PAYE Modernisation - What software

crawls

I have four employees (including myself). Each employee is on a salary and the amount paid, PAYE, PRSI etc does not change. All employees are paid weekly by direct debit. Is there a payroll system that will automatically make returns to revenue - that I don't have to update each week. I can automatically process the payroll for the year so all information is available.
Thanks

whatawaster

crawls wrote: »

I have four employees (including myself). Each employee is on a salary and the amount paid, PAYE, PRSI etc does not change. All employees are paid weekly by direct debit. Is there a payroll system that will automatically make returns to revenue - that I don't have to update each week. I can automatically process the payroll for the year so all information is available.
Thanks

Have used Sage Micropay and Brightpay. Brightpay is much better imo and costs 149 per year. Bargain for the time it saves

L.Jenkins

I'd have to agree Brightpay would be a sound investment.

wizardman

Thesaurus is a good option

TitianGerm

wizardman wrote: »

Thesaurus is a good option

I really don't like Thesaurus. It's the package we use in my new practice and I find it by far the least user friendly of all the packages I've used.

Colsoft would be my recommendation but I haven't used Brightpay yet.

whatawaster

wizardman wrote: »

Thesaurus is a good option

Made by the same guys as Brightpay, but an older software (still fully supported, BTW)

wizardman

whatawaster wrote: »

Made by the same guys as Brightpay, but an older software (still fully supported, BTW)

Oh didn't know that. Brightpay a better option?

Thanks

CiarraiAbu2

crawls wrote: »

I have four employees (including myself). Each employee is on a salary and the amount paid, PAYE, PRSI etc does not change. All employees are paid weekly by direct debit. Is there a payroll system that will automatically make returns to revenue - that I don't have to update each week. I can automatically process the payroll for the year so all information is available.
Thanks

Dont think any system will do it automatically, you will still have to run your weekly payroll and upload it to revenue each week.

CiarraiAbu2

CiarraiAbu2 wrote: »

Dont think any system will do it automatically, you will still have to run your weekly payroll and upload it to revenue each week.

Indeed.
All the stuff mentioned will just tell you what's due....

crawls

Thanks everyone. I was looking at brightpay. I had just hoped that I could just set up something to run automatically since wages rarely change

whatawaster

crawls wrote: »

Thanks everyone. I was looking at brightpay. I had just hoped that I could just set up something to run automatically since wages rarely change

The new Brightpay links in with your ROS digital cert.

It's a 3 step process.

1. Download RPN file from revenue. Software does this for you. A click of a button.

2. Process pay for the week or month.

3. Send file to revenue. Software does this for you. A click of the button

The only thing you will need to do is log into ros once a month to do your payment

whatawaster

wizardman wrote: »

Oh didn't know that. Brightpay a better option?

Thanks

Not familiar with Thesaurus but I would imagine the newer software is the way to go

crawls

whatawaster wrote:

The only thing you will need to do is log into ros once a month to do your payment

If wages are paid weekly do you need to log on each week?

TitianGerm

crawls wrote: »

If wages are paid weekly do you need to log on each week?

You'll need to download RPNs every week, calculate your payroll and then upload the payment file to revenue before your direct debit is paid.

whatawaster

crawls wrote: »

If wages are paid weekly do you need to log on each week?

No, monthly or quarterly depending on how often you file a return.

Not sure, but you may be able to set up direct debit if nothing changes week on week. Worth contacting revenue

crawls

whatawaster wrote:

No, monthly or quarterly depending on how often you file a return.

I've always paid monthly by dd and just file P35 but I assume that constitutes a monthly return.

ClaptonBay

You could try payslip.ie..newly set up company from what I understand and operate from Mayo but would be worth contacting them to talk about how it operates,rates etc.

mogilvie

Hi there,
Under modernisation you must submit your Payroll Submission "on or before" you make your payment to the employee.
So if you pay weekly, that means getting the latest RPN, processing the payroll, and submitting that to Revenue, every week

Where possible, we've been recommending people to move away from weekly to fortnightly or monthly if you can. It just reduces your payroll processing workload.

