In this issue:
|
Welcome to the January 2007 edition of Payroll Support News. Payroll Support News is a monthly communication to Sage Micropay Professional and Quickpay users. It provides vital information about payroll issues and we hope you find it informative and relevant. Please do not reply to this e-mail directly as this newsletter is sent from an unmonitored email address. For any queries, please send your company name, account number and a full description of the query to pye@sage.ie . In this Issue:
|
|
Quickpay
Duplicate Employees with No PPS Number Issue There has been an issue discovered in Quickpay while creating the P35 to ROS. If you have more than one employee with no PPS number setup in the employee details, the system will not allow you to create the file. Workaround Get a valid PPS number for the employees and enter it into details 1 of the employee details. OR
Create an original P35 but only include one of the employees with a Blank PPS number. To do this, when you are creating your p35 to ROS, you will select P35 to ROS and choose the Original Return. Click on the button called Select Employees . Click on each employee with a Blank PPS number that you would like to exclude, making sure to keep one employee with blank PPS number, click ok and click proceed. You will then need to create a supplementary P35 for each additional employee with a blank PPS number. Micropay
Consolidated P60 Printing.Issue When printing these reports from a consolidation company, the period Standard Cut-Off and Tax Credit will multiply by 52 or 12 depending on the frequency of the default company assigned to the consolidation company. This can lead to the annual figure on the P60 being too small or too large. As this value does not need to be returned on the P35, you can continue on. Workaround
We recommend that P60's be printed from individual companies.
Consolidated Pension Contribution ScreenIssue In a consolidation company, the pension contribution screen on the P35 to ROS/Plain Report will often show incorrect values. This is because the Pension Deductions would need to be the exact same ID numbers in all consolidated companies for this to work correctly. Workaround Create these reports in the individual companies and take a note of the correct pension values. Within the consolidated company you can then amend these values on the pension contribution screen when creating a P35 to ROS.
In general the 3 key rules of Consolidated companies are: • Make sure all consolidated companies are in Status P. • Do a ‘Cons All' each time you log into the consolidated company. • Never tick the box marked ‘Consolidate' on the Tax year End Reports screen. Consolidated P35 To ROSIssue In a consolidation company, when you go into Tax Year End Reports and select the P35 to ROS, there is a box called consolidate. If you tick this box, the system will generate a list of discrepancies. Workaround Do not tick this box. If you have already ticked this box, you need to Consolidate All again and generate report again. Company Missing From Admin Backup OptionIssueWhen taking a back up from within the Admin section, it can happen that a company will not appear on the list. This happens when there are 10+ companies in the Micropay Professional directory. WorkaroundThe user must instead take a normal company back up for those missing from the list. Paynote CorruptionIssueCorruption of the company paynote files can occur when updating from one version to another or when setting up a new tax year. This corruption is typically signalled by errors such as ‘cannot open paydata' or ‘cannot open emplmast/paynote'. WorkaroundTo fix this problem, the Paynote.dbf, Paynote.cdx and Paynote.ftp need to be replaced with the same files from a blank company. NB: Unfortunately this clears the information contained within the Employee and Company notepads. We advise users to print off this information before following this procedure. Problems with Paypath File on WinbitsIssueSome users have experienced problems with their paypath file not being accepted by the Winbits software. This is caused by the Sage PDF printer defaulting to the first available port. In some cases this can interfere with the port used by the Winbits software. Workaround To rectify, change the port on the Sage PDF printer to LPT1. |
|
End of support for Micropay for Windows As of September 2006, Sage brought to an end, the support for Micropay for Windows. This move became necessary, as we were no longer able to enhance Micropay for Windows with updated features due to its aged 16-bit technology. It is crucial that all remaining Micropay for Windows customers upgrade to Micropay Professional Version 4.10 as soon as possible, as there will be no Payroll Year End or future updates available for Micropay. We strongly advise that all Micropay for Windows customers who have not yet upgraded to Micropay Professional upgrade now in order to ensure a smooth and timely Payroll Year End. To purchase an upgrade, please call our Business Advice Team on 1890 88 20 60, or visit our website sage.ie. You will not be able to process Payroll for 2007 if you haven't upgraded to Micropay Professional. It is vital that you upgrade to Micropay professional immediately in order to allow time to install and begin processing on Micropay Professional prior to running your Payroll Year End in early December. We have made every effort to ensure that the process of upgrading is smooth, quick and simple. Micropay Professional has an inbuilt migration tool to help transfer your company data over from Micropay for Windows. Please ensure that all Micropay for Windows companies are on ‘start of period'. Please click on the link below for information on how to do the migration to Micropay Professional Migration from Micropay to Micropay Professional
|
|
No more P35 to Disk!
