National Minimum Wage check

How to check the National Minimum Wage in Sage Payroll.

There’s a minimum hourly amount you should pay your employees. The amount depends on the employee's age and work status. This is the National Minimum Wage.

You can use Sage Payroll to check that you aren’t paying below this amount.

This keeps you compliant and ensures you pay your employees the correct amount.

What is National Minimum Wage?

This is the Minimum wage you should pay an employee. The figure depends on their age and their employment status. This isn’t optional and is a legal requirement.

 NOTE: It doesn't matter how small your company is, you still have to pay the correct minimum wage. 

To see how the National Minimum Wage affects your business, read HMRC article The National Minimum Wage and Living Wage.

National Minimum Wage check

Sage Payroll performs a National Minimum Wage check in your pay run. It will use your pay date as the reference point. It checks if your hourly payments meet legislation for the National Minimum Wage.

You will see a warning if this is not the case.

 NOTE: The check only applies to hourly payments, not deductions. 

You can check your hourly pay rates are correct and change them if necessary.

You can get help to process your pay run. Read our article processing a pay run.

Employee Minimum Wage report

You may want to know which Minimum Wage band your employees are in, and what their rate per hour should be.

The Employee Minimum Wage Rates report gives you that information.

To run the report:

1. From the menu bar, select Employee Minimum Wage Rates from the Reporting drop-down menu.
2. Choose the required Tax Year, Frequency and Period.
3. Select Generte.
4. If required, you can then Export to a PDF or a CSV file.

 NOTE: If there is no value in the rate per hour column, you have entered an incorrect date of birth. For example, the employee start date, which means the employee is too young to qualify.