Look for a package that uses the "Direct" method of connection with Revenue. That software will be able to handle all the download and upload processes automatically in the background via the ROS servers and their API's.

P30's P35s P45s P60s etc are no longer used in 2019 and going forward. When you submit your pay run, Revenue use that to keep a track of the deductions made, and therefore your period return liability.

So instead of you submitting a P30 stating what you deducted, they now send you a period return stating what they think you deducted. The time frames are similar to the old process. You have until the 14th of the following month before your Payroll submission are deemed to be a declaration, and those on monthly payment frequencies will be debited on the 23rd.

Mark Ogilvie
parolla.ie

duffysfarm

i have always used a particular payroll software and had some issues with the software this year for the first time ever and wasnt happy with the support so i moved software.
I am having an issue with the new software in that we have prepared payroll, submitted it to revenue and then noticed there was an error. my problem is that i cant edit the payroll once i have submitted it to revenue with the new software. i have been on to the software support and the answer while not rude was something along the lines of you made the mistake we will see what we can do on our side so to see if we can let you make a change but at the moment you cant. they said we would have to amend the figures with revenue and i said yes we can do that on ros but first we have to be able to amend the wages to see what the new figures are for ros and it was only then that they seemed to realise what the issue was.
I mentioned that my previous software would allow you to make a change which it does but again the reply was along the lines of we cant commend on other software.
I would be very surprised if i was the first person to ever make a mistake with the payroll and have to edit it.
i am a little taken aback by the response. surley to make a mistake is only human and there has to be a way to edit payroll on a system? to me it is more that the software that i have moved to is not fully up to scratch. any opinions?

just for the record - i think with the new paye modernisation put all the software providers and accountants under a lot of pressure with the roll out of the new system and i do know that it has been a steep learning curve for the software providers, accountants and revenue

mogilvie

Hi Duffysfram.

The Revenue API already has a means of removing a payslip from a payroll submission. This allows you to remove an incorrect one, and replace it with a new one. The payroll software developers association even have scenarios published, with Revenue responses, on how to achieve what you've mentioned above.

You software provider may not have implemented those features, or may be planning to. But to be honest, we only got replacements working in Jan because the methods published by Revenue were slightly different in the live site than what we had prepared in the test site.

In the meantime you would have to do it manually in ROS, which is a bit of a pain really.

Regards,
Mark
https://www.parolla.ie

Stratvs

duffysfarm wrote: »

i have always used a particular payroll software and had some issues with the software this year for the first time ever and wasnt happy with the support so i moved software.
I am having an issue with the new software in that we have prepared payroll, submitted it to revenue and then noticed there was an error. my problem is that i cant edit the payroll once i have submitted it to revenue with the new software. i have been on to the software support and the answer while not rude was something along the lines of you made the mistake we will see what we can do on our side so to see if we can let you make a change but at the moment you cant. they said we would have to amend the figures with revenue and i said yes we can do that on ros but first we have to be able to amend the wages to see what the new figures are for ros and it was only then that they seemed to realise what the issue was.
I mentioned that my previous software would allow you to make a change which it does but again the reply was along the lines of we cant commend on other software.
I would be very surprised if i was the first person to ever make a mistake with the payroll and have to edit it.
i am a little taken aback by the response. surley to make a mistake is only human and there has to be a way to edit payroll on a system? to me it is more that the software that i have moved to is not fully up to scratch. any opinions?

just for the record - i think with the new paye modernisation put all the software providers and accountants under a lot of pressure with the roll out of the new system and i do know that it has been a steep learning curve for the software providers, accountants and revenue

Ours has a "corrections" tab with a number of options such as
-Do it all again
-Payment was different
and several others.
Haven't had to use them yet but I understand we can correct if needed so your experience seems odd.

In relation to the roll out, the one thing that was very late being made known was that one could embed an agent or multiple employer ROS certs in the payroll software. At a seminar I was at Revenue said no that wasn't probably going to be a feature, but 2 weeks before Christmas it all came together ok.

v638sg7k1a92bx

Does anyone know how it works with a back week? For example if an employee gets paid for week 52 in January, according to PAYE modernisation it's on a paid basis so week 52 would actually be week 1?

