This section gives answers to the most common problems and "gotchas" that may be encountered during the day-to-day processing of the payroll, such as making refunds to employees and explanations of the (occasionally cryptic) exception report messages.
The status shows how far the employee has progressed through the cycle of processing.
Status |
Explanation |
| 0 | The employee has been period-ended and no action has been taken in the current period. |
| 2 | Pay input has been performed. |
| 4 | Payroll calculation has been run. |
| 8 | Payslips have been produced. Status must be re-set if you wish to recalculate. |
| 16 | A payment run has been performed e.g. Cheque Print, BACS run etc. Status must be re-set if you wish to recalculate, reprint payslips or perform the payment run again. |
IMPORTANT NOTE: Beware of changing the status on an employee manually, unless you know exactly what you are doing. Changing it down e.g. from 16 to 8 so you can repeat the payment run, is generally fine but changing it up from less than 4 to 4 or higher is dangerous: status 4 means the employee has been calculated, but setting it to 4 in Employee Status [PES] does not magically make the employee calculated! You can seriously mess up your employee's cumulatives and hence the end of year returns by doing this - you have been warned!
No. All input relates to the current pay period, so you must finish one before you can start the next.
At any field where you are prompted for an employee number, enter ,<CR> (comma followed by carriage return) to invoke the search facility. It defaults to searching for employees by surname, but you can choose several other fields to search on. As a short-cut to this, you can enter ,xxx<CR> where xxx is the first few letters of the employee's surname. Example: ,GRE would return a list of all employees with surnames beginning GRE e.g. Green, Grenfell, Grey etc.
First, make sure that you have a component set up for Statutory Sick Pay payments. This should be shown on the Payroll Control File [PPM] in the Control Components box. If there is no SSP component shown here when you view the screen, you will need to search the Component Control File [PCM] for one and create it if it does not exist; there are instructions here. Make sure the new SSP component is added to the Payroll Control screen control components list afterwards.
To pay SSP, you can use either Full Pay Input [PFI] or SSP Entry [PSP], whichever you prefer. You will see basically the same fields on screen, just laid out differently.
Select the employee who will be receiving SSP. In PFI, you will then have to enter the component for SSP. In SSP Entry, you won't need to specify it since the program automatically uses the control SSP component. Then follow the prompts on screen.
The one that tends to be misunderstood the most is "Linked PIW". This is asking whether the period of sickness starts less than 8 weeks after the last one, and so forms a linked Period of Incapacity for Work. Enter "Y" or "N". This controls whether the system should calculate a new average weekly earnings, or use what it already has on file for this employee.
NOTE: SSP is always paid in whole days, never weeks or hours or as just money, no matter how the employee is paid their other earnings.
First, make sure that you have a component set up for Statutory Maternity Pay payments. This should be shown on the Payroll Control File [PPM] in the Control Components box. If there is no SMP component shown here when you view the screen, you will need to search the Component Control File [PCM] for one and create it if it does not exist; there are instructions here. Make sure the new SMP component is added to the Payroll Control screen control components list afterwards.
Secondly, you will need to enter the employee's Expected Week of Childbirth in Employee SMP Maintenance [PSMP]. The system needs that date to work out the Qualifying Week, which it uses to calculate how much SMP is due, and how much of it may be recovered. You should fill in as much of the rest of the screen as you can.
To pay SMP, you will need to use Full Pay Input [PFI]. As soon as you enter the SMP component on a female employee, the system will prompt you for the information it needs to process the SMP payment.
NOTE: SMP is always paid in whole weeks, never days or hours or as just money, no matter how the employee is paid their other earnings.
First, make sure that you have a component set up for Statutory Paternity Pay payments. This should be shown on the Payroll Control File [PPM] in the Control Components box. If there is no SPP component shown here when you view the screen, you will need to search the Component Control File [PCM] for one and create it if it does not exist; there are instructions here. Make sure the new SPP component is added to the Payroll Control screen control components list afterwards.
