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Change how often you pay an employee

Created on  | Last modified on 

Summary

How to change how often you pay an employee in Sage Payroll.

Description

If you need to change how often you pay an employee, do this:

  • At the beginning of a new tax year

  • Before you start to process pay

In either of these scenarios, you can swap the employee to any pay frequency you need.

See the section in this article "How to change an employee's pay cycle". 

It is possible to change during a tax year in some circumstances.

You must ensure tax and national insurance (NI) are calculated correctly for the employee.

The first pay run after changing the pay cycle must not overlap with the final pay run in the old pay cycle.

Make sure to change the employee to another pay cycle at a logical time.

For example: Don't move a monthly employee to a weekly pay cycle and pay outstanding monthly salary. They will pay more NI and PAYE than expected. 

 TIP: Unless it is the start of the tax year, an employee can only between a weekly and a monthly calendar. 

 TIP: 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

 CAUTION: If you find the system doesn't let you change the frequency, the cause is either:
  • You are trying to move the employee from a 2-weekly or 4-weekly payroll (not allowed in our system)
  • You have overlapping tax periods - check the payroll tax calendar (link below) 

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