RTI so far

You may have heard the way we report PAYE to HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) has changed and you may have heard this referred to as Real Time Information (RTI). This means information is submitted on a periodic basis instead of once at the end of each financial year.

Northumbria Healthcare has been involved in this work for some time now as we were in the pilot group for the NHS back in December 2012.  

This has been a significant project and NHS Payroll Services and we have invested considerable time and resources in understanding the issues and assimilating lessons learned to share with our client base.

The introduction of RTI added a number of processes to the approved payroll end-to-end processing schedule with amended deadlines which could not be passed on to other departments as our payment date was brought forward.

RTI comprised three processes - A pre RTI data cleanse of information held on the payroll system compared with HMRC, the Employee Alignment Summary (EAS) and the Full Payment Summary (FPS.) The pilot was successful with some minor queries with statutory sick pay quickly identified and resolved.

In January 2013, the process became more complex and there were a number of discrepancies between the P35 report and the FPS file to be submitted to HMRC- this was a national issue.  We were pleased to have the expertise of two talented employees in Graham Charlton and Lindsey Froud who developed a database using the NHS human resources system, Electronic Staff Record (ESR), to generate reports which enabled reconciliation. This toolkit has been shared with other trusts.