Wage Subsidy Scheme Issues

23-10-2020 12:38PM

head82 wrote: »

Is the 'holiday pay' not marked as such on payroll/payslip and therefore PUP would remain unaffected?

There are (up to) 50 fields uploaded to Revenue for each 'payslip', but they do not get a breakdown on of what Gross Pay consists of.

silent_spark · 23-10-2020 12:46PM

Social welfare has always counted annual leave pay as hours/days worked. They don't differentiate between holiday pay and work pay.

head82 · 23-10-2020 01:16PM

Thanks for the info! Looks like I may have to take a hit on my holiday pay.

I just presumed there was some provision in place to claim due holiday/bank holiday pay without upsetting PUP.
My employer has a policy of not carrying foward any unclaimed holidays or pay once calender year has ended.
Not sure how legal this is but that's how he runs his business.

PickYourName · 23-10-2020 01:22PM

head82 wrote: »

My employer has a policy of not carrying foward any unclaimed holidays or pay once calender year has ended.
Not sure how legal this is but that's how he runs his business.

It used to be the case that people could carry forwards holidays, but it is now illegal to do so. It's also illegal to take pay instead of the holidays. In other words, you MUST take the holidays.

Seve OB · 23-10-2020 01:23PM

PickYourName wrote: »

It used to be the case that people could carry forwards holidays, but it is now illegal to do so. It's also illegal to take pay instead of the holidays. In other words, you MUST take the holidays.

I th8nk it’s actually been that way since the mid 90’s

PickYourName · 23-10-2020 01:32PM

Seve OB wrote: »

I th8nk it’s actually been that way since the mid 90’s

That doesn't surprise me - I'm just showing my age!

je551e · 23-10-2020 07:35PM

Interesting about the holiday pay, has there been any clarification anywhere as to what happens? Seems unfair on the employees to lose out on holiday pay but I under companies position too.

Seve OB · 23-10-2020 08:26PM

je551e wrote: »

Interesting about the holiday pay, has there been any clarification anywhere as to what happens? Seems unfair on the employees to lose out on holiday pay but I under companies position too.

well not really unfair and no clarification needed.
holiday pay is pay.

je551e · 23-10-2020 10:37PM

Seve OB wrote: »

well not really unfair and no clarification needed.
holiday pay is pay.

True I suppose they just need to come off PUP and claim it

Irishdreamer · 26-10-2020 02:57PM

Hi,

I have a few questions that I'm hoping someone can help me with.
I work for a charity who employ 7 people. 6 of these 7 people we receive funding towards paying their wages. The 1 other person we do not receive any funding for so we pay their wages fully from the company. So my understanding is that for the 6 employees we receive funding for we can't apply for EWSS for them but as we pay the other 1 employee we can apply for EWSS for that wage.
We never used TWSS so we didn't have to worry about all that but now we think we are really going to have to apply for EWSS as we have very little money coming in to cover the wages.
I run the wages on a weekly basis but since the lockdown in March my manager was having me run a block of wages every 3 weeks (still weekly but done in advance) as this was to limit my time in the building. We are usually one of the first to be locked down so we have to cancel everything that would usually make us money throughout the year.

So we have to do up the financial figures to make sure we qualify for EWSS but I'm nearly positive that we will qualify.
If I sign the company up for EWSS on Friday morning, does that mean that I can run the wage for EWSS on the same day or does there need to be a period of time to let the registration for EWSS activate?
Also can we block run the wages in advance or will it have to be weekly? My manager wants to limit my time in the building so they would prefer if I only went in once every 3 or so weeks to run the wages for the next few weeks.

Thanks in advance!

collsoft · 26-10-2020 05:47PM

Hi IrishDreamer,

If you register for EWSS on Friday then you should be able to process wages for Friday and claim EWSS.

The only potential problem is making sure that you have a tax clearance certificate - this is the one thing that can delay your registration.

If you already have a tax clearance certificate then no problem, your EWSS registration will go straight through.

