Information on Sage Payroll

Information on Sage Payroll

Didn't find your answer?

Having spent a good hour and half ringing Sage 3 times about RTI matters I thought it only fair to tell other users what Sage haven't bothered to explain:

1. If you have 2 payrolls from the same company, in addition to merging them for year end - for which there are reasonable details within the program, you must merge them again for the EAS routine. (Sage require all payrolls however small to go through this routine). You will need to ask Sage to email you a power point presentation about EAS for multicompanies. I've had a quick look, but can't tell you how good it is until I use it myself next week.

2. While you're on the phone, ask Sage for their report RTIDetails1. This lists down all the RTI stuff that will be needed plus contracted hours for all staff. It is the only report that shows contracted hours if you aren't going to laboriously enter gross pay to the new box in which contracted hours are shown. Why isn't this report a standard report that comes with the program? No-one at Sage seems to know the answer. Ask them to talk you through installing it into the system as it isn't straightforward.

3. Some support staff don't know what they are talking about at present. One of them gave me duff info but the second person I spoke to was excellent and told me if you want to globally enter contracted hours - as you surely will for larger companies - the option is Tasks, Global changes, statements of employment, set contracted hours. I couldn't find this information from the program.

So that should bump up your telephone bill!

I can't help wondering that if these fairly simple things have not been explained properly, is there something ghastly around the corner.

Replies (9)

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By hkfinancials
05th Apr 2013 12:35

Thanks Moonbeam

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By johndon68
05th Apr 2013 12:47

Support

@Moonbeam - 'Some support staff don't know what they are talking about at present.'

Assuming that things still work in the same way that they did when I was there, as it is Payroll Year End, a lot of support staff for other products get 'drafted' to do Payroll Support and are given basic training to cover the year end process and not much else.

First year I was there I got a couple of hours training on the Sunday and was available to answer calls from 9am the day after!!  Managed to avoid it every year after that though :)

John

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By Moonbeam
05th Apr 2013 12:59

Yes, John, it is very clear that training is too basic

I can always tell when the person concerned hasn't got a clue. The worst of it is that I've already had to queue to speak to them and they don't feel able to admit they don't understand the query, let alone the answer.

It's not just at year end that the clueless ones are offloaded on us hardworking people who pay our subs religiously.

In less pressurised times I usually politely end the call and redial in the hope of getting someone splendid such as David Harbutt - to name but one very intelligent and knowledgeable technician. It's people like him that give me faith that things will get sorted if I have a query.

However, compared to those running the helpline at Iris GP payroll support, I have to remind myself that Sage are streets ahead.

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By gary.ging
05th Apr 2013 13:36

re: merging data before doing the EAS

Hi, I'm not sure exactly what you were told for this, but I can confirm that you do not have to merge data before doing an EAS from 6th April. 

Anybody who took part in the RTI pilot and had a split scheme did have to merge their data before the EAS because you could only do a single EAS per PAYE scheme, however, HMRC have updated the EAS for the 2013/14 tax year so that you can send multiple EAS's for a single PAYE scheme, to support the scenario you currently have with a split scheme payroll.

From tomorrow, When you go into the EAS option within each company you will be able to specify how many EASs will make up the alignment submission for the whole PAYE scheme. If you have 2 companies then you run the EAS in each one, indicating that there will be 2 parts. You must complete the EAS in each company before you do the first FPS in either and HMRC will then combine both EASs when matching your records with theirs.

Regards

Gary

Sage UK

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By Moonbeam
05th Apr 2013 14:37

EAS again

Good to hear from you Gary. A pity that not all your helpline people understand the process, thereby wasting hours of our time.

Does this mean that I can do EAS for part of Co X ltd's payroll and they can do separate EAS for their part of the payroll?

 

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By gary.ging
05th Apr 2013 15:05

Yes...

Yes, as long as they also use payroll software that has the EAS functionality and can specify the number of parts, then they just need to do the EAS for the employees within their company and enter the same number of parts.

When designing our RTI software we made the deliberate decision to use the EAS as the alignment submission regardless of the size of the company because we know a lot of employers have their employees split across multiple companies, or in-house and out-sourced, and this gives the most consistent way of doing it.

Regards

Gary

Sage UK

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By Kazmc
05th Apr 2013 15:57

I have to say

I'm afraid I agree. I have been very disappointed with the level of knowledge of the SAGE helpline operators since we joined the pilot in November with approx 150 payrolls.

We will now always question the advice we are being given and more often than not make more than one call (sometimes 3 if we know the people we were talking to have absolutely no idea what the question means) for the same question!

On quite a few occassions we have gone away and either called the RTI helpline to clarify a point or spent ages trawling the HMRC website and found that the advice we have been given by SAGE was incorrect.

The RTI helpline is no longer from tomorrow which is going to cause SO many problems!

Sorry Gary from SAGE, would not like to be in your offices on Monday!! Good luck :)

 

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By NDH
05th Apr 2013 16:49

Ditch sage...

Just ditch Sage and use either Moneysoft or 12Pay then that's the problem solved and you'll have more cash in your pocket to boot.

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By countrygirl
05th Apr 2013 21:14

Ditch Sage ..

Definitely ditch Sage and use Moneysoft.  We did and we have never looked back,  The majority of our clients have and they are all over the moon.

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