Not sure what happens when an employee leaves or retires? Don't worry, we've got you covered. When an employee leaves your business, you must complete a P45 form to ensure their tax and National Insurance contributions are correctly recorded in QuickBooks Online Standard Payroll.
When an employee leaves your company, you need to do the following:
- Mark them as a leaver in QuickBooks
- Run their final payroll and send an FPS
- Give the employee a P45
We'll also show you what you need to do after and how to activate an employee marked as a leaver by mistake.
1. Mark an employee as a leaver

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- Go to Payroll.
- Select the name of the employee to open the profile.
- Select Actions and select Mark as leaver under the employee name.
- For Details of leaving:
- Select the employee's leaving date.
- Select the employee's reason for leaving.
- Select Save. The P45 is will be available once you run their last payroll, you can access it on the Documents tab of the employee's profile.
Note: Once an employee is marked as a leaver and submitted to HMRC, reactivating them is not possible. Instead, you will need to create a new employee profile, which will generate a new payroll ID for that individual.
2. Run final payroll and send FPS
We'll let you know when you get to the employee's final payroll. When you send an FPS for that payroll, we'll tell HMRC you've finished paying the employee.
If you've already finished paying the employee, we'll tell HMRC when you send your next FPS.
3. Give the leaver a P45
Creating a P45 closes the employment record. If the employee returns, you'll need to open a new employment record with a new payroll ID.
The P45 can be found under Documents on the individual Employee's profile page. If you can't see the leaver's profile in the Employees tab, select the Active employees button and change it to list Leavers.
For more information, the government has guidance on what to do when an employee leaves.