Transferring UK Payrolls from SnowdropKCS Payroll to Sage 50 Cloud Payroll

You cannot directly transfer data from SnowdropKCS to Sage 50 Cloud Payroll, but as Sage 50 has the facility to import data using a CSV file, you can create reports in SnowdropKCS Payroll and run these to Excel, then (after a little manipulation) import the data into Sage 50 Cloud Payroll using the Advanced Data Import Wizard.

The best point to transfer data in this way is the start of the tax year, as at that point there are no year to date figures to transfer, so you will only need to export and import employee’s details. If you move to Sage 50 Cloud Payroll in the middle of the tax year, you will need to export and import year to date values as well.

SnowdropKCS is highly customisable, and different customers will use the system in different ways, so this guide is intended to be general advice rather than step-by-step instructions, as some customers will use the features of the software in different ways.

Creating a report to export employee details

We recommend these steps are completed by a user that has had training in the SnowdropKCS Payroll Report Generator.

1. Click Tools, double-click Reports, then click Generate Report.
2. Click Add
3. Enter a Report Title. We recommend Employee Details for Sage 50. Click the green tick
4. Click Edit
5. Select and enter the Database Fields. You can use the Find and Filter   options to help you find and select the fields. The list below lists the closest SnowdropKCS equivalent in the order that they would appear on the import template for Sage 50 Cloud Payroll.
6. Once all the fields have been added, click Cancel to close the Report Generator Fields window, and then Save  to save your report.

You can save your report and then return to editing it later if necessary.

The fields in bold are mandatory for importing into Sage 50 Cloud Payroll. Left column is the column heading on the Sage 50 import template, right column is the equivalent field in SnowdropKCS, with explanatory notes:

Your Report Structure should look similar to the following screenshots:

Running the report

Once you have created and saved the report as above, you will need to run it to Excel.

1. First, invoke a set containing all the employees you want to export. We recommend you export the employees that will be in one payroll in Sage 50 at a time. If you have several companies to export, do them separately, this way you will have a file for each company in Sage 50 Cloud Payroll.
2. Click Tools, double-click Reports, then click Generate Report.
3. Select the report you created (Employee Details for Sage 50) and click Run
4. Under “Output to”, select Spreadsheet, and from the drop-down menu to the right, select Excel. Ensure Date Conversion is not ticked.
5. Tick Active Employees Only if you want to exclude leavers from the report.
6. Ensure the Matching employees only box is clear.
7. Under “Report Parameters”, ensure the Totals, Blank line between Employees, and Print Record Counts boxes are clear.
8. Click OK
9. The report will open in Microsoft Excel as a spreadsheet. This may take some time if you are running the report for a large set of employees.

Once you have the spreadsheet, check that the information shown looks correct, and compare a few records against what is in the program. You will then need to make some adjustments to the spreadsheet before it can be imported. You may prefer to copy and paste the data to the Employee Details template provided with Sage 50 Payroll or alternatively change the column headings to match the ones used by Sage 50 Cloud Payroll.

Editing the spreadsheet and saving as a CSV file

You will need to make the following changes to the file in Excel.