If you do not have current tax clearance, then you need to apply for it on ROS before you register for EWSS. If you are up to date with your tax returns this should also be processed straight away. If not then you need to get up to date before you can apply for EWSS.

Now, as for future dating your EWSS claims - yes you can.

Revenue currently pay EWSS a month in arrears, but they will be changing this early in November so that that they will be doing a payment run every day. This is expected to happen from the 9th November onwards, and you will be paid about 48 hours after submitting to Revenue.

If you were to submit 3 weeks of wages into the future you will be paid, but I am not sure just yet if you will be paid all 3 at the same time.

Under TWSS Revenue paid every day, and they paid up to 4 or 5 days in advance. If you sent in a future dated payroll then they would hold that payment until 4 or 5 days before the date on the payslip.

But long story short, you will be able to submit in advance

Irishdreamer wrote: »

Hi,

I have a few questions that I'm hoping someone can help me with.
I work for a charity who employ 7 people. 6 of these 7 people we receive funding towards paying their wages. The 1 other person we do not receive any funding for so we pay their wages fully from the company. So my understanding is that for the 6 employees we receive funding for we can't apply for EWSS for them but as we pay the other 1 employee we can apply for EWSS for that wage.
We never used TWSS so we didn't have to worry about all that but now we think we are really going to have to apply for EWSS as we have very little money coming in to cover the wages.
I run the wages on a weekly basis but since the lockdown in March my manager was having me run a block of wages every 3 weeks (still weekly but done in advance) as this was to limit my time in the building. We are usually one of the first to be locked down so we have to cancel everything that would usually make us money throughout the year.

So we have to do up the financial figures to make sure we qualify for EWSS but I'm nearly positive that we will qualify.
If I sign the company up for EWSS on Friday morning, does that mean that I can run the wage for EWSS on the same day or does there need to be a period of time to let the registration for EWSS activate?
Also can we block run the wages in advance or will it have to be weekly? My manager wants to limit my time in the building so they would prefer if I only went in once every 3 or so weeks to run the wages for the next few weeks.

Thanks in advance!

Irishdreamer · 27-10-2020 01:01AM

Thanks Collsoft!

As a charity we have to keep our Tax Clearance Cert updated at all times so that shouldn't be a problem.

For determining the financial eligibility, do you know if we have to account for the possible EWSS payment we could possibly receive each month?
We're pretty sure that we have to include the funding we receive from the different Government bodies so they are going to definitely impact our eligibility.

We actually use Collsoft to run our wages so if we do sign up for EWSS then hopefully I can figure out how to use it in the software =D

collsoft · 27-10-2020 01:44PM

Hi Irishdreamer,

You don't have to allow for the subsidy payments in your eligibility calculations, but you will as you suggested have to allow for your other government funding.

Running EWSS is easy enough, on the wage entry screen simply click into the "COVID" tab and tick the box for EWSS.

If you want the tick box to be ticked automatically then you can amend the employee's file by opening the "Covid" tab on their details screen and tick the box there. Once its on the employee file it will automatically transfer onto any new wages that you process.

Hope this helps,

Jason

Irishdreamer wrote: »

Thanks Collsoft!

As a charity we have to keep our Tax Clearance Cert updated at all times so that shouldn't be a problem.

For determining the financial eligibility, do you know if we have to account for the possible EWSS payment we could possibly receive each month?
We're pretty sure that we have to include the funding we receive from the different Government bodies so they are going to definitely impact our eligibility.

We actually use Collsoft to run our wages so if we do sign up for EWSS then hopefully I can figure out how to use it in the software =D

Seve OB · 28-10-2020 09:58PM

I have finally reconciled the differences with the TWSS. I have not sent any csv file yet or anything, just manually reconciled.

Apart from the issue with the early amounts being overpaid, I have a few of other issues that I'm looking to see if anyone else can shed some light please.

