1. UK Payroll
  2. Employees
  3. Employees

Ready your employees for payroll

Get your employees set up and ready for payroll.

Ready your employees for payroll.png

Before you begin

UK Payroll requires certain employee data before they can be processed in your payroll. To fill out this information, navigate to Employees > relevant employee to access an employee's individual profile. 

Show mandatory employee data

HMRC requires specific employee details in the Full Payment Submission (FPS). If data is missing or incorrectly formatted, the FPS won't be submitted to HMRC, potentially resulting in late filing penalties. All HMRC required fields are mandatory in UK Payroll.

Note: If you integrate with Bob, make sure that employee data is kept up to date in Bob. UK Payroll pulls data from Bob, and data will be overwritten by Bob during syncs.

HMRC required fields

  • First name
  • Last name
  • Gender
  • Date of birth
  • Employee ID
  • Address line 1
  • City
  • Country
  • Post code
  • National Insurance number
  • National Insurance category
  • Tax code
  • Employee start date

Note: If you provide a personal title for an employee, HMRC requires it to match the gender normative associated with that title.

Other required fields

UK Payroll automatically requires employee banking details and contact details.

  • Email address

Note: To comply with GDPR, each employee record must have a unique email address.

  • Sort code
  • Account number

Additionally, it is mandatory to assign a Pay schedule and Salary to each employee. To learn more, see Add and edit pay schedule settings and Set salaries and pay rates.

To comply with The Pensions Regulator, it is mandatory to set a Pension status for each employee. To learn more, see Enroll staff into a pension scheme.

Tip: If an employee has opted-out of your pension scheme, we recommend you set their pension status to Opted-out.

How to check for pending employees

If an employee isn't showing in the payroll draft, they may still be Pending in the Employees list, indicating that some mandatory information is missing from the employee's profile.

  1. From the left side bar, select Employees.
  2. Search for the relevant employee.
  3. Look for their status - Ready or Pending - in the Payroll column. If they're Ready but still not appearing in the payroll draft, contact Support.
  4. If the employee is Pending, click on the employee's name to enter their profile. A number signifying the number of errors will appear next to any tabs with missing or incorrect data.
  5. Make the required updates and Save changes. The employee should now appear Ready.

How to access pending employees from Overview

If employees are missing mandatory information or require updates, a notification will appear on your Overview page.

  1. Click on View x employees.
  2. Click x issues to the right of the employee's name to see a list of specific errors. Alternatively, click Download issues > Download required updates to download a CSV file containing all employee updates.
  3. If you clicked x issues, click the button below each issue to go to the correct page to resolve it. Alternatively, click View employee to go to the employee's profile.

  4. Make the required updates. Once the employees are Ready, the alert will disappear from Overview and you can confirm your payroll.

    Note: If you have set up the Bob integration, make sure you update the data in Bob, as any data in UK Payroll will be overwritten by Bob. Any missing or incorrectly formatted data in Bob will result in blank fields in UK Payroll.

How to access an employee's profile from a draft payroll

If you notice something that needs to be changed in an employee's profile while reviewing a draft payroll, access their profile from the payroll to quickly make changes.

  1. From your draft payroll, click on an employee's name to open their draft payslip.
  2. Click on their name in the draft payslip. This will bring you to their employee profile.
  3. Make any necessary changes and Save changes.
  4. Click X in the top left corner to return to the draft payroll.

FAQs

What should I do if I receive an error message?
If you receive an error message when adding a new employee's data in their profile, check the following fields have been correctly submitted.

  • Employee ID: Ensure the employee ID is unique and complete.
  • Names: Ensure there are no special characters in an employee's name.
  • Address: Ensure there are no special characters in an address, that address lines 1 and 2 are no longer than 35 characters, and that the City, Country, and Postcode are complete.
  • Email address: Ensure the email address is complete.
  • Phone number: Ensure the employee's phone number is complete.
  • Salary: Ensure a salary has been added in the employee's Compensation tab.

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