Secondly, you will need to use Employee SPP Maintenance [PSPP] to set up the employee's qualifying information from their self-certificate requesting SPP. Not all the fields on this screen need to be filled in for SPP to work; you may not have the information yet for some of them, and others the system will maintain itself. You should fill in as much as you can. The bare minimum requirements are to indicate whether the SPP relates to a birth or adoption, and the Qualifying Week or Matching Week.
To pay SPP, you will need to use Full Pay Input [PFI]. As soon as you enter the SPP component on an employee, the system will prompt you for the information it needs to process the SPP payment. It will also warn you if any critical information is absent or incorrect.
NOTE: SPP is always paid in whole weeks, never days or hours or as just money, no matter how the employee is paid their other earnings.
First, make sure that you have a component set up for Statutory Adoption Pay payments. This should be shown on the Payroll Control File [PPM] in the Control Components box. If there is no SAP component shown here when you view the screen, you will need to search the Component Control File [PCM] for one and create it if it does not exist; there are instructions here. Make sure the new SAP component is added to the Payroll Control screen control components list afterwards.
Secondly, you will need to use Employee SAP Maintenance [PSAP] to set up the employee's qualifying information from their self-certificate requesting SAP. Not all the fields on this screen need to be filled in for SAP to work; you may not have the information yet for some of them, and others the system will maintain itself. You should fill in as much as you can. The bare minimum requirement is to enter the Matching Date from the matching certificate. Without this, SAP cannot be paid.
To pay SAP, you will need to use Full Pay Input [PFI]. As soon as you enter the SAP component on an employee, the system will prompt you for the information it needs to process the SAP payment. It will also warn you if any critical information is absent or incorrect.
NOTE: SAP is always paid in whole weeks, never days or hours or as just money, no matter how the employee is paid their other earnings.
The Payroll Calculation Exception Report will show you the total amount of the refund that the system has calculated for the employee. Enter the amount to release (or less, if you want to spread it over more than one payslip) in the Tax Refund Released field of Standard Deductions Override [PDP], and then re-calculate the employee to make the refund take effect. If you have already produced a payslip for the employee, you will have to re-set the status back to 2 before re-calculating.
Note: There is no need to enter the refund amount as a negative number; the system already knows it is a refund and will sign it accordingly.
When special circumstances arise that mean you need to override what the system calculates for tax, NI or pension, you should use Standard Deductions Override [PDP] to enter the values you want the system to use, instead of the ones it would normally calculate for itself. You will then need to calculate the affected employee again to make the overrides take effect. If a payslip has already been produced, remember to re-set the employee's status to 2 before you re-calculate.
When overrides have been used, you will see messages on the Payroll Calculation Exception Report [PCP] and Calculation Proof List [PPR] indicating which values have been overridden.
Note: You don't have to use Standard Deductions Override for pension, since you can enter pension overrides against the employee in Employee Statutory Data [PED], but if you do that you have to remember to take the override out after period end (Standard Deductions clears down automatically) and you don't have the messages on the report as a visual confirmation that it has been done.
If an error has occurred in a previous period, you may need to make a refund to the employee of part or all of their tax, NI or pension. This is done through Standard Deductions Override [PDP] in a similar fashion to the overrides described above. Here's how - but make sure you read the important bit at the end before you start!
- Work out how much tax/NI/pension you need to refund.
- Calculate the employee. If the amount you need to refund is less than the employee has calculated for tax/NI/pension in this period, subtract the refund from the calculated amount and enter the difference in Standard Deductions Override in the appropriate field(s). If the amount to refund is more than the employee has calculated, enter the difference as a negative amount in Standard Deductions Override.
- Re-calculate the employee to make the refund take effect.
