar into account
- Update Holiday Calendars
- Prior to Fiscal and Ledger Year updates, review the security for the domains that house these tasks:
- Search: Security Analysis for Securable Item and Account and verify that the correct people are assigned roles that will allow them to make the necessary updates to the Ledger Years and Accounts.
- Update Ledger Year, Ledger Periods and Open Ledger Periods for new Fiscal Year
- Extend the dates for scheduled reports and integrations that are set to expire
- Extend the dates for alerts that are set to expire
Year-End Maintenance
The tasks below can only be done after your payroll processing has been completed for the last pay period of the year. These must be completed prior to running your first pay calculation for the first pay period of the new year.
- Upload of P9 forms sent by HMRC
- Run tax code uplift for employees without P9 form and clear down process
- Perform Childcare Vouchers assessment (if applicable)
- Run validation to ensure that all employees have new tax record with source either P9 or P9X
- Update any additional deductions that may have custom limits
Legal End of Year Requirements
Make sure you include P60s in your Year End project plan to ensure they are submitted within the legal deadline. Below are some reports that will support you with the process completion:
- Create UK P60
- Create UK P60 forms
- View UK P60
- Publish UK P60
Finally, consider which reports you could run more often. Are there maintenance activities you could do at different times of the year? You should put these tasks on your calendar to stay on top of your payroll responsibilities throughout the year.