What to consider before processing an employee as a leaver

Make sure you're fully prepared to make an employee a leaver, to prevent any processing errors. Let's take a look.

• Does the employee's final pay include all outstanding payments and deductions? E.g. If the employee is owed overtime, you must pay them for it
• Has the employee died? If so, any final pay due to the employee isn't subject to national insurance (NI). Follow our guide to Process the final pay for an employee who has died
• Is this employee's director status set to Director (Pro-rata basis)? If it is, when you click the Select this check box if your employee is leaving and this is their final payment check box, their NI calculates on a year to date basis
• Has the employee received all of the statutory pay they're entitled to? E.g. If an employee is receiving SMP and decides to leave ten weeks into their 39 week maternity pay period, they may still be eligible for the remainder of their statutory payment entitlement

 TIP: In some situations the employee may not be entitled to receive the remainder of their statutory payment entitlement. Please contact HMRC's Employer's helpdesk. 

• Is the employee monthly paid and leaving part-way through a month? If yes, you can process the employee separately to the rest of your employees. The only difference to normal processing is that you must set your process date to the actual date you're paying the employee
• Have you updated the employee's final payment? For the P45 totals to be correct, you must update all payments
• Do you Post salary journals using the nominal link? If you do and current year leavers are excluded in the criteria settings, they don't show in the employee list. To avoid incomplete postings, you must post the nominal link before making an employee a leaver
• If the employee has been automatically enrolled, you should still deduct pension contributions as normal. If the employee wants to leave the pension scheme, they must speak to their pension provider

If you've made an error processing a leaver, use our handy Correcting errors for leavers guide to fix it.

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