IMPORTANT: If you are refunding NI because the employee has changed NI codes, e.g. reached retirement age and changed to NI Code C from A, you must leave the employee on the "wrong" NI code until after the refund has been processed and the period in which it was paid has been closed down. If you do not, the employee will never receive the refund, or if you change the NI code after payslips are produced but before period end, the refund will be on the payslip but will never hit the employee's cumulatives, causing problems with the P60s. Simply put, you cannot manipulate NI on two different table letters through Standard Deductions Override within the same pay period. Likewise, if you are refunding pension contributions because the employee should not have been put in the pension scheme, leave the "Pension (Y/N)" flag set to "Y" until after the end of the period in which the refund is paid, to ensure it is processed.
First, make sure that you have a component set up for Tax Credits. This should be shown on the Payroll Control File [PPM] in the Control Components box. If there is no Tax Credit component shown here when you view the screen, you will need to search Component Control File [PCM] for one and create it if it does not exist; there are instructions here. Make sure the new Tax Credit component is added to the Payroll Control screen control components list afterwards.
You will then need to set up the Tax Credit component on the employee, using Employee Component Maintenance [PEP]. It needs to be a permanent, time-based component. Make sure the component is on the employee before you try to set up the Payment Calendar (below), because you will not be able to create the calendar without it!
Finally, you must set up the Working Tax Credit Payments [PWTCP] screen which controls how much to pay in each tax period. Simply enter the start date and the rate to pay; the system will use its own central tax calendar to make sure it goes into the right pay period.
When the rate to pay changes, simply insert a new start date and the new rate to pay from that date, and the system will do the rest. Likewise, to stop the payments enter the date you want it to take effect and a rate of zero.
Note 1: You can enter as many future dates as you like. Since you will always get at least 42 days notice of rate changes, you can enter them in the calendar as soon as you receive notification and the system will apply them automatically at the correct time. You cannot, however, enter or amend dates for periods that have already closed down.
Note 2: Tax Credits are always paid in whole days, never hours or weeks, and follow the calendar week, not just the days the employee is actually working. Note also that the Working Tax Credit Payments [PWTCP] screen controls how much to pay and when; the pay input programs will not let you change the value of a component which is flagged as Tax Credit.
With effect from 6th April 2003, the rate of pay of a tax credit can be varied during the course of the award, instead of being fixed for the duration. This is supposed to make the tax credit system more flexible, to cope with the varying circumstances of the individual claimants. In theory, the rate could change many times within the course of a pay period. However, the Inland Revenue recognises that this will be impractical for employers to implement and therefore intends to restrict the number of tax credit Amendment Notices to no more than two per pay period.
If you receive a tax credit Amendment Notice, you will need to insert the effective date in the Start Date column on Working Tax Credit Payments [PWTCP] and the new rate alongside. The system will automatically apply the new rate at the correct time. You cannot enter a date which relates to a period which has already closed.
First, make sure that you have a component set up for Student Loans. This should be shown on the Payroll Control File [PPM] in the Control Components box. If there is no Student Loan component shown here when you view the screen, you will need to search the Component Control File [PCM] for one and create it if it does not exist; there are instructions here. Make sure the new Student Loan component is added to the Payroll Control screen control components list afterwards.
You will then need to set up the Student Loan component on the employee, using Employee Component Maintenance [PEP]. It needs to be a permanent, money-based component set up as a repayment, with the "Repayment Amount" set to the biggest number you can get in the field, e.g. 99999.99. This effectively makes the repayments infinite, so that they keep going until the Inland Revenue tells you to stop. When that happens, you just amend the repayment amount to be the same as the amount repaid to date, and the employee will then pay no more student loan..
You should not need to do anything else. The system should calculate the student loan recovery amount automatically each period, according to the parameters on the SSP, SMP, SPP, SAP and CSL Parameters [PSM] screen, but it can be overridden like any other deduction should you run into problems.
Stakeholder pensions are set up in exactly the same way as Group Personal Pensions. Simply use Pension Parameters Maintenance [PPA] to set up the parameters of the scheme or schemes, then apply them to the employees in the usual way. The crucial part is the setting of the Group Personal Pension flag on Employee Statutory Data [PED]. Set it to "P", and the system will then deduct the pension contributions from net pay, instead of before tax like ordinary company pension schemes.
