If you set up Sage 50 Payroll part-way through the tax year, you need to ensure your tax and national insurance (NI) calculations are accurate. To do this, you must enter Employee year to date values for your employees.

However, YTD values entered manually for directors aren't included in your full payment submission (FPS). To ensure HMRC receive the correct information, process directors from the start of the tax year. This applies even if their pay hasn't exceeded the thresholds for tax and NI.

You must take account of the director's RTI ID correctly. Find out below why this is important, and how to do it.

The RTI ID, also known as an employee’s Payroll ID, is a unique string of letters and numbers by which HMRC identifies employees on their side. Normally, this doesn't change once it's set. HMRC uses it to identify when an employee has moved jobs or has a second job.

When you set Sage 50 Payroll up mid-year, ensure you set employees up with the same RTI ID as the previous payroll software. This avoids HMRC thinking the employee has a new or second job.

Enter the RTI ID

You must use the original RTI ID that the prior employer used. Contact HMRC or the previous employer to obtain this.

NOTE: You can only amend the RTI ID field when you first create an employee's record. Once you've saved and created an employee's record, there's no way to change the RTI ID field.

1. Create the employee records with the correct RTI IDs.
2. Re-process the payroll and submit a dummy fps for the last period liability was received by HMRC.
3. Process the payroll for the next period and submit a live FPS.

I've already entered YTDs

If you've already processed a director after manually entering their YTD values, you need to correct this. To find out more, visit the known issue: manually entered NI year to dates for directors not included in FPS guide.