Process your payroll

To make sure tax and national insurance calculate correctly, you must set your process date to the day you pay your employees, to do this:

1. Click Payroll, then Change Process Date.
2. Enter the process date, then click OK.

You can only process one payroll per tax period for each employee. To see where each tax period begins and ends, visit our tax week and month calendar >

If you process more than one pay frequency in Sage 50 Payroll, select the employees from one pay frequency at a time before you follow the steps below.

Each period, you must enter your employees' pay, hours, deductions, and anything else you want to appear on their payslips.

1. Select the employees that you want to pay in this pay period. 
2. Click Payroll, then click Enter Payments.
3. Enter the hours and rates for any payments and deductions.
4. Click the Summary tab and check amounts are correct.
5. Click Save / Next.
6. Repeat 3 to 5 for each employee.
7. Click Close.

TIP: Enter payments is the most common way to enter your employee's pay, but you can use Timesheet Entry instead if you prefer.

You need to assess your employees for automatic enrolment in each pay period you process. You must identify any new starters, or employees whose circumstances change, that are now eligible for automatic enrolment.

If you have the Pensions Module, when you run the Pension Assessment the Pensions Module automatically enrols your eligible employees.

Not using the Pensions Module? If you'd like to know more, leave your details and we'll get in touch.

Now that you've entered your employees' payments, you can produce their payslips. You can print, email them, or upload them to an online portal. Employee payslips >

You can also print other types of reports to show a breakdown of the different payroll values, click Payroll, then click Pre-update Reports.

Once you've entered your employees' pay information and produced their payslips, you can now update your payroll, don't worry this is easy to do:

1. Click Payroll, then Update Records.
2. Click Yes, click Backup
3. Click Next, then click Next.
4. Click Next, then click Finish.
5. Click OK, then Next.
6. Click Finish, then click OK.

If you use Sage 50 Accounts, or Sage 200 Accounts, you can easily transfer your payroll information using the Nominal Link Wizard.

You can find more about setting up from the following support guides:

• Set up the nominal link to post to Sage 50 Accounts >
• Set up the nominal link to post to Sage 200 >

If you pay your employees by BACS and use e-banking, we have the handy e-Banking Wizard that helps you to create payment files to upload to your banking software.

You can find out more in our support guide on e-Banking >

We recommend you print a selection of post-update reports. The reports you print depend on your individual requirements, however, as a minimum we recommend you print the Payment Summary Part 3 and the P32 Employer Payment Record, they provide details of payments due to HMRC at the end of each tax month.

If an employee is leaving your company, you must mark them as a leaver and provide them with a P45.  
We have a handy guide that explains the steps you'll need to carry out. Processing a leaver >

After updating your payroll and, if required, processing any leavers, you're ready to submit your FPS for this pay period to HMRC. You must send this submission on or before your process date to avoid any late submission penalties. 

1. Click Pay Employees then click Full Payment Submission (FPS).
2. Select the check boxes to indicate you have done everything you need to.
3. Click Full Payment Submission (FPS).
4. If you're submitting your FPS after your pay date, from the drop-down menu, click the relevant reason then click OK.
     NOTE: If you have any employees that are marked as on hold because they aren't being paid in this period, you can select to include or exclude them from the FPS. To exclude an employee from the submission, clear the Include check-box. 
5. Read the Important Notice then click Continue.
6. Click Submit then click Submit.
7. Click here to view and print the submission log then click Print.
8. Click Close then click Return to Pay Employees menu.

Employer payment summary (EPS)

There are different scenarios where you may need to submit the EPS. You may need to adjust your payment to HMRC because you have statutory payments to recover and any related NI compensation. You may also need to let HMRC know that there's no payment due for this month, previous months or future months.

For full guidance on when you need to submit an EPS and how to do it, visit our handy support page when to submit an Employer Payment Summary (EPS) >