It is also possible to use a suitably-configured component, with a Group Personal Pension flag set to "Y", to deduct Stakeholder Pension contributions, but you lose the flexibility of using the Pension Parameters screen and the numerous pension reports. It is also difficult to do it on a percentage basis through a component.
The Payroll Calculation Exception Report is produced automatically each time the calculation (gross to net) is run. Normally it prints one line per employee processed, with sometimes more than one line if there is more than one exception message to print. Not all exception messages are errors; some are warnings and others are simply conveying useful information (see the table below).
Note: Messages classed as "errors" require action by the user to clear the problem. Messages classed as warnings may require action depending on the circumstances.
Message |
Type |
Explanation |
| Suspended | Info | Employee has been suspended from the payroll and will not be processed in this pay period. |
| Left | Info | Employee left in a previous period. |
| On holiday | Info | Employee has previously been paid holiday pay in advance and will not be processed in the current pay period. |
| Already paid | Warning | Employee has already been processed as far as a payment run. |
| Payslip produced | Warning | Employee has already had a payslip produced. |
| No NI Code | Error | Employee has no NI table letter. |
| Invalid tax details | Error | Employee's tax code has been entered incorrectly. |
| No payment type | Error | The employee has not been given a payment type and so cannot be paid or closed down. |
| Leaving - full outstanding repayment deducted for (comp. no.) | Warning | Employee has a repayment component which is flagged to recover the full outstanding amount when they leave. |
| Leaving - outstanding repayment(s) component (comp. no.) | Warning | Employee has a repayment component which has an amount outstanding and they are due to leave in this period. |
| No component 'nn' control | Error | Employee has component 'nn' on their record, but the control record for it does not exist. This usually occurs when a component is deleted in Component Control File Maintenance [PCM] without first removing it from the employees. |
| No group pension component | Error | Employee is in a Group Personal Pension scheme
set up to use a component for the deduction from pay, and the component
is either: a) missing from the employee b) not defined on Payroll Control c) defined but does not exist in the component file. |
| Low earnings - no student loan deducted | Warning | Employee has not earned enough to make a student loan repayment. |
| Protected earnings applied | Warning | Employee's deductions have been adjusted to ensure their net pay does not fall below the protected earnings level. |
| No taxable gross but tax credit exists | Warning | Employee has no pay other than tax credits. In these circumstances the employer may stop the tax credit, at their discretion. |
| No taxable gross pay this period | Warning | Employee has no taxable pay this period. |
| Net pay less than prot. earnings by (amount) | Warning | Employee has not earned enough to reach the protected earnings level, and the shortfall is (amount). |
| Net pay zero | Warning | Employee's net pay is zero. |
| Net pay negative | Error | Employee has more deductions than pay. A negative net payslip can be put through, if required, by setting the "Print negative payslip" flag on Standard Deductions Override [PDP] and re-calculating the individual. |
| Warning - negative holiday fund | Warning | Employee has been paid more holiday pay than they had accrued in their holiday fund, which has sent the fund negative. |
| Employer pension override used | Info | Standard deductions override has been used for employer pension contributions. |
| Employee pension override used | Info | Standard deductions override has been used for employee pension contributions. |
| Voluntary pension override used. | Info | Standard deductions override has been used for employee voluntary pension contributions. |
| Warning - override exceeds max pension percentage | Warning | Pension schemes can be configured to allow tax relief on pension contributions up to a certain percentage of the employee's gross or pensionable pay. The override contribution is causing the employee to exceed this percentage. |
| No parameters for pension scheme | Error | Employee is flagged as part of a pension scheme which no longer exists. This usually occurs when a pension scheme is deleted from Pension Parameters Maintenance [PPA] without first removing it from the employees. |
| No. of NI periods override used. | Info | Standard deductions override has been used to adjust the number of periods over which NI should be calculated. |
| Invalid NI code | Error | Employee has an NI table letter other than A, B, C, D, E, F, G, J, L, S, X or blank. |
