New company awaiting HMRC PAYE AO references and credentials

If you have set up a new company, but you do not have the PAYE or AO reference or credentials, follow this guide.

Overview #

You cannot file a full payment submission without references or credentials. However, you will need to process Pay runs, produce payment files to pay employees, and submit the FPS and EPS later once information is received from HMRC.

You must save a payment file for each pay run so you can compare payments made with final submissions. Either use a bank file or the simple Worker payment (txt) added by:

• Setup > Report Definitions > Add… > Group:other > Template: Worker payment (txt) > Add

Process using Rewind and automatic ripple forward #

1. Complete the first pay run in the usual way, up to the point of approval, but do not approve
2. Save all the first pay run data in a Pay Run 1 folder
   1. Documents > click the download icon to save the bank file or Worker payment (txt) file
   2. Documents > click the zip icon next to the Pay run to save a zip file of all documents
   3. Ensure any uploaded files used to prepare the payroll are saved
   4. Employees > Download to save an employee CSV
   5. Tools > Create Pay Item workbook > Create template > Download to download all of the pay items for the company as they are now
   6. If applicable, save away any Data feed files, e.g. workers or shifts that may have been uploaded
3. Pay Runs> Approve the pay run, which will be rejected by HMRC, and result in Report and Pay run exceptions
   • Handle the exceptions in the usual way to proceed to the next pay run:
     • 2.4. End the EPS and FPS report submissions
     • 3a. Pay run Resume report submissions (any issues have been resolved)
4. Proceed with the second pay run, following steps 1 to 3 above
   • In exceptional cases, if there is a longer delay, approve the 3rd pay run, etc.
5. When the requested information is received from HMRC:
   • Pay runs > Rewind the first pay run
   • Enter PAYE and AO references in Companies > Update > Tax
   • Enter credentials in Setup > Report Definitions > GB RTI FPS/ EPS and DPS, and set the late reason code to G reasonable excuse
   • Pay Run > Redo
   • Verify that the checked-out pay run matches the original pay run
     • Pay runs > View > Reports tab > Compare… using the bank file from step 2.1 above
   • Approve and ensure Resend submissions is ticked is set Ripple forward: next pay runs – you cannot ripple forward through all pay runs because you must set the late reason code G after each approval
   • Approved: Yes, and Confirm

Backup Process – copy the company and manually reprocess all payruns #

If the above process fails for any reason, you will need to manually reprocess each pay run using the saved files. There are several ways to do this, but this approach should be the easiest:

1. Companies > Copy… > Company:New_company_awaiting_credentials > Create company which will create Test company and copy all definitions, but not the employees
2. Companies > Update > Set New_company_awaiting_credentials to a Test Company and change the name to delete, cannot be undone and delete the old company – this is needed to ensure employee usernames don’t clash
3. Rename the Test company to the same name you used for New_company_awaiting_credentials
4. Employees > Upload > Jurisdiction: UK > Choose file: Employees.csv from Pay Run 1 folder saved above > Upload file to server… > Pre-process selected data… > Publish… to add employees
5. Setup > Pay Schedules > update the pay schedule to the first pay run date
6. Start a new Pay run
7. Enter the HMRC information as described above
8. Repeat 2 steps for each pay run
   • Re-process payroll, ensuring all original steps were followed
   • You must verify that the payments made to each employee match the original