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Employment Wage Subsidy Scheme – Extension Announced

Today’s blog post will look at the recently announced extension of the Employment Wage Subsidy Scheme (EWSS), to 31 December 2021. 

As discussed in previous blog posts, the EWSS is the follow-on program from the previously implemented Temporary Wage Subsidy Scheme (TWSS). It represents a substantial and key part of the Government’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic with the aim of supporting businesses, encouraging employment and helping to maintain the link between employers and employees.

The scheme represents an important bridge between the Pandemic Unemployment Payment (PUP) and regular employment, which is the ultimate goal.

It has recently been announced that the Employment Wage Subsidy Scheme will be extended beyond 30 June 2021, until 31 December 2021.

It should be noted that:

  • Current enhanced payment rates will be maintained for Quarter 3 (July, August, September) at current turnover thresholds. 
  • In order to benefit more firms, the time period for assessment will be broadened from the current 6 month period of assessment to a full 12 month period. This will ensure businesses and their workers are supported through the earlier part of the recovery and in recognition of the value of workers maintaining their links to the labour market. 
  • Two important questions have come up recently which have not been resolved, but have been noted and will be considered during the remainder of 2021:
    • whether an employer contribution to employee benefits in terms of the scheme will be required; and 
    • the issue of the appropriate calibration of rates of subsidy for the final quarter of the year. 

The EWSS is seen as a very important part of the re-opening process and it is hoped that it will align incentives with the need for businesses to attract staff and that people benefit from a return to employment.

Our team is already working on the necessary updates to the system which will allow you to apply the EWSS system item to your employees for payslips beyond June 2021 and up to the new end date.

If you have any questions on how the information above relates to SimplePay, please feel free to contact us at [email protected].

Keep well and stay safe.

Team SimplePay

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New Feature: Approver Override

We’re all about helping your business be more efficient, which is why we have a mobile app and self-service portal that allows employees to log their own requests for leave, info updates and claims. But what happens when the approver for that request is on leave? Does the request hang in limbo, bringing your payroll processing to a grinding halt? Now it doesn’t have to. Introducing our new approver override function for Full Admin users.

Full Admin users now have the option to step in and make decisions on pending requests that they are not an approver on. The Full Admin’s approval temporarily overrides the need for it to be approved by the approvers in the approval group – in other words, it bypasses the whole approval structure and the Full Admin user’s decision is taken as final.

For more information on how this works, head to our Approval Override help page.

Need assistance with this new feature? Have an idea for how we can improve this? Get in contact with our helpful Support team who are ready to listen and assist if needed.

Team SimplePay

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Pandemic Unemployment Payment and Returning to Work

Monday 12 April 2021 was a day that gave cause for cautious optimism, as the Government began loosening restrictions and reopening the country. Provided COVID-19 numbers remain subdued over the coming months, many employees that have been relying on Pandemic Unemployment Payments (PUPs) since December 2020 can begin to return to work. 

Our blog post today is aimed at informing you on the process and what is required of you and your employees when making this transition.

Returning to Work

The very first thing that your employee needs to do on the date that they return to work is close their PUP claim on the DEASP website.

Until this is done, the process to change the employee’s RPN cannot begin and so will result in them paying more tax. The process is as follows:

  1. Your employee closes their PUP claim on the DEASP website.
  2. DEASP will make the last PUP payment due to your employee, before closing the claim on their system and informing Revenue.
  3. On receiving the information for DEASP, Revenue will update your employee’s tax credits in line with the amount received through PUP, before creating an updated RPN on a week 1 basis. 

From the date your employee(s) close their PUP claim, it will take approximately two weeks before an updated week 1 RPN will be available. If your employees are paid weekly or fortnightly for these pay periods they will pay more tax, due to no tax credits being available on the RPN.

This is unfortunately an unavoidable feature of the transition, but there are some things that you as an employer can do to minimise the extra tax your employees will have to pay:

  1. Encourage your employees to close their PUP claim on their first day back at work – this will get the process started.
  2. Pull RPNs for your employees as close to the payment date as possible – this will maximise the chances of receiving an updated RPN for your employee(s), reflecting that they’ve returned to work.

Any overpayments of tax and/or USC will be reimbursed, but employees will need to wait for their Statement of Liability in 2022, meaning that it is better to use the updated information  now if possible and save the wait.

NOTE: Overlap between PUP payments and first week back

The PUP system works as follows:

  • Friday of any given week: people enrolled for PUP are noted for payment in the following week.
  • Tuesday of the following week: PUP payments are made in accordance with the list of people collected on the Friday.

