Payroll questions, answered with the source

RTI (Real Time Information) means you report pay and deductions to HMRC every time you pay someone. You do it by sending a Full Payment Submission (FPS) on or before each payday, even if you pay HMRC quarterly rather than monthly. If you pay nobody in a tax month, you send an Employer Payment Summary (EPS) instead.

An EPS is the second report that sits alongside your FPS. You use it to claim reductions from what you owe, such as statutory payments and Employment Allowance, and you send it by the 19th of the following tax month. You also send one instead of an FPS if you paid no employees in a tax month.

HMRC charges a penalty for each month a report is late, based on your headcount: £100 for 1 to 9 employees, £200 for 10 to 49, £300 for 50 to 249 and £400 for 250 or more. There is no penalty for your first late report in a tax year (annual schemes are an exception), or if every payment in a late FPS is within 3 days of payday. A new employer who sends a first FPS within 30 days of paying someone is also not charged.

You must give your employees a payslip on or before payday, on paper or electronically. It shows pay before deductions, deductions such as tax and National Insurance, pay after deductions, and hours worked if pay varies with time worked. You give a P60 by 31 May to everyone working for you on 5 April, and a P45 when an employee leaves.

Pay what you owe HMRC by the 22nd of the month, or by the 19th if you pay by post. The amount is the tax and National Insurance on your FPS for the previous tax month, less any reductions you claimed on an EPS sent before the 19th. If you usually pay less than £1,500 a month, you may be able to pay quarterly, and the HMRC payment helpline for employers can tell you how to arrange it.

A tax month runs from the 6th of one month to the 5th of the next, so it does not match the calendar month. An EPS is due by the 19th of the following tax month, and your PAYE payment is due by the 22nd. For example, for the tax month 6 April to 5 May, the deadlines are 19 May and 22 May.

Your duties start as soon as your first member of staff starts working for you, and you must put eligible staff into a workplace pension scheme and pay an employer contribution for them. If someone becomes eligible later because their age or earnings change, you must enrol them and write to them within 6 weeks of the day they meet the criteria. With PayNinja, auto-enrolment is handled as part of your payroll.

You must enrol staff who are aged between 22 and State Pension age, earn at least £10,000 a year, and normally work in the UK. That includes people who are based in the UK but travel abroad for work. Staff who do not meet all three conditions are not automatically enrolled.

For 2026/27 the automatic enrolment earnings trigger stays at £10,000. The qualifying earnings band stays at £6,240 to £50,270, unchanged from 2025/26. In most schemes, contributions are worked out on earnings between those two figures.

The minimum total is 8%, made up of at least 3% from you as the employer and 5% from the employee. These are minimums, so your scheme may ask for more. You take the employee's share from their pay each month and pay the contributions into the scheme by the 22nd of the next month, or the 19th if you pay by cheque.

Your re-enrolment date is 3 years after your first member of staff started work, and it repeats every 3 years. By that date you must re-enrol staff who left your scheme more than 12 months earlier, or who are still in it but pay below the minimum contribution level. You must write to eligible staff within 6 weeks after the re-enrolment date.

A declaration of compliance is how you tell The Pensions Regulator that you have met your auto-enrolment duties. You must complete a re-declaration every time you carry out your re-enrolment duties, even if no staff were re-enrolled. If you do not complete it on time, you could be fined.

If your company pays you a salary, you must register as an employer and run payroll, even if you are the only director and the only employee. HMRC classes directors as employees for National Insurance, and this applies to a director running payroll for their own company. PayNinja's Director's Payroll is £12 a month and covers your first 2 directors.

You must register before your first payday to get your employer PAYE reference number, which is sent to you in a letter. You cannot register more than 2 months before you start paying people. Most limited companies with 1 to 9 directors can register online.

Employment Allowance for 2026/27 is £10,500, which reduces your annual employer National Insurance bill. A limited company with only one director cannot claim if that director is the only employee liable for secondary Class 1 National Insurance. You also need to do less than half your work in the public sector.

From 1 April 2026 the hourly rates are £12.71 for age 21 and over, £10.85 for ages 18 to 20 and £8.00 for under 18s. The apprentice rate is also £8.00, for apprentices under 19 or aged 19 and over in the first year of their apprenticeship. These rates apply from 1 April 2026, so check them again when the next tax year starts.

You are, whoever runs your payroll. HMRC says that as an employer you are legally responsible for completing all PAYE tasks, even if you pay someone else to do them. So if you change provider, make sure your payday reports and payments to HMRC keep going out on time.

Register as an employer before your first payday to get your PAYE reference number, and do not try to register more than 2 months before you start paying people. You must tell HMRC about each new employee on or before their first payday. You also send your FPS on or before that payday.

Employee Payroll is £24 a month and covers your first 4 employees. Each pay run includes a reminder email, payslips, your RTI submission to HMRC and a summary of what to pay your staff and HMRC. Workplace pension auto-enrolment is handled as part of payroll, and payroll is an add-on to PayNinja's accountancy packages.

Director's Payroll is £12 a month and covers your first 2 directors. It follows the same pay run as Employee Payroll: a reminder email, payslips, the RTI submission to HMRC and a summary of what to pay the directors and HMRC. It is an add-on to PayNinja's accountancy packages.

We email you a reminder when your pay run is due, and you send us the pay details for the period. We produce the payslips and submit your RTI report to HMRC. You then receive a summary of what to pay each employee and what to pay HMRC.

Yes. PayNinja offers Bookkeeping, VAT Returns, and Accounts and Tax Returns, and each one is quoted individually because every business is different. Message us on WhatsApp with what you need and we will give you a quote. Payroll can be added on top of any accountancy package.

Message us on WhatsApp and tell us which services you need. Send us your business and staff details and we set everything up. Your first pay run then shows you the whole process, from reminder email to summary.

For your business, we need your company details and your PAYE reference if you already have one. For each employee, we need their name, full address, date of birth, gender, National Insurance number, start date and pay, plus either a P45 or HMRC's starter checklist. For each pay run, we need the pay details for that period.