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:
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
For example:
You want to switch an employee from weekly to monthly and want their first monthly wage to be 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.
After tax week 21, and before tax week 22, you can change the employee’s pay cycle to monthly. Begin processing them as a monthly employee in tax month 6.
The following table shows the last weekly pay run to process on the old pay cycle:
Last weekly pay run that can be processed before switching | First monthly payment |
Week 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 |
The following table shows the last monthly pay run to process in the old pay cycle:
Last monthly pay run that can be 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) |
If you can't process the first pay run in the new pay cycle because it overlaps with a completed pay run in the old pay cycle, you can either:
- Continue processing using the old pay cycle
If you want to switch from weekly to monthly, it may be easier to continue processing using weekly. Do this until the next available monthly processing date. - Wait until the new tax year
The best time to change a pay cycle is at the start of the new tax year and before you process a pay run. This avoids the possibility of overlapping pay runs.
- Go to Employees, then select the relevant employee to open their record.
- On the Pay Cycle list, select the relevant pay frequency option.
- Select Save.
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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