Furlough Staff

Hi ive got a furlough question. need to furlough my staff but they all finished work on different days during march.  So far Ive ran payroll as normal with no mention of furlough as I wanted them all to have afull wage this month as they earned it, as of next month they will just be getting the 80%. My question is in order to claim the money back will I have to have listed it as furlough in the payroll system this month and added the extra as a bonus maybe or should I still be able to claim despite not putting it down as this - I have letters that I sent to my staff advising them they were going onto furlough so its not like Im making it up. Please advise.  Also with it being the end of the tax year can I resubmit payroll or is it now too late?

Hi Muffskins,

Thanks for joining this thread. We're advising customers to create an additional pay category for the furlough so that this can easily be distinguished on the payslip when claiming back. 

You can view our guide here which details how to set this up on the payroll you're using. 

You are still able to submit payroll for the last period of the tax year 19/20 - please advise which payroll you are using (standard or advanced) if you are needing assistance with this.

Hi Georgia,

I have already successfully created a new category for my furloughed employee as you explain in your recently published guide. However, what about the previous payroll that has already been paid to an already furloughed staff member?

My employee stopped working on the 1st of March, she was paid in full as usual on the 28th of March (usual payday) even though she did not work at all, how do I report that her wages for that payroll period represent her being furloughed?

Thanking you in advance!

Thanks for getting back to us, @KokkiSushi

You'll need to delete and recreate the previously completed payroll using the updated setup.

I'd also recommend contacting our Support Team. From there, they can securely check your account and see if this can be possibly adjusted. Here's how to contact them in your QuickBooks Online (QBO) account:

1. Go to the (?) Help menu.
2. Click the Contact Us.
3. Enter a brief discussion of your concern, and click Let's talk.
4. Select Start a chat.

You might also want to check our Employees and payroll page for future reference. From there, you can read some great articles and learn some best practices in managing your payroll.

Know that you're always welcome to post here anytime you need further help. I'm more than happy to help. Stay safe and more success in your business!

Hi,

We've just switched to advanced payroll ( everything is new and I'm definitely no expert in payroll)  and we will be running our first monthly pay run at the end of this week.  Some of our staff have been furloughed for the first 3 weeks but are back to work for the last week.  These staff are paid hourly,, do I need to enter the furlough hourly rate at 80% for 3 weeks and keep the standard/basic rate at 100% for1 week??  We are paying staff 80% for the time of furlough.

Thanks

Hi jmh06

When you create the new Furlough pay category you can set this up as a fixed payment and iwithin the employee settings > pay rates you will be able to enter 80% of the employees usual wage and whether it is automatically included in the payrun. It is up to you whether you pay the additional 20% of the employees wages however this will be recorded using their usual pay category and calculated accordingly. If you are not paying your employees the 20% then you can de-select the catagory within the pay rates section within the employees settings.  to include the usual You will also have to ensure that the Firlough category is included in the pensionable items for both the employee and employer, withn the pension settings,

I cannot contact anyone by chat today. The chat window stays open and nobody responds there. However, in 5 min I've received an email that someone has responded on my text. I still don't see any response even though my chat window is open.

Hello GDL, 

As far as we are aware the chat is working, the agents might be very busy therefore have not responded to you yet. 

Hi, I don't know if this has been raised already, but your instructions for creating a new pay category for furlough do not include the fact that you need to go into your pension settings and make this a pensionable pay item. 

I have just had a client who runs their own weekly payroll get in touch as they did not realise that no pension contributions were being deducted from the fuloughed staff for the last three weeks.

Obviously I check this kind of thing when I run payrolls myself, but I think it is worth including this within your instructions, as people who don't check though their pay run carefully may miss this.

Hi Catherine Flannery, 

Many thanks for joining this thread and raising this - we've passed this onto our team to have updated and really appreciate you pointing this out for other users on here =) 

can you tell me how to amend the pension settings as referenced above

Hi Rachel,  You need to go into your pension settings, go into the scheme, scroll down and you should see a box with a list of all the pensionable pay types listed in it.  If you click in the box, a drop down of all other pay types (including the new one you will have set up called Furlough) should appear.  Select your Furlough pay type and it will then be added to the list of pensionable pay items.  Then when you run your payroll, you should see pension deductions occurring.  A small anomaly, when you go back into an existing pay run, you may have to delete the existing furlough income line from the employee and then add it back in for the deduction to occur.  Hope that helps :)

Thanks so much.

