Freeagent payroll import problem with SA figures

[philip@wellwoodhoyle]

I know we have a few freeagent accountants on here. There is an issue that you need to know about. If you are importing your payroll data into freeagent using their csv import tool, whilst it brings in the data for the ledgers, etc., it doesn't populate the personal tax section with the payroll, so the personal tax forecasts, personal tax return, etc., will be wrong. I've raised this with FAC but received an unsatisfactory reply that they've no immediate plans to fix it. Basically, the personal SA tax side of FAC only works automatically if you use the inbuilt payroll functions within FAC, not if you import the payroll data. Please be aware of this and warn your clients that their personal tax liabilities shown in FAC may well be wrong!

[Maslins]

Cheers, not something we've spotted.

I imagine FreeAgent's typical client has very modest payroll, certainly not dozens of employees, therefore the number of times that situation will cause a significant problem will be minimal.

Presumably you can add the employment income to the personal tax section manually as other employment? Appreciate it will then show that person as having two separate jobs with the same employer which might look a bit daft, but overall figures should be ok.

[philip@wellwoodhoyle]

I imagine FreeAgent's typical client has very modest payroll, certainly not dozens of employees, therefore the number of times that situation will cause a significant problem will be minimal.

It's more where the accountant does payroll for their clients elsewhere, i.e. on Moneysoft and then uses the FAC csv import to bring the data in bulk into all their clients' FAC accounts. We do a big import once per month that feeds the payroll into all our clients's accounts on our dashboard. It would be a time consuming nightmare to use FAC's own internal payroll for each client individually hence why FAC provided the import facility. Before they brought in payroll RTI, FAC allowed you to enter the whole year in one go which is what we used to do, but when they changed it to RTI, they made it that you either have to use RTI each month within FAC or import data - they took away the manual entry.

So, basically, it's a problem even with one worker, the director, as the director's payroll isn't being populated into the SA taxes section, so if the client uses FAC for submitting his own SA return, or for checking how close he is to the HR threshold, then it won't be right and the director has to remember to input the payroll manually. So, it has the potential to affect all clients, even sole director situations, where the payroll is done otherwise than by the internal FAC RTI system. So quite a large number of users could be affected and need to know, otherwise they'll end up taking too much dividend, submitting a wrong tax return, paying the wrong SA tax etc.

[Maslins]

Fair enough. We/our clients use FreeAgent's internal RTI payroll so that in itself isn't an issue for us...I'd just imagined you'd meant in year switching.

Presumably the import just creates a journal? If so, can see why that wouldn't innately link to the SA bit.

Presumably if we are talking 1-2 director companies here, then most will be on an identical salary...in which case might be a job for an office junior to hammer all the figures onto FreeAgent SA section as though it's a secondary job? Appreciate that might be a bit time consuming, but it'd be a once a year job, no need to do it monthly.

[Jennie Stamp]

Hello, our CEO (Ed Molyneux) replied to this same post on AccountingWeb. Below is his response...

Hi Philip,

Thanks for your comments.

If you use your accountants’ dashboard to import payslips from different payroll software into FreeAgent, this recreates the payslips in FreeAgent and posts the payroll accounting entries, but you’re right, the Employment page of the Self Assessment area will not be automatically populated with the salary and tax deducted.

I’m sorry if this isn’t what you were expecting; you can of course enter these details manually into the Employment page of the Self Assessment area, but I agree that we should make it clearer during the payroll import process that this is the way we handle this data. Leave it with me.

Just to be clear for everyone, if you use FreeAgent’s built-in payroll, FreeAgent will automatically populate the Self Assessment area with these figures.

Ed

[philip@wellwoodhoyle]

Presumably if we are talking 1-2 director companies here, then most will be on an identical salary...in which case might be a job for an office junior to hammer all the figures onto FreeAgent SA section as though it's a secondary job? Appreciate that might be a bit time consuming, but it'd be a once a year job, no need to do it monthly.

Yep, that's what we're on with at the moment to prevent clients getting themselves into trouble by relying on incorrect data. Funny thing is that it seemed to be ok last year, but not this, even though the procedure is the same. And no, it's not just a journal, it rightly populates the payroll/salary area so the client can still view and print their payslips from FAC, it just doesn't populate through to the SA section. Very strange, but it's a known issue to FAC and like I say, they're not inclined to fix it any time soon.