| NI code C should not be contracted out | Warning | From 6th April 2003, NI code C is reserved for age-related cases only, and no longer used for employees deferring payment of contracted-out NICs. |
| New NI code - adjust ytd before period end | Warning | Employee is paying cumulative NI, has reached the final pay period of the year and has changed NI code letter during the year. Check that the year-to-date NI contributions are correct before closing the period. |
| Employees NI override used | Info | Standard deductions override has been used for employee NI contributions. |
| NI contracted out override used | Info | Standard deductions override has been used for employee contracted-out NI contributions. |
| Employers NI override used | Info | Standard deductions override has been used for employer NI contributions. |
| Invalid holiday credits per year | Error | Employee's annual holiday credit entitlement is not numeric or does not contain a valid accrual formula. |
| Warning - negative holiday credits remaining | Warning | Employee has consumed more holiday credits than they have accrued or are entitled to. |
| F code no longer valid - calculated using code 0T | Warning | Tax code F is no longer valid and the employee has been calculated as if they were on code OT. This message should no longer appear unless the data is very old! |
| Tax refund held - (amount) | Warning | The system has calculated a refund of tax of (amount) which exceeds the refund limit specified on Tax Parameters Maintenance [PTM]. You will need to release it - instructions are here. |
| Tax refund released | Info | Standard deductions override has been used to release a previously-held refund of tax. |
| Invalid tax suffix/prefix | Error | Employee's tax suffix/prefix letter is missing or something other than A, D, H, J, K, L, P, V, Y, NT, BR, OT. |
| Invalid tax code and/or type | Error | Employee's tax code (the numeric portion) is incorrect or not numeric, or the calculation type is something other than 1, 2, 3 or 4. |
| Tax refunded (student) - (amount) | Warning | Employee is a student who has previously paid tax which is now being refunded. |
| K code limit applied | Info | Employee's liability for tax has reached the maximum allowable under tax code K. |
| Net pay less than total bank account amounts | Warning | Employee has multiple bank accounts into which a set amount of their pay is paid each period, and their net pay is less than the total of these set amounts. The operator must override one or more of the set amounts or adjust the employee's pay, then recalculate the individual. |
On Employee Status [PES], there is a field for Periods Left On Holiday, which represents the number of payroll periods the system expects to suspend the employee from the payroll whilst they are on holiday. Reset this to zero and the employee will become available for processing in the current period.
IMPORTANT: If you have accidentally processed advance holiday pay, the employee's tax, NI and pension (if appropriate) contributions for the period in which it occurred will be incorrect. Accidentally advancing 1 week will result in the week's pay being assessed for tax, NI and pension over two periods instead of 1, making the contributions too low and requiring corrective action in the following period.
We supply one type of payslip stationery, a green and white security pay envelope with employer's fly copy, designed to be printed on impact printers at 17cpi. Please contact our New Barnet office on 0208 449 4496 for pricing and availability. If this does not describe the payslips you are using, we cannot supply them and you will need to contact your own stationery supplier.
Yes, just run Payslip Print [PPP] again. If you have done a payment run you will need to reset the status of the employee to 4 first, through Employee Status [PES]. If you want to reprint payslips for a large number of employees or a whole payroll, use Reset Employees Statuses [PRS] on Menu 73 to reset the statuses quickly before running PPP again.
Yes. You will need to reset the status of the employees first, though, using Reset Employees Statuses [PRS] on Menu 73.
Yes, but make sure you delete them from any employees who have used them first, via Employee Component Maintenance [PEP]. If you don't do this, and delete the control record for the component through Component File Maintenance [PCM], every employee who has used that component will throw up error messages on calculation. You have been warned!
On Employee Statutory Data [PED] there is a field for "NI Cumulative (Y/N)". Set this flag to "Y" for any employee who is a director or otherwise liable for cumulative National Insurance. If you are changing someone over to cumulative NI part way through a tax year, make sure you also set the linked field "From Week" to the tax week from which they are to be treated as cumulative. Note that this is always a tax week, even on a monthly payroll!
