New figures released by *HMRC reveal that organisations which use OpenPeople payroll software from Advanced Business Solutions (Advanced), are recording success rates for Real Time Information (RTI) submissions ahead of the national average.
HMRC first proposed RTI in 2010 as a means to deliver a more efficient tax system that was also less prone to error. RTI was implemented in April 2013, when UK employers became legally obliged to notify HMRC each time they paid an employee. Employers notify HMRC by submitting details of payments and deductions via the Government Gateway- the online entry point to government services.
Data from Q3 2013 (October 6 to January 5) saw Advanced customers who were using the company's OpenPeople payroll software record a 99.9% success rate for their Employer Payment Summary submission figures. By contrast, the national success rate stood at 96.9%.
A similar pattern was identified for National Insurance Number Verification Request (NVR) submissions, with OpenPeople customers seeing a success rate of 84% compared to the overall RTI figures of 79.63%. For Full Payment Submissions (FPS) customers had a success rate of 99.83%, versus a national figure of 99.59%.
The legislation, which represents the biggest change to the PAYE system since its introduction in 1944, forced many organisations to adopt new payroll software capable of complying with the requirements of RTI.
Simon Fowler, Managing Director Advanced Business Solutions, said: "The statistics show that RTI adoption has not been as onerous as many were predicting prior to the go-live on April 2013.
"They also show that our payroll software has played a key role in helping businesses to cope with this challenging change to the PAYE system. The majority of users are experiencing success with their RTI submissions; a testament to the software's rich functionality which has been closely mapped to HMRC's electronic filing processes."
Despite concerns when RTI was launched, research by HMRC last autumn showed the vast majority of businesses had found the migration straightforward. Seven in 10 employers said RTI had been either 'very' (27%) or 'fairly' (43%) easy to deal with overall. Only nine per cent said it had been 'difficult'. The same research also revealed RTI had resulted in the mean average time spent working on PAYE going down from 2.6 hours to 1.6 hours a week.
Added Fowler: "Our own user figures, combined with this HMRC research, suggest that RTI has not been the major issue for businesses that many commentators were predicting. In fact, with the right payroll software in place, research shows actual time taken to process payroll is faster under RTI."
Advanced's payroll system is fully RTI compliant, and allows employers to take charge of compliance simply and conveniently through their payroll department. The software also includes a full assessment of employees, postponement, refund calculations, standard National Employment Savings Trust (NEST) extracts, letter generation and document management options.
OpenPeople additionally creates a pension auto-enrolment mail merge schedule, which highlights specific letters that are required to be sent to employees to ensure routine compliance is achieved.
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