Change how often you pay an employee
Description

You can't change an employees' pay cycle in every situation. This depends on:

  • The point you're at in the tax year
  • What you've already processed

This is to ensure employees' tax and national insurance (NI) contributions calculates correctly.

The beginning of a tax year

As employees won't have any year to date values yet, you can change to and from any pay cycle.

NOTE:

You'll need to create a new Pay Calendar for any pay cycles that don't yet exist. For more information, read Pay day calendar settings 

Mid tax year

For new employees, you can change the pay cycle to any option before including them in a pay run.

For existing employees, you can move between Weekly and Monthly and vice versa. The first pay run after changing can’t overlap with the final pay run in the old pay cycle.

If it does, it will result in the employee under or over paying NI. To check this, refer to the Tax week and tax month calendar.

CAUTION:

It's not possible to move to or from a 4-weekly or 2-weekly pay cycle until the start of the new tax year.

Cause
Resolution

Weekly to monthly

You can't process any week that overlaps into the tax month you want to process the employee in.

For example:

  • You want an employees' first monthly wage to be Month 5 (August).
  • The last weekly pay run to process is week 17.
  • You must not process any weekly pay runs within tax month 5 (6 August to 5 September).

If you’ve already processed weekly pay for the employee in tax month 5, continue to pay weekly until tax week 21, and then change.


Monthly to weekly

You can't process any month that overlaps into the tax week you want to process the employee in.

For example:

  • You want an employees' first weekly wage to be week 23 (7 September - 13 September)
  • The last Monthly pay run to process is month 5 (August)

If you’ve already processed tax month 6, the earliest you can change to weekly pay is week 28 (12 October - 18 October)


How to change an employee's pay cycle

  1. Select Employees from the menu bar
  2. Select the relevant employee.
  3. Under Employment Details, select the relevant pay frequency option from the Pay Cycle list.
  4. Select Save.

I can't change the pay cycle

If you find the system doesn't let you change the frequency, the cause is either:

  • You’re trying to move the employee from or to a 2-weekly or 4-weekly pay cycle
  • You have overlapping tax periods - check the payroll tax calendar
Steps to duplicate
Related Solutions

Unused pay calendars

Create and manage payments