From April 2003 tax codes "A" and "H" began to be phased out. From April 2004, they are no longer valid. If an employee has brought you a P45 or other form showing their tax code including either of these letters, consult your local tax office or the Employers' Advice Line for guidance.
The most usual cause of this message is the most obvious: someone else is amending the file or employee! First make sure that any other payroll operators in your current company have returned to menu or logged off completely, then try the program again and see if you still get the same message.
If you do, then the file or item has been left locked by a program terminating abnormally - usually this is the result of a crash or other system problem. The action to take depends on the message being received: UNLOCK unlocks files flagged as busy, UNLITEM unlocks items such as employees flagged as in use. Make a careful note of the message and contact the TriPay support desk on 0191 427 4519 for assistance.
No - well, not strictly. You have to generate the payslips before you can do a payment run such as BACS. However, there is nothing to stop you running the payslips to holdfile, then running BACS, then printing the payslips from the holdfile later when you have more time. Just make sure the holdfile doesn't get cleared before you print it!
This usually occurs on weekly payrolls, in periods when all the employees are on holiday and you are trying to close the period down. When you print payslips, the payslip date is written away to the Payroll Control File [PPM] as "This Period's Payroll Date" and Period End checks that this date exists before it will proceed. When everyone is on holiday, no payslips are produced hence this field is empty. You can manually enter a date in the "This Period's Payroll Date" field on PPM then run Period End again, and it will run through.
You can also get this situation occurring if you have had to re-print payslips for a sub-set of the payroll, such as an individual. Under these circumstances the date doesn't get written away, because the system thinks you are not producing payslips for the whole payroll. The solution is the same.
This is usually a sign that the index has got out of step with the actual content of the employee file, and needs regenerating. If this does not resolve the problem, contact the TriPay support desk on 0191 427 4519 for assistance.
SSP Recovery is calculated under the Percentage Threshold Scheme, which dictates that the only SSP you can recover is the amount which exceeds 13% of the gross NICs per tax month per PAYE scheme. Since TriPay splits employees into payrolls, it follows that you can have more than one payroll (or even more than one company) containing data relating to a single PAYE scheme.
We had already modified Payroll Analysis [PNA] to accumulate payrolls into tax months for the purposes of calculating SSP Recovery, but where multiple payrolls per PAYE scheme were concerned, this was not enough. We have added a facility to Payroll Control File Maintenance [PPM] to group together payrolls which share a common PAYE reference by designating one as a master and the others as its slaves. This allows Payroll Analysis to report a consolidated total Yellow Book Summary at the end of each tax month, for all payrolls in the same PAYE scheme.
Since SSP Recovery is the only figure calculated across an entire PAYE scheme, we have suppressed it from the Payroll Analysis of all payrolls designated as slaves. It will appear on the company totals page of the PNA for a master payroll (or standalone, in installations where 1 payroll = 1 PAYE scheme) to be consistent with the Payroll Control Totals [PPCT] screen. However, for making your returns to the Collector of Taxes, you should use the new consolidated Yellow Book Summary at the end of the report.
From April 2004 all employers with more than 250 employees will have to make their payments of tax and NI to the Collector of Taxes by electronic means. This can be by BACS, CHAPS, telephone or online banking.
New features have been added to TriPay to allow you to maintain the Collector of Taxes' address and bank account details (PAYE/NICs by BACS Parameters [PPBBP]), and pay the tax and NI totals by BACS at the end of every tax month or quarter (PAYE/NICs by BACS Payment Run [PPBPR]). There is also a history screen, Payroll PAYE/NICs Totals [PPBT] that maintains a list of payments made by the payment program.
If you are not set up to use BACS, you can run the payment program in report mode to produce a listing of what needs to be paid, along with your reference numbers, for you to use to make payment by other means. However, this does not update the PPBT totals.
FAQ updated March 2004