How to change an employees pay cycle in Sage Payroll.
Description
You can't change an employees' pay cycle in every situation. This depends on:
- The point you are at in the tax year
- What you have already processed
This is to ensure employees tax and national insurance (NI) contributions calculate correctly.
The beginning of a tax year
As employees won't have any year to date values yet, you can change to and from any pay cycle.
NOTE: You’ll need to create a new Pay Calendar for any pay cycles that don't yet exist. For more information, read Pay day calendar settings.
Mid tax year
For new employees, you can change the pay cycle to any option as long as they haven’t been included in a pay run.
For existing employees, you can move between Weekly and Monthly and vice versa. The first pay run after changing, can’t overlap with the final pay run in the old pay cycle.
If it does, it will result in the employee under or over paying NI. To check this, read Tax week and tax month calendar.
CAUTION: It's not possible to move to or from a 4-weekly or 2-weekly pay cycle until the start of a new tax year.
Resolution
▼Weekly to monthly
You can't process any week that overlaps into the tax month you want to process the employee in.
For example:
- You want an employees' first monthly wage to be Month 5 (August).
- The last weekly pay run you should process is week 17.
- You must not process any weekly pay runs within tax month 5 (6 August to 5 September).
If you’ve already processed weekly pay for the employee in tax month 5, continue to pay weekly until tax week 21, and then change.
The following table shows the last weekly pay run to process on the old pay cycle:
| Last weekly pay run processed before switching | First monthly payment |
| Week 52/53 (4 or 5 April) | Month 1 (April) |
| Week 4 (27 April – 3 May) | Month 2 (May) |
| Week 8 (25 May – 31 May) | Month 3 (June) |
| Week 13 (29 June – 5 July) | Month 4 (July) |
| Week 17 (27 July – 2 August) | Month 5 (August) |
| Week 21 (24 August – 30 August) | Month 6 (September) |
| Week 26 (28 September – 4 October) | Month 7 (October) |
| Week 30 (26 October – 1 November) | Month 8 (November) |
| Week 34 (23 November – 29 November) | Month 9 (December) |
| Week 39 (28 December – 3 January) | Month 10 (January) |
| Week 43 (25 January – 31 January) | Month 11 (February) |
| Week 47 (22 February – 28 February) | Month 12 (March) |
▼Monthly to weekly
You can't process any month that overlaps into the tax week you want to process the employee in.
For example:
- You want an employees' first weekly wage to be week 23 (7 September - 13 September)
- The last Monthly pay run you should process is month 5 (August)
If you’ve already processed tax month 6, the earliest you can change to weekly pay is week 28 (12 October - 18 October)
The following table shows the last monthly pay run to process in:
| Last monthly pay processed before switching | First weekly payment |
| Month 1 April | Week 6 (11 May-17 May) |
| Month 2 May | Week 10 (8 June-14 June) |
| Month 3 June | Week 14 (6 July-12 July) |
| Month 4 July | Week 19 (10 August-16 August) |
| Month 5 August | Week 23 (7 September-13 September) |
| Month 6 September | Week 28 (12 October-18 October) |
| Month 7 October | Week 32 (9 November-15 November) |
| Month 8 November | Week 36 (7 December-13 December) |
| Month 9 December | Week 41 (11 January-17 January) |
| Month 10 January | Week 45 (8 February-14 February) |
| Month 11 February | Week 49 (8 March-14 March |
| Month 12 March | Week 1 (6 April-12 April) |
▼How to change an employee’s pay cycle
- Go to Employees, then select the relevant employee.
- On the Pay Cycle list, select the relevant pay frequency option.
- Select Save.
If you find the system doesn't let you change the frequency, the cause is either:
- You’re trying to move the employee from or to a 2-weekly or 4-weekly pay cycle
- You have overlapping tax periods - check the payroll tax calendar
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