In week 1 of the scheme, we had someone who worked their last week as they then opted to go on short time lay off. We didn't get paid any subsidy, but had requested it by moving them to J9 & referencing the pay correctly. comment from Revenue on ROS is Refund not allowed reason: J9 Payslip leaveDate has a value.

We didn't get paid subsidy for one person one week. My fault as I didn't include the 1c payment. Is there anyway to claw this one back?

From changes which came in May we had someone who has a Revenue Average Net Pay 224.47 which was imported from the revenue csv downloaded file. Payroll software calculated the covid subsidy @ 85% to be 190.80 which it paid to the staff member. (using Sage payroll professional). This is not even something I can override, the software looks after it. However the revenue only paid over 161.74. this is actually 85% of the 190.80.... I have no idea what is happening here. Only lasted about 6 weeks as the person retired. Incidentally the same person in the second problem, so I can not make any changes to payroll for this person should it be required

Seve OB · 28-10-2020 10:14PM

collsoft wrote: »

I think Sage Micropay Professional may be like our software - I think they were reporting the TWSS payments form the end of April or beginning of May.

So if you were in the scheme at the start (from March 12th) you may have 5 or 6 weeks that were not reported.

I know that we had to write a function to go back and resubmit those periods - not sure how Sage handled it

turns out we ran the scheme from pay date of 3rd April as we pay in arrears.

The CSV file, I generated it from Payroll just there for one of our payrolls, we have monthly and weekly. I have to wait to get to SOP for the weekly before I can generate that one. I left the dates in at default of 15 March to 23 October. figures match what I reconciled myself today.

Before I upload the CSV file, I was wondering if I need to merge the 2 files, or is it ok to upload 2 seperate files?

wpd · 28-10-2020 10:17PM

think you will need to merge into one
when i did it any later files i uploaded overwrote the ones already uploaded

Seve OB · 28-10-2020 10:34PM

wpd wrote: »

think you will need to merge into one
when i did it any later files i uploaded overwrote the ones already uploaded

were yours for the same employees or different employees?
how do you know it overwrote?

jammiedodgers · 28-10-2020 11:55PM

Seve I think you mentioned before you were using Sage payroll software?

Fix here for the omitting €0.01 problem, you can't actually submit the csv until you rectify this, I ran into the same problem.

Seve OB · 29-10-2020 12:48AM

jammiedodgers wrote: »

Seve I think you mentioned before you were using Sage payroll software?

Fix here for the omitting €0.01 problem, you can't actually submit the csv until you rectify this, I ran into the same problem.

thanks, i had just created the csv file for that payroll and got the error so that was a help to resolve. so i just made the change for the person in the etp tab and clicked through to resubmit and got lots of warnings about expired run's so i just hope thats not going to cause any issues and that its ok now.

Can you tell me, does this sort out the problem of getting paid the subsidy for that person for that week? I know they probably won't actually pay me, but will they offset it against the amount we owe them

so then i recreated the csv file...... and getting the same Line item ID error again

manually searched through the payrolls and came up with another employee with 0 top up paid in one particular week, subsidy was received though

i fixed her, resent submission for that week and ran csv again

same problem :mad:

came up with a few completely blank payslips for people being wrapped up but not paid so there is a totally blank payslip there for them, so no 1c, no top up, no covid amount claimed, but there is an empty etp record for them.

i don't even know if this is the problem.
can i manually delete the etp line from their employee record?
would this fix the csv file issue?
could it be some other problem?

Seve OB · 29-10-2020 01:13AM

actually i dug into the csv file just there
it seems that for one particular week, 19th june, every single person on the payroll has not had field 2 of the csv file populated.

i'll have to dig a bit deeper to find out why, but everything looks ok, timesheets were saved, etp records are present and correct, top up amounts are there, submission went through, subsidy was received

Seve OB · 29-10-2020 01:24AM

still digging and looking at first file i created and i see that of the 2 people i mentioned above who had no top up payments, only one actually caused a problem when creating the file. i think the difference between the two people was that one who we didn't get any subsidy payment for, was only getting the subsidy back and no more, however the other person who we did get paid for, also happened to received a few euro refund against USC, so that must have triggered the relevant credentials.