Do you have any idea how to actually set someone up for furlough if they were furloughed part way through the month?

What do I put the base salary as and what do I put their furlough salary - do I just pro rata their salary?

Hi rachel37,

To do this in Advanced payroll go to Employees > Payroll Settings > Pension Settings > Select the contribution plan to edit > Select the box beside 'Employee contribution' and 'Employer  contribution' and select the new pay category for furlough on the drop-down for each to add.

In Standard Payroll, go to the Cog Wheel > Account and Settings > Payroll > Pension PayTypes > Turn on the new pay category. 

Thanks!

Hi Rachel, I have people who have been furloughed mid month and I have prorated their basic salary for the time they were working.  I have then created the separate pay type for Furlough, and entered 80% of whatever their prorated salary was for the furloughed period.   You do need to unpick their pension and employer NI contributions, but there is a helpful calculator on the HMRC website if you need it.

Thanks

Hello

I have done all of the above regarding pay category, added the category for Pension and PAYE.  I have employees who were paid furlough half way through the month of March.  Which report shows the furlough pay category and the pension and PAYE contributions applicable to that pay category.  Have run the Pay Run Audit with earnings details but when I send it to excel it removes the page, NI contributions and pension details.

Thanks 

Hi, I am not aware of any software provider the ability to do this as all claims are individual.  My understanding is that the separate pay category is just so it can be shown separately. I manually calculated all my furlough claims, so would be livid if I had missed that opportunity if Quickbooks did it for us!

You do not need a separate/additional code for pension and NI as far as I am aware.

The pension is pretty easy. Work out the pensionable pay threshold for the period that the member of staff was on furlough.  So for March, if its a monthly payroll it will be £512 / 31 days x number of furlough days (remember these are total days of the month, not just the days they would have worked on).  Take this away from the furlough pay, and multiply the answer by 3%.  That's your pension claim.

For NI, if you were still benefiting from the Employers NI allowance, then you do not reclaim any.  If you did pay NI over to  HMRC, the total employer NI contributions due in a pay period should be apportioned on a daily basis, with the amount apportioned to any qualifying furlough days forming the basis of the amount that can be claimed through the scheme.  If you paid staff 100%, then remember that you have to multiply the answer you get by 80%.

The April claims have been easier as a lot of businesses will have no employers NI expense due to the allowance, so you don't claim employers NI back.

The HMRC website has a calculator with examples.

https://www.gov.uk/guidance/work-out-80-of-your-employees-wages-to-claim-through-the-coronavirus-job...

Thank you for the reply however the pay run audit report does show the information when selecting earnings details.  However it does not download to excel.  It would be very easy to total up the columns as necessary.

Gosh, egg on my face then.  I have used the reports when the employees are furloughed for the total pay period, because you have no apportionment to make. 

When it's a partial month on furlough, where did you enter the number of days of the month on furlough as this is the basis for the apportionment calculations?  This would be really useful for when people come off furlough and we will have split months again.

Sorry! Being a pudding.  I guess you put that on the payslip data entry.  I will have a look at that if I have any split ones again 

I paid my 1 furloughed employee as normal in March and April, with my claim for furlough pay entering the bank account from HMRC in early May.

I am now about to claim for May and want to know how to run the May salary, for instance should I show 3 months of furlough pay as I will have had that amount paid to the business from HMRC and then a negative in salary.

Hi Stuart199

Did you run the payroll with the Furlough amounts as shown here for the March and April pay runs? If so you want to stick as close as possible to what has happened in real life and in that case, you will have recorded the expense of the Furlough and then you can record the money paid back off HMRC as income through the bank deposit section in the + symbol>selecting HMRC as the payee (it would be a case of setting up a new income account under the accounting>chart of accounts>new) so you can keep track of this. We would advise speaking to an accountant to confirm they are happy with this.