At Christmas you may want to pay your employees earlier than usual before Christmas. When paying employees early, you should report the payment to HMRC with the normal pay date reported on the FPS.

If you are paying weekly pays that for example are due to be paid on Friday 27th December but you want to pay it on Friday 20th, you should report it as paid on the 27th to HMRC.

If you are paying monthly pays that for example are due to be paid on Friday 3rd Jan but you want to pay it on Tuesday 31st December, you should report it as paid on the 3rd to HMRC.

You need to ensure that the date paid of each pay run is their normal pay date on the FPS due to universal credits.

To pay your employees a bonus in bulk you would need to create a pay category called “bonus”.

If you want to upload bonus payments in bulk via a pay run import, you will need to follow these steps:

1. Create a pay run and pay the first employee a bonus.

2. In the pay run actions menu you should export the pay run.

3. Open the spreadsheet and identify the employee with the bonus, this will then let you see the pay category ID you need to use. You should then copy the bonus Pay Category ID and paste it into that column for anyone you want to pay the bonus to.

4. You should then fill in the units and the rates:

5. If you then save the spreadsheet you can then import the spreadsheet into the pay run:

6. You will need to make sure you either amend the spreadsheet for the employee that was originally paid the bonus or this will end up in the pay run twice. Alternatively you can go into the pay run and delete/amend the earnings line.

To pay your employee a bonus you would need to create a pay category called “bonus”.

Once you've done this you can then go into the employees details within the pay run. Then go to Actions Add Earnings Line:

This will produce an extra earnings line. You can then select the 'bonus' Pay Category from the drop down menu and apply the correct units.

There are a few different leave scenarios that you can come across, and if processed correctly it is a seamless process. Below are four different scenario's, and how they should be handled.

1. Processing leave WITHOUT a leave request: 
   What you should do:
   In this scenario, you need to create a pay run and within the pay run, click on the employee name. Then use the Actions > Take leave option.
   What you should NOT do:
   It is important NOT to use the Actions > Add earnings button. Some people do this, and then select the ‘Annual Leave Taken’ pay category. When you do this, the system will show an earnings line for leave taken, but it doesn’t ‘connect’ to the leave category and so the employee's leave balance doesn’t reduce.
2. Processing leave WITH a leave request:
   If an employee has put in a leave request, you need to ensure that you apply the leave request from the leave request tab. If you don’t apply the leave from the leave request tab, but instead use the Actions > Take leave option, the system can’t match up the leave taken to the leave request and so that leave request will keep appearing in each pay run to be applied. If this happens, you can remove it by clicking into the ‘Leave request’ tab within a pay run and selecting the ‘manually applied’ option. The key point here is to apply a leave request from the leave request tab.
3. Processing a leave request that spans multiple pay periods:
   If an employee is taking leave that spans multiple pay periods, when you click the 'Apply' button within the 'Leave request' tab you only need to enter the hours that apply to the current pay run. Then, when you create the next pay run, you'll be able to click the 'Apply' button again in order to add the remaining leave:
   
4. When an employee comes back early from leave (leave HASN'T been processed in a pay run)
   If an employee has put in a leave request for say 38 hours, but they only took 30.4 hours, you have 2 options:
   • When you apply the leave from the leave request tab you can select to enter only 30.4 hours. However, the system will still be waiting for the other 7.6 hours to be applied, and as such the leave request will keep coming into each pay run. You can get rid of this prompt by selecting the ‘mark as manually applied’ option. 
     
     
   • As long as none of the leave request has been applied in a pay run, you can go to the Manage leave page and edit the original leave request in order to reflect the actual hours taken:
     
     
5. When an employee comes back early from leave (leave HAS been processed in a pay run)
   Like above, if an employee puts in a request for 38 hours and comes back early, but this time the full leave request has already been applied in a pay run/the employee has been paid, you can do an adjustment in the next pay run. You can do this be selecting the Actions > Adjust leave option, add a positive adjustment 7.6 hours (for example) to add the hours back to the employee's leave balance. If you tick the 'apply earnings rules' boxes it will also switch the earnings back from Annual Leave Taken to the default pay category (as long as your leave category settings are set to pay earnings against another pay category - if your leave category payment setup is Basic you may have to manually add an earnings line to adjust), the apply earnings rule will also deduct leave loading if any was paid.

Common Public Holiday scenario's include:

1. If employees are salaried employees and get the same pay each week regardless of Public holidays worked or not worked, there is no need in separating out the earnings to show hours worked against Public Holidays. You can just process their hours as normal.
2. If you need to separate earnings for Public Holidays, you have a few options depending on your payroll plan:
   • On the Standard plan (no rule sets), you can use a work type, and this work type can be configured to pay against whatever pay category you need. This could apply to employees not working on a Public Holiday, and you want to use a 'Public Holiday not worked' pay category, or you might want to use a 'Public Holiday worked' work type to map to a pay category with a penalty rate. As long as the employee uses that work type, the system will change the pay category for the Public Holiday.
   • If you are on the Advanced/Plus plan (with rule sets) you can set up a rule set to pay different conditions for the Public Holiday. This could be an OT pay category, or the employees could accrue TIL instead...there are a number of different outcomes that can be achieved.