Since 6th April 2013 and in line with the introduction of RTI, employers are no longer required to submit a P45 to HMRC when an employee leaves their employment. Instead, HMRC will be notified of an employee leaving in the last Full Payment Submission you send for that employee.

With this, the employee’s leave date must therefore be entered before their final pay period is finalised, so that the date of leaving is included in the Full Payment Submission in the period they are last being paid in.

Processing a Leaver in BrightPay Cloud

1) Within Employees, select the employee from the listing and enter their leave date under the Starter/Leaver section and Save.

2) Within Payroll, enter the employee's final pay and select Finalise Payslips on the menu toolbar. 

3) The ‘Leaver’ indicator will now show next to the employee’s name.

4) When it displays leaver "Yes", click 'Finalise' to finalise the employee's payslip.


 

On finalising the employee’s payslip, the corresponding Full Payment Submission will notify HMRC that the employee has now left your employment. Once an employee’s leave date has been entered in BrightPay, they will no longer be included in any subsequent payroll period. The employee’s payslip history, however, will remain should this need to be viewed at any time.

The leave date for the employee will be visible on the FPS. If no leave date is there, please check that the leave date entered into the employee's record falls within the finalised period.

Please note, as soon as an employee leaves your employment, a P45 should still be given to them for their own records. 

Printing/Emailing/Downloading the Employee's P45

 1) Within Employees, select the employee from the listing.

2) Select P45 on their menu toolbar.

3) Select which parts of the P45 you wish to print/email/download and click Continue

4) Select Email/Download/Print on the menu bar, as desired

No P45 available for the employee?

If there is no P45 available for viewing/printing within the employee's record after entering their leave date, this usually means that the pay period in which the leave date is falling is still 'open' and has yet to be finalised within the Payroll utility (even if there is zero pay for the period).

Simply check the leave date, and then within the Payroll utility, establish the pay period in which this leave date falls.

Is the payslip in which the leave date falls still open for the employee? If so, simply finalise this payslip accordingly and the employee's P45 will become available within the employee's record. 

If the employee is deceased

If the employee is being made a leaver because they have deceased, process the leaver in the final pay period (with or without pay), enter the leave date and then tick the box under the leave date 'Employee is deceased'. This will then be included on the next FPS to HMRC.

If you have entered a leave date in error, you will need to re-open the payslip to be able to remove the leave date. If the FPS with the leave date has already been submitted to HMRC; re-open the payslip and remove the leave date. Finalise the payslip again and then send an additional FPS > correction to earlier submission for this employee.

Employee leaving at end of tax year and no periods remaining to process P45

If an employee leaves at the end of the tax year but after the final pay period end - ie period end for month 12 was 31st March and the employee left on 2nd April (after the period end date but still in the tax year) - in order to issue a P45, you will need to force the leave date.

Re-open the last payslip for this employee >

Open Employee Details

   Go to the employee’s record and open the Starter/Leaver tab.

2. Reveal the Override Field 

   With the Starter/Leaver tab open, press:  

• Ctrl + Shift+ L (Windows)  

• Cmd + Shift + L (MAC OS)  

   This reveals the hidden Reported leave date field.

3. Enter the Override Date

   Input the leave date you want to report to HMRC.  

   Reminder: This date is not validated.

4. Save Changes

   Click Save to apply the override.