In a pay run, you record earnings and deductions for your employees for a set period. Sage Business Cloud Payroll then makes sure that all current payroll legislation is applied correctly, and calculates your employee’s pay. You can then record the payments and provide pay statements to your employees.
You can also watch a video demonstration of this process
Before you start a pay run
Before you start a pay run, you first need to set up your employees and assign them to pay groups. For help with that, see Create and edit employees
You should also review the default pay groups to check they are suitable for your business. For more information about pay groups, see Create and edit pay groups
You can also edit existing payments and deductions or create new ones, unique to your company. These are referred to in Sage Business Cloud Payroll as pay components. For more information about them, see Create and edit pay components
Finally, if you need to make submissions for your company, you need to make sure all your company information has been entered correctly. For help with this, see Create and edit your company information
Your first pay run
Create a pay run schedule
The first time you start a pay run you have to set up which pay periods you want to use when recording a pay run.
From the Pay Run tab, select Create Pay Run Schedule.
Select the Frequency and the Pay Group you want to use for your pay run.
Enter the Start Date of the first pay period you are processing in Sage Payroll.
Enter the first date you want to pay your employees, then Create Schedule.
Enter YTD values
If you have moved to Sage Payroll part way though a tax year, you may also need to enter YTD (year to date) values for your employees.
You can also watch a video demonstration of this process
You can only enter your employee year to date values during your first pay run in Sage Payroll.
After creating your first pay run schedule, you are presented with a list of your employees.
To enter an employee's year to date values, select the employee.
Enter their values as required. The YTD information is usually found on an employee's last payslip or from reports on your previous payroll system.
After you've entered the YTD information for your employees, you can process the pay run. Within your pay run, your year to date payroll costs will be updated to include the information you've entered.
Starting a pay run
From the Pay Run tab, select Create new Pay Run.
Enter the information for your new pay run, then Create your Pay Run.
Earnings & Deductions
After you've entered the dates and created your pay run, you can enter what your employees have earned. To do this:
Select the employee you want to edit.
Any earnings, benefits and deductions (pay components) that are part of this pay group or employee's template will already be listed. You can enter the amounts for each one as required.
If you need to add a new pay component for a single employee, use the relevant + Add option. To remove one, select Delete.
If you need to add a new pay component for a number of employees, add it to the pay group template.
Any pay components you leave blank do not appear on your employee's pay statement but will be available again for your next pay run.
Once you're happy with the information, select Save then close the employee.
Repeat the process for each employee as required then select Next.
Review & Submit
Check the information you've entered is correct.
Your Employee and Employer contributions are calculated automatically, based on your employee's earnings and deductions.
If you're unsure, to see a more detailed breakdown of the pay run calculations, select View a full summary.
Once you're happy with the figures, select Submit Payroll.
Confirmation
You've now completed the pay run. In subsequent pay runs, it appears in the All Pay Runs section as a completed pay run.
From the Confirmation stage of the pay run, you can access tasks that are commonly done after a pay run. For more information about each task, select the relevant link:
Generate submission files: