Employer Payment Summary (EPS)

The HMRC will use the values from the individual FPS files throughout the tax month / quarter to determine what payment value they are expecting from your company - accumulating the NIC’s, PAYE and Student Loan deductions. Most employers have to pay this monthly but quarterly payments may be possible when arranged accordingly with the HMRC. Where you have paid any Statutory Payments these can be offset against this payment to reduce your overall bill.

You only make this submission once per tax month (quarter) per tax reference. If you have multiple payroll companies within Datafile (a weekly and a monthly payroll) you only send this submission once.

You also only need to submit IF you have paid any statutory payments this month that you are eligible to claim back or IF you haven’t paid any employee in the relevant tax month/quarter.

Submitting the Employer Payment Summary

Selecting the Employer Payment Summary option takes you through the submission process. The system uses today’s date (not the payroll period date) as the control for which tax month/quarter you are processing with the 19th being the cut-off date after which you move into submitting for the next tax month.

The system displays on screen the tax month/quarter you’re submitting an EPS for and asks two parameters.

No Payments Due – if you haven’t paid any employees in the tax month/quarter shown then select this option and enter the tax month/quarter dates.

Period of Inactivity – you can optionally advise, in advance, if you know that there are to be no payments made to employees for this tax reference. If set enter the tax month/quarter date range for which no employees are to be paid.

To continue with the submission select PROCEED.

XML Template– displays the template definition to be used for the EPS submission.

XML Filename – displays the XML filename to be created containing the EPS submission.

Print XML Output – set this option if you require a printout of the XML generated output file. This can be useful if the Datafile validation of the generated XML reports an error – if set send to output print the spooler.

Report Errors Only – set this option when omitting the printout of the XML output file to report the entries in the output where any errors are generated.

Test Submission – Identifies the submission as a test only, the HMRC will not process a submission flagged as a test but will validate the contents as acceptable.

Selecting the RUN option begins the process – you will be warned whether you have selected to process a test or live submission before being prompted to commence the output.

Next the system warns that before you submit this file that all the FPS submissions to the end of the tax month have been sent for the current tax reference and displays the companies that use this tax reference. Select CONFIRM if you are OK to proceed.

Next the system displays the payment table for deductions that can be made from your payment to the HMRC.Three sets of values are displayed – the previous submission columns shows any values already claimed, the current submission shows what you can claim back this tax month and the year-to-date column is an accumulation of both.

Values for SMP through to SAP NIC compensation are calculated for you and cannot be amended.These values are based on the amounts recorded as paid to the employee in the tax month on the FPS submissions (applying the 92% or 100% plus 3% compensation depending on whether you have set whether you are eligible for Small Employer Relief or not).

The system does not calculate values for SSP recovery or the value of any CIS deductions or NIC holiday deductions so you are allowed to enter these values as required. HMRC’s current rules are that SSP recovery is only allowed where SSP payments exceed 13% of your gross Class 1 NI contributions and you can only claim the excess. NIC holiday deductions are only allowed under certain conditions for new employers.

Confirm values as required then select NEXT to move to the next stage. You will be prompted to confirm values are correct for the EPS submission before you can proceed. The system will then offer to print a report showing your confirmed values – print and save with your payroll records before moving to the output stage of the submission

If you commence output then the submission file is created and a summary screen shows whether Datafile has detected any errors within the submission.

If any errors have been generated then the XML printout includes details of the error. If any errors have been detected the system does not proceed to send the XML file and you have to correct the data for the reported error before repeating this process.

If no errors are detected then select Proceed and, after any printout of the XML file, the submission process to the HMRC begins.

The submission process goes through several stages in communicating with the HMRC Government Gateway.At the end of the process the system will report whether the submission was successful or whether any business level errors were detected – these might include an invalid ECON reference for which you are not registered. If a business level error occurs then you need to correct the advised error and then re-submit the file.

A common business level error of 1046 indicates that your HMRC credentials have been rejected – this may mean the tax office details are incorrect or your HMRC user-id / password have been supplied incorrectly. Check and update these details if necessary and submit again.

If the gateway is busy or off-line you may get the ‘Submission Poll’ message repeated. If this is the case keep trying for a few loops but if it continues select the SKIP button – the submission will have been made to the HMRC and you can use the ‘Check for Active Submissions’ option within the Payroll Utilities menu to check whether the submission has been accepted / rejected later.

After a successful live submission click CLOSE on the display above and you will be prompted to print a submission receipt – recommendation is to print this and file with your payroll reports for the period.