1. Delete rows 1 to 4 inclusive and delete row 6 (which is empty).
2. Sort the report by Gender, then change all the Female entries to F and all the Male entries to M.
3. Ensure the Marital Status Desc column has a valid entry for each employee.
4. If there are any question marks (?) in the Work End Date column, delete them.
5. If there are any entries in the Payroll Tax Regime column (letters S or C), check these show at the start of the Payroll Current Tax Code in the column to the right.
   For example, if the Payroll Tax Regime says S, and the Payroll Current Tax Code is 001250L, change the Payroll Current Tax Code to S1250L.
   Tax codes are held in SnowdropKCS as a 7 digit field. Codes shorter than 7 digits are padded with leading zeroes. Before you can import into Sage 50, you will need to remove the leading zeroes.
6. Change the Pay Current Pay Method to the corresponding acceptable value for each employee.
7. Change the Pay Current Pay Frequency to the corresponding acceptable value for each employee.
8. Change the Director Type to the corresponding acceptable value.
9. For any records with a Director NI Weeks entry, change this to the date they became a director. You can refer to the tax calendar and use the first day of the relevant tax week if in doubt. Any zeroes in this column must be deleted.
10. If there are emergency contact details to import, you will need to add a column for Contact Permission and enter 1 in this column for each employee with an emergency contact.
11. If there are bank details for BACS payments, add a column for the Bank Account Type and enter a valid entry for each employee that will be paid by BACS. If you are splitting some pay into a second account, you will need to add another column for Second Bank Account Type and enter valid entries for the employees that require them.
12. Reverse the Exc. From Emailing Docs? entry (if applicable) so employees that are to be emailed payslips have 1 in this column, and employees no to be emailed payslips have 0. You will also need to enter a Date Confirmed for employees getting email payslips, and a Payslip Password (although this can be added in Sage 50 later).
13. Check the HMRC Pay ID entries are all present and correct, and then add a Previous Payroll ID Status column – you will then need to enter a value of 1 for each employee in this column.
14. For any employees classed as Non-UK workers (for automatic enrolment purposes), add a Non UK Worker column and enter 1 for any employees this applies to. In SnowdropKCS, non-UK workers would have “Exclude from Auto Enrolment” set to E for Exclude.
15. Add a column for Right To Work Confirm Status and enter the number 2 for all employees.
16. Amend the value in the Exclude From Auto Enrolment column as follows:
    If it is N or Q, change the value to 0 (zero).
    If it is E, replace it with the appropriate reason number from 1 to 5, for no-UK workers see step 13.
17. Once all the amendments have been made, click File, then Save As, then Browse.
    Browse to the folder where you want to save the file.
    Enter a File name.
    Under Save as Type, select CSV (Comma delimited)(*.csv)
    Click Save.

You now have a file to import employees into Sage 50 Cloud Payroll. Please refer to the Sage 50 Cloud Payroll guide on using the Advanced Data Import to import Employee Details.

To Date values

If you transfer to Sage 50 Cloud Payroll mid year, you will need to export to-date values to a CSV file and import these, once the employee records have been created.

For details of how to create a to-date values report, Read more >

After importing data - other useful reports

PRINT PARAMETER DETAILS

You can run the Print Parameter Details report in SnowdropKCS Payroll to list all the payment and deduction rules that you have set up on a payroll, and how they are configured. Although you won't be able to import it directly in to your new payroll product, you can refer to this report when setting up your payments and deductions. Read more >

P11 DEDUCTION CARDS FOR NI AND TAX

The P11 is a statutory report in two parts which you would expect to find in all UK payroll software. It details the breakdown of payments for tax and NI purposes. You can run this for the current and previous tax years. For details of how to print or export P11 reports for an individual employee or a set of employees, Read more >

P60 REPORTS FROM PREVIOUS YEARS

You may want to produce and retain copies of P60s from previous tax years for reference, or in case an employee requests a copy. You can now produce P60s in PDF format that can be saved, emailed, or printed on blank A4 paper and do not require stationery. For more information, Read more >

THE COSTING REPORT

As well as the standard to date values, you may want to report on to-date figures such as the salary paid to date, or the overtime paid to date, or the amount deducted under a particular deduction rule to date. You can obtain this by running the costing report from period 1 to the last period of the tax year without selecting the option to have a new line for each period - this will present totals based on what you have actually paid. The costing report can be run for previous tax years. For more information about the costing report, Read more >

PMTAX REPORTS

The PMTAX report shows a summary of the statutory payments and statutory deductions by tax month. It is the equivalent of the P32 substitute. There are options that allow you to run it for the current or previous tax years. For more information, Read more >

PAYSLIP HISTORY ENQUIRY

You can use the Payslip History Enquiry option to print or export copies of historic payslips. You can run all the payslips for a department or cost centre, or for an individual employee for up to a year at a time. The output option allows you to save the payslips in Word, PDF or Excel format, but please note that to print on payslip stationery, you will need to print directly from SnowdropKCS Payroll. Once the file is output to one of these formats, it won't align with the stationery, but you may want to keep these copies so you can refer to the figures. For more information on how to do this, Read more >