The payment for week 52 is entered on or before the actual pay date.......so enter them in week 52

collsoft

Sandra Thundering Lodge wrote: »

Does anyone know how it works with a back week? For example if an employee gets paid for week 52 in January, according to PAYE modernisation it's on a paid basis so week 52 would actually be week 1?

Hi Sandra Thundering Lodge,

Revenue are very clear on this one.

Any payments made to employees from the 1st January must be recorded as a 2019 payroll - irrespective of when the wages were earned.

The only wiggle room here is if you had the employee a cheque dated 31st December.

Section 10.12 (Page 84) of the Employers Guide covers this particular topic;

https://www.revenue.ie/en/tax-professionals/tdm/income-tax-capital-gains-tax-corporation-tax/part-42/42-04-35a.pdf

If Revenue detect that you have recorded a payment on your 2018 P35 but actually paid the employee in January they will make you do the following;

1) Remove the Payment from your 2018 P35
2) Amend your employee's records to ensure they have the right number of insurable weeks in 2018
3) Submit an amended 2018 P35
4) Enter the "Week 52" payroll in your 2019 Payroll and make a PMOD Submission to cover it


We have seen this happen a lot in our support desk over the last few weeks.


In particular Revebue have been looking at the submissions that are coming in. They are seeing people make their first monthly Payroll with a February date and they are calling those employers to ask "Where in your January Payroll" - that is where it all starts to unwind.


Revenue have not as yet detected cases of weekly wages, but they will uncover them in audits.

We had one client, a hotel with 150 weekly paid employees. Their auditor detected this and asked Revenue what to do - guess what the answer was????


And I can tell you it was not easy to rectify.


Regards,


Jason

CollSoft Limited

mogilvie

Sandra Thundering Lodge wrote: »

Does anyone know how it works with a back week? For example if an employee gets paid for week 52 in January, according to PAYE modernisation it's on a paid basis so week 52 would actually be week 1?

Dang, that's getting a bit awkward.

So you're supposed to report on or before payment to the employee. You're late for a Jan payment, that reporting period closed on the 14th of Feb.
Anyhow, by now you should have already issued your P60's and your P35's for 2018. So there's no going back to week 52 2018 either..

Getting at the root of what I think you're asking, how does a back week work? You must submit a payroll submission on or before each payment to employees. Revenue don't really care what period it covers, they just need the date of payment and the amounts to accurately reflect what was paid to the employee. So if you pay for two weeks (one being a back week) then its gets reported in the current week.
Regard,
Mark
https://parolla.ie

collsoft

Hi All,

Some PMOD stats if you are interested.

To date Revenue have received 894K payroll submissions (as of 27th Feb), with 445K of those relating to February payrolls.

This covers around 148K Employers.

Revenue issued 200K January statements, and initially there were 75K of these as Nil statements.

On the 11th February Revenue sent 62K letters to employers who had nil statements on file. Approx 24K of these are employers who have no employees registered - the balance do.

Some of these would be seasonal employers who had no payroll in January.

As of last week there were still 48K of these employer who had yet to engage with Revenue at all.

Jason

CollSoft Limited
www.collsoft.ie

Stratvs

collsoft wrote: »

On the 11th February Revenue sent 62K letters to employers who had nil statements on file. Approx 24K of these are employers who have no employees registered - the balance do.

Interesting stats, thanks Jason.

Am I reading the above right that some 40K employers with employees had nil January statements ?

collsoft

Hi Stratvs,

Yes, you are reading that correctly, but I should say that those numbers are only accurate to 20th Feb.

Initially there were 75K Nil statement Issued on 5th Feb, some of which were accepted by the employer as correct (no employees or no wages paid in January)

Revenue have acknowledged that there are 24K Employer registration numbers without any registered employees.

