Full Payment Submission (FPS)

TIP: Within your HMRC portal, set up an email address to receive confirmation of a successful electronic submission.

▼When to submit an FPS

You must submit the FPS to HMRC on or before the date that you pay your employees. If you submit the FPS after the pay date, HMRC wants to know the reason for your late submission. You must select the late reason before you can continue
You must still process your payroll if you have active employees but aren’t paying them in a particular pay run. This will also submit an FPS. Process your pay run to the Edit Pay screen. You must select the Don’t pay check box. When the FPS submits for this pay run, it informs HMRC that the employees are still in your employment. It also informs HMRC they aren’t paid this time

HMRC uses the reason you give to help determine whether any late filing penalties are due. It’s important that you select the correct reason. For further information, refer to the FPS late reasons section.

You must complete your pay run in full and update records before you make the FPS

If you’re registered as an employer, but currently have no employees, you must notify HMRC that no payment is due. You do this by sending a Nil payment employer payment summary (EPS) at the end of the tax month

▼How to submit an FPS

Process your pay run as normal. Once you confirm the pay values are correct, select Complete Pay Run.

The Confirm Pay Values option appears. If you haven't submitted before, the system asks for your Government Gateway credentials.

Enter or check your details, then select Confirm.

A message confirms the pay run is complete. The payroll then submits the FPS. A summary of the completed pay run appears.

The status in the Summary tab shows if the submission is successful or not. See section 'To check a submission is successful'.

If you’ve signed up for both Accounting and Payroll, your totals post to your accounts. This happens each time you process a pay run. You can check what’s posted by looking at the salary journals.

NOTE: If the submission is taking a long time, leave it to complete. You can continue to use the payroll as needed. You can even close down the payroll. The submission will continue in the background. It will either complete the submission or report an error message if it fails. See the section below: 'To check a submission is successful'.

▼FPS late reasons

It’s important that you submit your FPS on time, which is on or before you pay your employees.

Sometimes a late submission is necessary. If you submit your FPS after the deadline, you’ll see a list of reasons to choose from. Choosing the right reason lets HMRC know why your submission is late.

TIP: When you complete your pay run, Payroll compares your pay date with your system date. It then prompts you to enter a late reason if you’re beyond your deadline.

Late reporting reason code	Description of why the payment is reported late
A	Notional payment: Payment to expat by a third party or overseas employer.
B	Notional payment: Employment related security.
C	Notional payment: Other.
D	Payment subject to Class 1 NICs but P11D/P9D for tax.
E	Micro Employer using temporary ‘on or before’ relaxation.
F	Impractical to report work done on the day.
G	Reasonable excuse.
H	Correction to earlier submission.

You may be unsure what qualifies as a reasonable excuse for a late submission. Find more information at What happens if you don’t report payroll information on time.

▼To check a submission is successful

When a submission is successful, it appears with a green check mark in the summary of the completed pay run. You can also view the status for each attempted submission you make.

If a submission gives submission errors, select Resolve from the HMRC Real Time Information (RTI) Scheme section in the Summary tab. This will give you an error code. Look up the error code in our article Submission Errors.

▼To view the FPS and FPS history

After you complete a pay run, a detailed breakdown of the completed pay run appears.

To download a copy of the FPS submission file sent to HMRC, choose Download XML from the View FPS drop-down menu. Each piece of information in the file displays in a way that HMRC’s software can understand.

You can also view each attempted FPS submission you’ve made:

Select the Pay Runs tab and select the relevant pay run.
From the HMRC Real Time Information (RTI) Scheme section, select Actions.
Select View FPS History.

The status in the Summary tab shows if the submission is successful or not. See this article, section 'To check a submission is successful'.

▼FPS for a corrected pay run

When you make changes to a completed pay run, an additional FPS submits for you. This provides HMRC with details of the updated values.

If you make a change to a pay run from the current tax year, an updated FPS sends automatically.

When making a change to a payroll from a previous tax year, send a Supplementary FPS.

Read our article:

Supplementary FPS

It isn't possible to resend historical FPSs without making a change to a payroll first.

If HMRC need proof of a submission, go to:

Pay Runs tab.
Select the period HMRC are querying
Within HMRC Real Time Information (RTI) Scheme section, select Actions.
Select View FPS History.
Find the Correlation ID column.

The Correlation ID is the unique reference we’ve received from HMRC for the FPS submission for the period in question.

Giving the Correlation ID to HMRC may resolve their query, allowing them to find the original submission within their systems.