6th April : Update employee payroll records for the new tax year

With the beginning of the new tax year starting on the 6th of April there isn't much time left to make sure that you have everything sorted out with your payroll. 

For each member of staff you employ, you’ll need to ensure they have the correct tax code, you have a payroll record established and have assigned the tax code to the payroll record. 

Those people who should be on your payroll are any employees, regardless of how much they’ve earned in the current tax year.

Also, any employees who have worked for you in the current tax year, even if they’ve now left the business. 

It’s important to make sure that your staff have the right tax code as this can affect their earnings and, subsequently, what they take home at the end of the month.

If there are any employees who need a new tax code, HMRC will send you a P9T form. If you have new members of staff coming on board, you can use the information provided in their P45, supplied by their previous employer, to set them up on your payroll.

Once the required employee details are in the system, your staff will be able to make expenses claims for any outlay they make on behalf of the business.

While employees can submit claims via the traditional method, harnessing the power of an expense management platform removes the hassle of a manual expenses process. 

What's the solution?

There are a host of expense management software providers on the market, but it’s important to choose one that offers a variety of useful features and can be scaled up as your business grows.

Expend is one such company. It’s a flexible platform that has a nifty app that employees can download on to their smart phone so they can log expenses as they incur them. Invoices and receipts can be uploaded via the secure app, making it a convenient and safe way to process financial data. 

As the system has a built-in approval process, expenses can be sanctioned in one click, making it easy to manage spend.

Automatic reminders for any outstanding receipts ensure all expenses come with the relevant (and required) paperwork, so there’ll be no problems for the accounts department when it comes to tying everything up with HMRC.

Being able to automatically integrate expenses into the organisation’s accounting system is also a huge benefit for the accounts team. It streamlines the process and allows management to monitor company spend as the outlays happen, rather than playing ‘catch up’ as is all too often the case with manual systems.

All these factors combine to assist the accounts department’s control and management of employee expense claims.

The fact that systems like Expend’s expense management platform can be integrated and overseen from one central point makes the whole process far easier to govern. 

The system itself is competitively priced and, perhaps most importantly, has the capacity to continue to do everything that’s required as your business grows. I

f you would like to understand more about how Expend can help you streamline and manage your expense claims system, get in touch.