SNCP is a statutory parental payment effective since 6 April 2025.

Continue to follow the steps below to process this payment.

To find out more about this payment before you process it, visit our SNCP entitlement and eligibility article.

In Sage 50 Payroll, you need to process Statutory Maternity Pay (SMP) or Statutory Paternity Pay (SPP) before you process SNCP.

You can't process SNCP for an employee if they're currently receiving another statutory parental payment.

If you're currently paying a parental payment, process the SNCP when the parental payment ends. ▼ View an example.

Set up SNCP

To be able to pay SNCP, you first need to enter the SNCP details.

1. Double-click the relevant employee on your employee list.
2. Select the Absence tab, then the S.N.C.P. button.
3. Enter the Actually Born On and First Day of Neonatal Care dates.
   • If there's more than 28 days between these dates, a message explains that the employee isn't eligible for SNCP
4. Ensure the Manual Statutory Neonatal Pay Calculations checkbox is clear.
5. Select the Declaration received checkbox to confirm you've received 'form NEO3'.
6. Select Auto Calc to calculate the employee's average weekly gross pay.
7. A prompt could appear that holiday payments made in or near the relevant period affect the average earnings, click OK.
8. Select the 8 Weeks Gross tab to check the values that make up the average weekly gross pay.
9. To check the employee's entitlement select the Entitlement tab.
   • Your software also updates the Previously Paid values in this tab with any SNCP payments you process
10. Keep the employee record open and move on to the SNCP Leave Details section.

SNCP Leave Details

Use the SNCP Leave Details table to the right to enter your employee's leave dates.

This table has several lines in case your employee is taking their SNCP in separate blocks of leave.

1. Enter the Ended Work for NCPP date. This is the last date the employee works before their SNCP to starts.
2. Enter the number of weeks they're taking in this period of leave under the No of Weeks column.
3. Select OK, then OK.
4. Select Save, then Close.
5. If your employee takes any more weeks of SNCP later, return to their record and repeat Steps 1 to 4.

Your software calculates the SNCP due when you next process this employee's payroll. You can see the SNCP amount due in the summary tab of Enter Payments.

Pension contributions

When an employee receives statutory parental pay, you need to pay employer pension contributions based on their full pay, not the statutory payment.

To find out how, visit the handle employer pension contributions for employees receiving statutory pay article.

What's next

If required, you can adjust normal payments to accommodate statutory pay for the period due to the SNCP payment. 

Submit an EPS at the end of the tax month to notify HMRC of any SNCP. Find out more in our when to submit an employer payment summary (EPS) article.