Seve OB · 29-10-2020 01:54AM

Sage have indicated there maybe other issues that require a manual fix
quite long, and tedious

however i found a shortcut and have fixed mine (hopefully)
when you first look at the csv (in excel) it looks quite intimidating with long strings etc, but its not that bad
my problem was a particuar week hadn't filled in the line item(column b), the file is by default sorted by staff, so if you look at column b you will see for each staff that column b is nearly the same every time. the only difference is close to the end of the string, which has a reference to the week number
i copied the cell above, pasted and just had to change the week number

it was an awful lot easier than fixing as sage suggest in the link above

might be useful to someone so figured i should stick it up here

jammiedodgers · 29-10-2020 02:31AM

Seve OB wrote: »

Can you tell me, does this sort out the problem of getting paid the subsidy for that person for that week? I know they probably won't actually pay me, but will they offset it against the amount we owe them

I would imagine we will have to wait for stage 2 of the process where Revenue will examine everything.
Hopefully there won't be a delay with stage 2 now that they are planning on doing EWSS payments on the same timescale as the TWSS.

Masala · 30-10-2020 04:26PM

quick question:

Employer looking at cutting Employee A hours back from 39/40 per week to 20hrs a week.... in effect by 50%. He is earning €700 gross and taking home €600++ (say). Employer will get EWSS for same for about €300. The Employee will now probably fall to €350 gross and take home around €300+/-. My question - what can Employee A apply for to bring up his weekly cash flow???

I presume he cant get PUP as he is getting 20 hrs a week..... or can he???

Seve OB · 30-10-2020 04:27PM

Masala wrote: »

quick question:

Employer looking at cutting Employee A hours back from 39/40 per week to 20hrs a week.... in effect by 50%. He is earning €700 gross and taking home €600++ (say). Employer will get EWSS for same for about €300. The Employee will now probably fall to €350 gross and take home around €300+/-. My question - what can Employee A apply for to bring up his weekly cash flow???

I presume he cant get PUP as he is getting 20 hrs a week..... or can he???

can't get pup
can get dole for short time layoff
so if he works 2 days, he can claim 3 days dole

Lallers96 · 30-10-2020 04:30PM

Advance recovery has appeared on my last payslip for the first time, I'm assuming this is the government coming back for some of the Temp. Subsidy money we were paid?

Masala · 30-10-2020 04:32PM

Seve OB wrote: »

can't get pup
can get dole for short time layoff
so if he works 2 days, he can claim 3 days dole

Thanks Seve.... will it involve the X's and O's form that has to be stamped by the Employer every week/month???

As a matter of interest - could he end up 'being better off' when all the payments are put together???

Thierry12 · 30-10-2020 04:35PM

Seve OB wrote: »

can't get pup
can get dole for short time layoff
so if he works 2 days, he can claim 3 days dole

Work 2 days for €300

Get 3 days stamp/dole at €40 a day?

€420 not bad for 2 days work if your not hard pressed

30-10-2020 04:39PM

Lallers96 wrote: »

Advance recovery has appeared on my last payslip for the first time, I'm assuming this is the government coming back for some of the Temp. Subsidy money we were paid?

Nothing to do with the government. You will need to contact your employer, it may be an attempt to rectify their own overpayment mistake.

BTW, 'Advances' (otherwise know as Loans) are subject to BIK. It is not a good description to use when recovering overpayments. If they are audited by Revenue, questions will be asked.

Seve OB · 30-10-2020 04:39PM

Masala wrote: »

Thanks Seve.... will it involve the X's and O's form that has to be stamped by the Employer every week/month???

As a matter of interest - could he end up 'being better off' when all the payments are put together???

yes it does
not sure about being better off, would be on a case by case basis i would assume

remember though the dole is taxable

Wage Subsidy Scheme Issues

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