If your employee returns to work on a Monday and immediately closes their PUP claim, as they were still registered as unemployed on Friday they will still receive a PUP payment for their first week back at work. In other words the first week back they will receive both their salary and a PUP payment.

This is not an error so do not be concerned when this occurs. If you would like to learn more about the taxation of PUP for 2021 and the effect of returning to work, you can find out more on the Revenue page.

We hope that you have found the above information useful. If you have any questions on how the information above relates to SimplePay, please feel free to contact us at [email protected]. 

Equally, if you are not yet a client of SimplePay but would like to be, or if you’d like to know how we can take the effort out of filing and calculating payroll, get in contact with us or visit our website: www.simplepay.ie. 

Keep well and stay safe.

Team SimplePay

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New Feature: Bulk Leave Import

We’ve had several requests asking for a way for payroll administrators and leave admins to record leave in bulk and we’re delighted to let you know that this feature is now here! This means that there are now 3 ways for leave to be captured on the system:

  • Employees can request leave via self-service or our mobile app which then gets captured once approved by a leave approver.
  • Payroll administrators and leave admins can record leave for individual employees via an employee’s profile.
  • Payroll administrators and leave admins can download an Excel file, complete it with the relevant leave days and upload the file into SimplePay.

For more information on how to use this new feature, head to our help page.

We’re continuing our mission to revolutionise payroll, and in the process make SimplePay the preferred payroll software provider for small and medium sized businesses. We hope that with the additional method for recording leave, every user now has an option that meets their needs.

If you have any queries on how to use the system or any suggestions on how we can better serve your needs, please reach out to us.

Team SimplePay

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TWSS Reconciliation

As you’re likely aware, the Temporary Wage Subsidy Scheme (TWSS) was introduced last year to help mitigate the adverse effects of the pandemic on employment. Affected employers could receive income support for their employees, helping avoid layoffs over the period that trade was restricted. A requirement to partaking in TWSS was that employers would need to carry out a reconciliation process after the scheme had reached completion. The first phase of this occurred in October 2020, where employers were required to submit reconciliation reports, as covered in our previous blog post.

This Monday (22 March 2021) the reconciliation window for TWSS opened. Between now and 30 June 2021 you will need to log into ROS, check the information recorded to be correct, make amendments if necessary, and submit your reconciliation. 

If you haven’t already, you will receive a notification in your ROS inbox when your reconciliation information is available.

IMPORTANT: The deadline for completing the reconciliation is not until 30 June 2021. Before you review and accept your reconciliation balance on ROS, you need to read through Revenue’s guidance on the TWSS reconciliation to ensure that you complete it correctly. This provides a useful overview, as well as information on each key step of the reconciliation process.

In section 4 “How to review and correct subsidy paid data” we would recommend that you make any necessary amendments directly on ROS. This will immediately update your information to give you an up to date statement of account on submission.

Information about TWSS reconciliation can also be found in this Revenue Press Release, and in this Extensive Guide which covers the whole process in detail.

What Happens Next?

Whether or not you make any amendments to the amount of TWSS paid to your employees on ROS, Revenue will combine this information with any payments you have already made to issue you with a statement of account. This will show the amount that either you or Revenue owe to the other.

PRSI Corrections Post TWSS Reconciliation

The J9 PRSI class contributes to the number of insurable weeks of the last used non-J9 PRSI class. As a result, you’re unlikely to need to make any manual changes to the PRSI class.

However, where PRSI Class J9 was applied to your employees’ payslips and:

  • You opted out / reversed out of TWSS;
  • You were ineligible for TWSS;
  • One or more of your employees were ineligible for TWSS; or
  • Certain payslips were ineligible

then an adjustment may be required.

If Revenue has raised a PAYE or PRSI assessment with you for some or all of 26 March to 31 August 2020, then you should confirm with the caseworker whether you need to make any adjustments.

More information on changing PRSI classes on payslips for the TWSS period can be found here.

Useful Links

We hope that you have found the above information useful. If you have any questions on how the information above relates to SimplePay, please feel free to contact us at [email protected]. 

Equally, if you are not yet a client of SimplePay but would like to be, or if you’d like to know how we can take the effort out of filing and calculating payroll, get in contact with us or visit our website: www.simplepay.ie. 

Keep well and stay safe.

Team SimplePay

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New Feature: Custom Beneficiaries

We’ve expanded our beneficiaries functionality so that you can add beneficiaries for custom items that are set up as benefits, deductions or employer contributions. This gives you more flexibility in tailoring the beneficiaries report for your needs, making any payments linked to payroll even easier.