That leaves just over 50K unaccounted for

Revenue acknowledged that there was 48K Nil statements were automatically deemed accepted on 15th February because the employer had not interacted with them.

I can say that in the last week there are about 2K additional employers who have now made a submission of some sort

Stratvs

collsoft wrote: »

Revenue acknowledged that there was 48K Nil statements were automatically deemed accepted on 15th February because the employer had not interacted with them.

I can say that in the last week there are about 2K additional employers who have now made a submission of some sort

Thanks Jason, just surprised at the amount of “no shows” as it were given the the level of interaction with employers, accountants etc. in the run up to it.

v638sg7k1a92bx

Stratvs wrote: »

Thanks Jason, just surprised at the amount of “no shows” as it were given the the level of interaction with employers, accountants etc. in the run up to it.

The amount of interaction from revenue was to roll out this new process on an unprecedented scale with an arbitrary cut off date, hold on a few seminars around the country and in classic revenue style basically put the responsibility on the employers and their accountants.

In reality this level of "interaction" is akin to standing on you desk, taking a giant s**t and then handing employers a roll of toilet paper and telling them to clean up the mess.

collsoft

Hi Tickers,

You must have a sturdy desk!!!!

From our side - we develop and sell software and we provide technical support.

Our helpdesks have been flooded due to PMOD, and I can only say that most of the tech support that we have had to supply would be better described as training.

Many of our own customers have expressed to us how bad our support has been in this period, and I understand where they are coming from. But they really don't understand the sheer scale of the problems that there have been with the implementation of PMOD.

Jason
CollSoft Limited
www.collsoft.ie

Stratvs

Sandra Thundering Lodge wrote: »

The amount of interaction from revenue was to roll out this new process on an unprecedented scale with an arbitrary cut off date, hold on a few seminars around the country and in classic revenue style basically put the responsibility on the employers and their accountants.

The PMOD concept was initially flagged in Oct 2016 I believe. Over the following 2 years we've had Revenue seminars ( which in fairness weren't great ), webinars and newsletters by the payroll software providers, Revenue letters to employers, Revenue phone calls to employers and physical callouts by Revenue staff to employers checking their readiness for 0/01/19. Some accountants will also have been spending time with clients on this as to what was coming and in cases helping them with the transition.

I absolutely agree that Revenue's approach is often to say, this is what's happening, it's your problem to deal with it and we'll penalise you if you don't. The payroll providers have also had what must have been a huge headache and cost to deal with this. But we've had 2 years to get ready for this matter. At this point if there are employers who haven't interacted with Revenue, I'm not sure what they can do but follow up non filers to see what's going on.

FWIW since 01/01/19 everything I've had to do with the new payroll & ROS filing has worked perfectly with no need for calls to tech support or Revenue. Apart from my digital cert being kicked out of the payroll once but once I reloaded it all was grand again. So someone must have done something right.

collsoft

Hi Stratvs,

I agree, we have been working closely with Revenue for about 18 months, and it has been the best engagement that we have ever had as an industry with Revenue.

They were very responsive to our requests, but as is usual not everything went our way.

Revenue tend to have a very "Black & White" view of things - I guess that you can afford to have this when you can write the regulations to suit yourself.

Our experience is more around the human error side of things - people make mistakes because they don't know the regulations.

I think that Revenue could have done a much better job at explaining things to Employers. Take for example the "Employers Guide".

Revenue only published the 141 page Employers Guide for PMOD on 10th December 2018 - this should have been available to employers 6 months before the rollout to give people time to read it.

It also contains mistakes.

For example you wont find anything in there about "Employment IDs" - the document still refers to "X" and "T" PPS Numbers which no longer exists and which have been replace by Employment IDs.

Anybody who has fallen foul of the "Duplicate RPN" problem will tell you what a pain it has been and it all comes down to not knowing what an Employment ID is.

I would also argue that Revenue should have sent each employer a PAYE Modernisation Information pack to try and get them to prepare - but they didn't.

But I would also close by saying that generally PMOD has been very successful - the number of submissions is very large and people are getting used to the new system slowly but surely.