Sage Accounting and Payroll
Version 27 Sage 50 Accounts
Sage 50 Accounts – Version 27 Main Features.
- Custom Alerts – a great new feature. Create popups or windows to give you a message in Customers, Suppliers and Product modules. When accessing invoices, credit notes, quotes, sales or purchase orders it will give you a prompt of necessary actions.
- New User Management Features – three new User types, i.e. “Standard”, “Accountant or Bookkeeper” and “Administrator”. Greater flexibility to set up User facilities.
- New Features when creating a new Company – Create, Connect, Restore, Download.
- Supplier Transaction Attachments – attach an electronic document to a Purchase Invoice or Credit Note on receipt which is then accessible within the system.
- Removal of Little Used Features – no longer available: Nominal Graphs, Dashboards, Phone Dialler, Process Maps, Configuration XMLs
- Changes to Connected Services:
- One Process to set up Cloud Services – currently three
- Pause/Resume Sage Drive – control access for remote Users
- Retrieve Lost or Forgotten Encryption Passwords – avoiding the need to reload the data again.
- Improvements for Accountants – more flexible access.
Note – Release of v27.1 on 22nd December provided facilities required after the end of the Brexit transition period, viz:
- The creation of five new Tax T Codes – T15, T16, T17, T18 and T19
- The provision of VAT Postponement facilities
- Logging of EORI number.
Are you on the latest version of 50 Accounts and Payroll?
Are you on the latest version of Sage 50 Accounts?
To ensure that you are benefitting from the latest Updates, go to Help > About > on your system and check that you have one of the following. If you have a Network version, all users must be on the same version:
50 Accounts and Instant Accounts
v2021 – 27.1.562 the latest update (22 Dec 20), including VAT Codes, etc. following Brexit
v2020 – 26.3.245.0 (after loading Update 3 23 May 20)
50 Payroll
Payrolls are updated with a completely new version each Tax Year End.
Each year there is the Update which will include the Tax Tables for the New Tax Year as well as the Year End function for the current tax year.
After loading the Updates for the Job Retention Modules the version becomes 26.02.105. Athough there was an email from Sage saying that there is an Update to 26.02.168, this does not seem to be available.
Accounting By Computer is as easy as ABC
Employer’s Allowance for National Insurance
How to process the Employer’s Allowance for National Insurance.
This is £4,000 for the 2020/21 Tax Year. But there are certain changes to the rules, you need to apply again, see below for change of procedure.
The reduction in the NI you pay is reclaimed over the first few months depending on the amount of Employer’s NI you pay each month. It is deducted each month until the total of £4,000 has been recovered.
In the Payroll:
- In Company > Settings > there is a new button (bottom left) “Apply for EA”. You cannot take the deduction until HMRC have confirmed.
- As usual print the monthly P32 Employer Payment Record which shows the Tax & NI payable for the month and the Employer’s Allowance.
In the Accounts:
There is no automatic inclusion of the Employer’s Allowance in the Nominal link, so it has to be processed manually.
- Select Nominal > Journal. Create a new Memorised Journal to Debit the PAYE/NI Control Account in the Balance Sheet and Credit the Employer’s NI account(s) in the Profit & Loss Account. (Note – if you have more than one you may have to calculate an approximate percentage to each account.)
- From the P32 Payment Record report extract the Employer’s Allowance and enter it the Memorised Journal that you have created each month until the Allowance has been totally used.
Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme
It is assumed that you have already been to the Govt. Website explaining the Scheme:
https://www.gov.uk/guidance/claim-for-wage-costs-through-the-coronavirus-job-retention-scheme
There is new “Job Retention Scheme” Module available free for Sage Payroll Systems. If you cannot access it from the link on opening the Payroll, go to the Sage Website> Support > Download and download it to your computer to install it.
Calculating the Claim.
Before making the claim ensure that you have all the information noted in the HMRC website
You can either use the Payroll Module to calculate the claim or use the Calculator on the HMRC website. Be warned, if you have a Weekly Payroll, or need to calculate part of a month, the HMRC calculator needs Saturday and Sunday to be included.
Be warned that you must have all the info before you start, the system will throw you out after 30 minutes, so you don’t have time to leave it to ferret out information.
The claim is made for the whole Company for each of the three costs, (i.e. Gross Pay, Employer’s NI and Employer’s Pension Contributions) you will not have to claim for each individual employee.
Making Changes to the Accounts and Payroll.
- In Accounts set up a new Nominal Account, in the Overheads, close to your Wages costs, for “Furlough Pay”. Set up another, adjacent to that, for “Furlough Pay Grant”; you should be aware that this is treated as “taxable income” in your Corporation Tax/Income Tax Computations, so your Tax Accountant will need to identify it. These should offset one another, but there may be timing differences.
- In Payroll set up a new Pay Element for “Furlough Pay”. Untick the two boxes“Value” and “Hours” for Minimum Living Wage; leave all the other boxes ticked if they apply in your Company’s case.
- In Payroll> Nominal Settings set Furlough Pay to post to the new Nominal Code set up in para 1 above.
Points to Note
- You should also be aware, when making the claim, that, if you get the Small Employer’s Relief of up to £4,000 this year, you may not be paying any Employer’s NI for a while.
- When Payroll posts the Employer’s NI Contribution to the Nominal Ledger, there will be one figure. I suggest you calculate the amount relating a manual journal for these costs (for only the Furloughed Staff) to the same account.