When an employee rejoins your organisation within the same tax year, you should treat them as a new starter in BrightPay.

Here’s how to manage this process:

Mark the Employee as a Leaver (if not already done)

If the employee was previously marked as a leaver, their record will be retained in BrightPay, but they will not appear in the active employee list for payroll processing.

This record must remain unchanged, as the leaver status has already been reported to Revenue.

Add the Employee as a New Starter

• You should add the employee again as a new starter, even if they have previously worked for you in the same tax year. This is because HMRC requires a new starter declaration and a new payroll record for re-employed staff within the same tax year.
• If the employee left in the current tax year, BrightPay can help with this process.

• In the Employees list, leavers appear faded—click the employee’s name, and you’ll see an option to Rehire.

   

  

   

• Enter the new Start Date and works number if Applicable and tick any options you wish to copy over from the previous record, and Create.

   

  

   

Employee was a leaver from a previous tax year then you will need to manually enter their details

• Go to the Employees section.
• Click New Employee
• Enter the employee’s details. You can use the same personal details as before, but you must enter the new start date.
• Complete the starter declaration (P45 or new starter checklist) as you would for any new employee.

HMRC Reporting

BrightPay will include the new starter information in your next Full Payment Submission (FPS) to HMRC, ensuring compliance with HMRC requirements.

Previous Employment Details

If the employee provides a P45 from their previous employment (even if it was with your company), enter the pay and tax details from the P45 in the starter process. This ensures their tax is calculated correctly for the remainder of the tax year.

Pension and Other Settings

You may need to reassess the employee for automatic enrolment and set up any other relevant deductions or benefits as you would for any new starter.

If you have created more than one record for re-hiring an employee in error, choose one of the new re-hire employee records from the list in the Employees utility. Click on 'More' > Delete. Take care to only delete the new duplicate record.

Note: 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.

If no FPS has been submitted that included the leave date, then just re-open the payslip for the period that the leave date was entered and remove the leave date from the Starter/Leaver section.