If you are intending to make your submission online, you need to ensure that you are registered to make online submissions. For information on how to become a ROS customer and make online submission visit http://www.ros.ie/PublisherServlet/info/setupnewcust and complete the simple and short application. Both Sage Quickpay and Micropay Professional are ROS compatible and facilitate this online submission.
|
Budget Update for 2007The Government announced their budget changes for the tax year 2007 on December 6th. Sage has created a budget update file, which is to be used to update the PAYE and PRSI tables. Please click on the links below to download this budget update. Sage Budget Letter: Web Version Sage Budget Letter: Doc Download
Please ensure that you run this update before you begin processing for Tax Year 2007 in order to ensure you are calculating PRSI and PAYE correctly. Please note you will not be able to manually update your PAYE and PRSI tables. The Budget Update must be run before you can process payroll for 2007. If you really need to process the 1 st week of January, you can do so, by setting up the 2007 tax year (see Payroll Year End user guide). After you receive the Budget Update you will need to go back to the 2006 version of Micropay Professional and run the Budget Update. You will then need to reset up the 2007 Tax Year by going into Year End – Tax – Tax Year End 2006 – Set up 2007 Tax Year. You will then need to reprocess week 1 of 2007, and check for any differences in the nett pay from the original period processed and the re-processed period. If there is a difference, this will be down to either tax or prsi, and you will need to set up a non taxable, non prisable payment or a nett deduction for the difference (depending on if nett pay is higher or lower) for employees in the next period. If there is no difference you can continue on as normal.
|
|
Please ensure that you keep up to date with the Sage Payroll Year End website http://sage.ie/pye/ for updates and important information related to Payroll Year End. The Payroll Year End Website http://sage.ie/pye/ also contains FAQ and Knowledgebase Articles useful for your day-to-day payroll processing. |
|
Payroll Year End Issues Tax Credit Import Over the course of the year end, you may receive an email from the Revenue Online Service (ROS) advising you that there are tax credits (P2C's) available to download. These need to be imported into your payroll system. To import these tax credits you will firstly need to export them from ROS, you will need to save the file to a floppy disk or a location on your hard drive and then import it. If you have more than one company with the same tax registration number, you will need to perform the import on all companies. For instructions on how to import tax credits into Quickpay and Micropay Professional please click on the links below.
Did You Know? In Micropay Professional V5 you will now have easy access to all historical payslips. Previously you would have only been able to access only the most recent 12 months of payslips, now with the multi-year processing you are able to login to the appropriate year and easily access any payslips from that year. Setting Up The Calendar for Tax Year 2007 (Micropay Professional Only)
Before you start processing for the New Year, one of the first things that must be setup is the calendar. The main function of the calendar in Micropay Professional is to set out each payment date for the duration of the tax year. It holds the Pay Date, Cheque Date, Giro Date and EMT date (“Electronic Monetary Transfer” or “Paypath”) for each payroll period. The number of entries made in the calendar relates to the number of pay periods applicable to the frequency of that company. For a weekly frequency this will be 52 or 53, for Monthly 12, and so on. For information on how to setup the calendar, please click on the link below How to Setup the Calendar in Micropay Professional
PC Specifications For Quickpay Minimum System Specifications PC Specifications For Micropay Professional Minimum System Specifications
Sage Payroll Policy on Dot Matrix Narrow Carriage Printers The use of narrow carriage Dot Matrix printers is not supported with Sage Micropay, Micropay Professional or Quickpay. Some payroll reports are very wide and require the capacity of wide-carriage printers. Narrow-carriage Dot Matrix printers at times have difficulty printing reports in a Windows environment due to font, driver and speed limitations. Windows 95, Windows 98 and Windows ME As part of their Lifecycle Policy, Microsoft announced that they were ending extended Support for Windows 98, Windows 98 Second Edition, and Windows ME. As part of this they retired public and technical support, including security updates, by 11th July 2006. Microsoft are strongly advising customers to upgrade to Windows 2000 or Windows XP, as these are the operating systems that will continue to be supported going forward. For more information on this, please click on the following link: |
|
Technical Support – Easy Access! Below is a list of contact numbers and email addresses should you require further assistance with any other technical queries. By telephone on our Lo-call number 1890 946 771, and select Option 3. If you are calling from outside Ireland, please call +353 1 6420877. By fax on 01 6420895 By email to pye@sage.ie To unsubscribe from this newswire click here , quoting your full company name and Sage account number where applicable. Please note it may take up to 20 days to effect this change.
|