To add a custom beneficiary:

  • Go to Settings > Beneficiaries and select Add under Custom Beneficiary
  • Enter the details for your beneficiary and click Save

Once you have added your custom beneficiary, you can link it to custom items as follows:

  • Go to Settings > Custom Items and select the custom item (or click Add to create one)
  • Tick the checkbox Link to beneficiary
  • Select the Beneficiary Type:
    • ‘Fixed’ should be selected if there is only one beneficiary for this custom item for all employees. You will then need to select the beneficiary from the dropdown list.
    • ‘Different on every employee’ should be selected if different employees have different beneficiaries for this custom item. If you select this option, the beneficiary will need to be specified when adding the custom item to the employee’s payslip.
  • Then click Save

For more information on setting up custom items, head to our help page here.

We hope you love this new feature and that it’ll make your payroll processing more efficient.

Team SimplePay

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Revamped Preview Page for Bulk Finalising Payslips

We understand the importance of capturing payroll correctly. Many clients spend countless hours downloading and reviewing the PDF draft payslips for employees before finalising them. We thought that there has to be a better way to review payslip information in bulk! Introducing our new and improved bulk finalisation page.

This newly improved page allows you to use various toggles to show or hide additional payslip information so that you can focus on the information and figures that you want to see, whether this is simply the nett pay for each employee or more detailed information like payslip inputs or payslip values. The recent activity for payslips is now more clearly laid out, which is particularly useful to review if your payroll is prepared by multiple users.

For more information on the various aspects of this page, please refer to our help page here.

Just another way that the SimplePay team is working to improve payroll for you! 

Not a SimplePay client but want a payroll system that makes you more efficient? Sign up for our free 30-day trial here and see just how simple payroll can be.

Team SimplePay

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New Feature: Payslips Export

Being a SimplePay client means that you’re used to the benefits of a simple and efficient payroll system. But we’re always looking at ways to make your job even easier and faster. We heard your cries for a quicker way to download multiples payslips for an employee and are happy to announce that this is now available.

Our new Payslips Export report allows you to download a ZIP file with all the payslips within a specific date range for selected employees or pay points. For more information on how to generate this, head to our help article here.

This report makes the task of assisting employees with payslip requests much faster. Remember that employees also have the option to download payslips themselves using the self-service portal or app.

For any further questions, do not hesitate to contact our support team.

Not a SimplePay client? Want a payroll software provider that actually listens to their clients? Sign up for a free 30-day trial here to see just how simple payroll can be when using SimplePay.

Team SimplePay

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New Feature: Give Admin and Leave Admin Users Read-only Access

Unlike many other payroll systems, SimplePay does not charge for or restrict the number of users on the system. This means that you can give system access to all the people that need it, whether this is a department head who approves leave, a payroll administrator who processes payroll or an external accountant who completes filing submissions. While our user settings already have a range of roles and restrictions that you can configure, we’ve had several requests for giving users read-only access to the system. 

We are delighted to announce that we’ve upgraded our permissions to enable you to give users read-only access, with extensive flexibility that lets you customise this on a company, pay frequency or pay point level. 

When adding a user, you can still select their permission role (e.g. Leave Admin) and restrict them to specific companies, pay frequencies or pay points. However, when restricting users with Admin or Leave Admin roles, you can select the type of access for each company, pay frequency or pay points, namely:

  • Full: gives the user full access to the areas of the system as defined by that particular role
  • Read-only: gives the user read-only access to the areas of the system as defined by that particular role
  • None: gives the user no access

For more information on setting up users with read-only access, refer to our help article here.

We hope that you love the new feature! Please reach out to us if you have any trouble setting up users or if you have any further questions.

Team SimplePay

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New Feature: Bulk Assign Leave Policies

Happy new year! We hope that 2021 brings you new opportunities, improved performance and overall success in all your endeavours. As always, we’ll support you with an efficient and effective payroll system. We’re kicking off the new year with a brand new feature – you can now assign leave policies to employees in bulk.

SimplePay’s leave functionality allows you to set a company default leave policy for all employees that are added to the system. You can then assign a different leave policy to employees if they are not on the default policy. Being able to assign leave policies now in bulk saves you time if you have many employees who are not on the company default policy. It is also useful for companies who do not have a single company default policy, but rather separate policies per pay point or pay frequency.

Once you have created your leave policies, you can assign them in bulk as follows:

  • Go to Employees > Bulk Actions
  • Click on Entitlement Policies under the Leave heading
  • Use the filters to select only those employees that are part of a specific pay point or pay frequency
  • Use the drop-down menus to allocate the leave policies for each leave type for each employee on the page. If all employees on the page are on the same policy, use the Copy first value down option to save you time.
  • Click Save

It’s as simple as that. For more information on leave management and bulk leave actions, refer to the following pages:

Team SimplePay