I use Quickbooks Online Advanced Payroll. How do I enter the previous pay and tax from a P6 Notice of Coding?

Hello @paulamcorbett,

Let me help share a few things about how you can enter your employee's previous pay and taxes from the P6 form.

When you received a P6 form from the HMRC, you can enter it in the payroll system in the YTD figures as long as you haven't run any payroll transactions. The ability to enter it in the YTD figures will also be determined if you are still their employer base on the P6 form.

But if they've worked on a different company before you, the system will only let you fill out the P45 details. This is the reason why the P45 information is visible on the employee information when you enter them.

In addition, I'd also recommend getting in touch with your accountant for professional assistance with this matter.

Lastly, I've also included this helpful article for a compilation of useful reference while working with your business and utilising your payroll account: QuickBooks Online Advanced Payroll Hub.

If there's anything else that I can help you with, please let me know in the comments. Stay safe!

Thanks for responding.  The pay was from a second job with a different employer so I can't enter it into the year to date figures which relate only to this employment.   I cannot enter it onto the P45 either, because this relates only to the year the employee started, which was several years ago.  Anything entered on there now is used for reporting purposes only, and in any case it won't accept any date after the start date.

To avoid too large a tax refund being calculated, I am having to enter the new tax code with Week 1 Month 1 ticked.  This means the employee will pay more tax than they should, and will have to wait until the end of the tax year to request a refund from HMRC, which is not ideal. 

I must say, if this payroll doesn't cater for this scenario, this is a fairly basic omission.  I remain open to hearing about any other workarounds.

Thanks again for your input.

Hello, paulamcorbett.

Thanks for taking the time to get back to us. I'm here to continue regarding your concern in entering the historical P6 information. 

As mentioned by JonpriL, you can only enter the P6 information if you haven't run payroll (or if you recently signed up for the service). Just like what the support agent suggested as workaround, you may want to use the Opening Balances to enter the details in the meantime. Make sure the amounts and details are correct regarding their previous payroll information.

As the employee will have already paid TAX and NI in their secondary job HMRC may just be asking for the tax code to be updated as they may have been on a BR tax code 

You might want to reach out to an accountant (to ensure your books are correct) and HMRC (for tax compliance) before doing this. 

The option to enter historical P6 information easily might be included in future updates. You can visit here for news about our product updates: https://quickbooks.intuit.com/uk/product-updates/.

Do you have other concerns regarding your payroll service or QuickBooks Online? I'd love to hear them out, so leave your replies here and I'll get back to you. 

Has this ever been resolved? If you cannot add P6 information is the payroll suitable for the UK? This is a tax form from HMRC that we cannot apply/adhere to.

Hello Annette,

No, this has never been resolved as far as I am aware.  In the end I had to keep the employee on Week 1 Month 1 for the whole of the rest of the year and left it to HMRC to work out the correct tax and refund the employee directly the following year.

Sorry I can't be of more help.

Kind regards,

Paula

Thanks Paula, its good to know QB is at fault and I'm not missing something! 

I had same problem but was only using standard payroll so what chance had I.

Recommendation was to link to HMRC for automatic tax code updates - but this did not bring the previous pay details either - and did not say it could not -  which is more to the point!

QB Help suggested I use HMRC software! - for one employee!

And could not advise if Advanced payroll could do it which it now appears it can not!

Ended up pretending employee had "left" and including P6 pay and tax to date in new employee's "p45" figures - but this is confusing to HMRC and the pension company as this employee now has a new payroll number!

Please QuickBooks fix this basic problem!

Reference to ask your accountant are NOT helpful when it is a QuickBooks programming fault!