There are five areas where employers need to act.
1. Data cleansing. Ensure that your payrol system has official names, dates of birth , gender and the correct National Insurance Number (NINO) for all your current employees.
2. New data items. Normal Hours Worked. This is a new piece of information required to be reported for each employee for each payment. The Normal Hours Worked are the contracted hours as defined by the DWP.
Passport Number. Where an employee is from outside the United Kingdom, where possible the employee passport number should be obtained and recorded against the employee submission in the RTI data.
Irregular Payment Indicator. This needs to be set for employees who are not paid on a regular basis. When HMRC has not received any RTI information for an employee for over 13 weeks HMRC computer systems will assume that the employee has left that employment unless the Irregular Payment Indicator has been received in that employee's last RTI submission. Employees paid quarterly, half-yearly or annually should be indicated as being paid irregularly. Employees on maternity leave should be indicated as being irregularly paid if they intend to take a further 13 weeks of unpaid maternity leave.
Payroll ID. This is a new field that is essentially a 'submission identifier'. It should be used when an employee has two separate employments with the same employer, which are paid in separate payments, so that HMRC can tell which payment is for which employment. It is NOT the employee payroll number, works number, staff number etc.
3. Business processes. Check that your business processes are designed such that your payroll is provided with a new employee's correct name, date of birth, gender, and if known NINO before they are first paid.
4. Software supplier. Check with your payroll software supplier or your payroll agent, their time timetable for complying with the RTI regulations.
5. BACSTEL-IP supplier. If you pay your employees through direct BACS, check that your payments software provider can accept and submit revised file layouts from your payroll software.
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