STUDENT AND POSTGRADUATE LOANS

Employees that have been in higher education may have student loans or postgraduate student loans. When moving to a new payroll product, you will need to ensure the repayment of these loans continues in the new system. In order to identify which employees have these loans and whether they are still active, you can create and run a report in SnowdropKCS. We have prepared a guide to assist you with this. For more information, Read more >

ATTACHMENT OF EARNINGS ORDERS (AEO)

Employees that have outstanding attachment of earnings orders or earnings arrests will need to have these set up to deduct the outstanding balance on your new payroll system. You can create reports to show which employees have the attachments and what the balances are. Please note that if you have used different accumulators in each payroll company, you will need to adjust the report before running it for the employees in the next payroll company or create separate reports for each payroll. Read more >

SALARY HISTORY

You can create a report that shows employee's historical salary increases/changes. For details of how to create and run this, Read more >

OTHER FIELDS THAT CAN BE REPORTED ON

To see a list of all the fields that are available to be reported on:

1. Click Tools, then click Reports, the click Generate Report.
2. Click Add  then enter a report title, such as TEST then click .
3. Click Edit .
4. Ensure Database Fields is selected. The table above lists all the reportable fields available in the database.

You can use the Filter  option to look for fields containing a particular word.

ABSENCE REASON/ABSENCE TYPES

In SnowdropKCS Payroll, absences are recorded using letters to represent the type of absence. You may use S for Sickness, P for Paternity, and so on. You can print a list of what the absence types are and which letter is used to represent them on the absence calendar:

1. Log in to payroll as the system user.
2. Click Admin, double-click Absence Administration, double click Absence Lookups, then click Absence Type (for absence reasons, you can select Absence Reason at this point).
3. A list of the associated codes is displayed. Click Print 

   .

4. Click Yes to view the report, you can then print it.

You can print out a list of other lookups in the same way.

ARCHIVING PRINT FILES

You can create archives of the Payroll reports in SnowdropKCS Payroll so that they can be viewed and printed outside of the software. Reports can be archived as a Word document (to open in Microsoft Word), a PDF (to open in Adobe Acrobat Reader), or in the original text format. For information on how to archive print files, Read more >

P11D AND P11D(b) REPORTS

Customers that have the P11D Module may want to save copies of P11D and P11D(b) reports from the last and previous years. If you have not already saved these in PDF format, they can be run historically, a tax year at a time. 
For details on how to generate the P11D Special Stationery reports, Read more >
For details on how to generate the P11D(b) Special Stationery report, Read more >

Other information

Which user IDs have access to which payrolls

You can view which user IDs have access to which payrolls by looking at the Payroll Allocation.

1. Log in to Payroll as the system user.
2. Click Admin, double-click Payroll Administration, then click Payroll Allocation.
3. Select a user ID using the Lookup .
4. The payrolls that are allocated to the user are displayed in the box on the right:
   

If you have a large number of user IDs, you may want to report on the payroll allocation rather than looking up each user, however, there isn't a report that shows this information. You can instead do a dump of the privpay table which will show each payroll company number that is allocated to an ID:

1. Log into the Live Admin System.
2. Click Admin, then click Run A Program.
3. Enter the password SoLo and click OK.
4. In the Program name box, enter dmpprocx privpay and click OK. 
5. You will be returned to the Run a program window which will display a confirmation message:
   Program dmprocx.r has completed. Enter another program.
6. Click Cancel.
7. On the machine that the admin program was run, browse to the control directory. This is typically on:
   {local drive}:\snowdropkcs\payrollV10\apps\live\control
8. In this directory you will find a file called privpay.d - this is the dump file which can be opened with a text editor, such as Microsoft Notepad.

Below is an example showing the same user as the above screenshot. We can see that the user ID andy has access to payrolls 66, AH and MO: