This article explains how to use the Carry Forward Wizard to carry your benefits forward to the next tax year. If you have both processing options ticked, you can choose which benefits to carry forward in the wizard.
The Carry Forward Wizard is to be used to carry forward your benefits to the next year. For payrolled benefits, this may be when setting up in March ready for the next tax year, or for P11D benefits this may be post July submissions or post tax year end.
If you have both processing options ticked, you can choose in the Carry Forward wizard, which benefits you want to carry forward, to fit in with the individual timescales.
To access the Carry Forward wizard you should go to Payroll Settings > Pay Run Settings > Benefit Categories.
The Carry Forward Button can be found from the Year end button on the benefit categories page. Clicking the button will begin the wizard process.
The first step of the wizard will open when you click Carry forward, here you will see some explanatory text and options. The text explains that the carry forward process is going to duplicate any benefit categories and employee benefits which have the carry forward check box ticked. If there are any benefits which you do not want to carry forward then you will need to cancel out of the wizard and update the benefits before starting the wizard again.
**Note:** if a benefit category has the carry forward check box ticked, then the linked employee benefit can have the carry forward check box ticked or unticked, however, if the benefit category has the carry forward check box unticked, then the linked employee benefit can only have the carry forward check box unticked and it is greyed out.
It is possible to amend the benefit category and update all the linked employee benefits where they match, if the carry forward setting is not as required.
The system will default to the process option you have set up, however, if both processing options have been set up then you will be able to select which type of benefits are to be carried forward (only one type can be carried forward at any one time).
If there are no benefits available to carry forward then you will get the following notice: "There are no benefits available to carry forward based on your selection".
When you select which benefit to carry forward you will see the below screen. You will need to select the tax year of the benefits to carry forward.
You then need to select an option which allows you to choose whether to duplicate all the non-pro-rata employee linked benefit values exactly as they are for the current year, or whether to zero out the OpRAs and amount made good values, (this will also set any cost to you values to match the benefit category cost to you value).
For example - you have set up a medical benefit in 2020/21 with a cost to you value of 0.00, then added a cost to you value to each linked employee benefit, as the value is different for each employee. Duplicating with the option set to leave the values, will duplicate the benefit category cost to you as 0.00 and keep all the linked benefit cost to you and made good values exactly as they are currently - i.e. different for each employee.
Whereas, setting the option to clear the values, would zero out any made good values on the linked employee benefits and would set all the new 2021/22 employee benefits to 0.00
Another example might be where you have set up a medical benefit in 2020/21 with a cost to you value of £650.00, 10 employees are linked to this benefit category and have the same cost to you value, but 2 are linked and have different values - Fred £750 and Mary £900
Duplicating with the option set to leave the values, will duplicate the benefit category and keep the cost to you as £650 and will duplicate all the linked benefit values exactly as they are currently - i.e. 10 with £650, Fred at £750 and Mary at £900.
Whereas, setting the option to clear the values, would zero out any made good values on the linked employee benefits and would set all the new 2021/22 employee benefits to £650
Note that for any pro-rata benefits - type B, I or M, the cost to you value which was calculated based on the number of days the benefit was available for, will always revert to the annual cost of the system level benefit. The selected wizard option will only apply to the made good values.
Once you have made your selections click Next.
Once you have clicked next you will see the Benefit Categories list. The following benefit categories and linked employee benefits shown in the list are set to be carried forward along with the number of employees who are linked to these benefit categories.
The linked employee numbers shown here are excluding any leavers and employee benefits which have end dates.
(Note: When setting pro-rata start dates, the system will automatically enter pro-rata end dates. If pro-rata end dates are 05/04/YYYY, then the benefit will be duplicated, where the carry forward checkbox is ticked. If you have manually set the pro-rata end date to be 05/04/YYYY, then you will need to untick the carry forward checkbox, if you do not want the benefit duplicated).
You can cancel out of this step of the wizard if you need to make any changes. Once you have checked through the list of benefit categories and linked employee numbers, if you are ready to proceed you can select the Carry forward button. The duplication process begins as soon as the carry forward button is pressed at step 2 of the wizard. Benefit categories are duplicated first, then linked employee benefits.
The processing bar shows and once completed the wizard will show the number of benefit categories carried forward successfully and the number of employee benefits carried forward successfully as presented with a screen as below:
You can now close the wizard by clicking on the Complete button and you need to go and check through all the duplicated benefit categories and check the linked employee benefits, making any amendments as necessary to any values for the next tax year. When the benefits are payrolled benefits, it is important to make any changes before the first pay run of the year is processed, as benefits are locked for deletion, after the first pay run is finalised.