Exporting payroll reports
This article explains how to export the year-to-date figures that have been generated from your payroll in FreeAgent.
Please note:
- You can export a breakdown of the National Insurance Contributions, auto-enrolment pension contributions or figures that have been sent to HMRC, from your payroll in FreeAgent. You can also export a summary of the money due to HMRC, and each employee’s pay and deductions.
- You need to have level 7 access or above to your FreeAgent account to be able to export year-to-date figures.
- FreeAgent's payroll functionality won't be available if you have an unincorporated landlord or non-UK account type, or if you're preparing your accounts using the cash basis of accounting.
Navigate to the ‘My Money’ tab at the top of the screen and select ‘Payroll’ from the drop-down menu.
Select the relevant month from the ‘History’ section.
Select ‘Export report’ and choose the relevant option from the drop-down menu. You can select either ‘NI breakdown (CSV)’, ‘Auto-enrolment (CSV)’, ‘Submission data (PDF)’ or Summary (XLSX) or Summary (PDF).
National Insurance Contribution breakdown
Selecting ‘NI breakdown (CSV)’ will download a .CSV file containing the year-to-date figures as at that month for all the employees included on your payroll.
Please note that the data for any employees who left the company during previous months won’t be included in this .CSV file. To obtain the year-to-date data for employees who have left, you’ll need to navigate to the last month they were included on your payroll and then select ‘NI breakdown (CSV)’ from the ‘Export report’ drop-down menu.
Auto-enrolment pension contribution breakdown
Selecting ‘Auto-enrolment (CSV)’ will download a .CSV file containing your employees that are enrolled in your workplace pension as at that month and how much you and they are contributing to their pension. If you're using Excel for Mac, you’ll need to save the file in ‘Windows CSV’ format.
Please note that the data for any employees who left the company during previous months won’t be included in this .CSV file. To obtain the year-to-date data for employees who have left, you’ll need to navigate to the last month they were included on your payroll and then select ‘Auto-enrolment (CSV)’ from the ‘Export report’ drop-down menu.
You can also export this information from FreeAgent by selecting ‘Export auto-enrolment CSV’ from the appropriate month in the ‘History’ area of your payroll dashboard.
Find out how FreeAgent supports automatic enrolment for workplace pensions.
Submission data breakdown
Selecting ‘Submission data (PDF)’ will download a .PDF of the figures that have been sent to HMRC for the selected pay period. Please note that this will only be available if you filed the payroll to HMRC using FreeAgent. If you have marked that month as filed, the report will state that there is no RTI submission data to display. Here’s an example of what one of these will look like:
The .PDF will include the Full Payment Submission (FPS) which notified HMRC of any updates to the pay or tax for the employees, and the Employer Payment Summary (EPS) which notified HMRC whether or not the Employment Allowance was being claimed.
This report is useful when communicating with HMRC as it shows the data which they received from FreeAgent when you filed the payroll. You can search for specific information or figures on the .PDF by opening it, pressing ‘ctrl + F’ on a PC or 'cmd' + ‘F' on a Mac to access ‘Find in document’ and then enter the term you want to search for.
If you make a correction for a previous year, the month 12 report will include both the original submission and the correction.
Payroll summary report
Selecting ‘Summary (XLSX)’ or ‘Summary (PDF)’ will download a file containing a breakdown of the money due to HMRC, and the pay and deductions for all relevant employees included on your payroll for that month, as well as the year-to-date totals. These figures are provided in two sections, the first summarising the chosen month and the second presenting year-to-date values as of that month.
The summary report will show a breakdown of Tax, NI and Employment Allowance, along with any figures for statutory payments in the month, with the exception of Statutory Sick Pay as this does not reduce the amount owed to HMRC.
Also included will be any CIS offset for the month. It’s important to note that the CIS offset is calculated at the point the payroll is prepared, so if any CIS invoices were marked as paid after preparing the payroll, you’ll need to force a recalculation of the CIS offset by deleting and then preparing the payroll again. This will pull through any CIS deductions from invoices not previously included. Alternatively, the deductions will be included on next month’s payroll.
Please note that the monthly money due to HMRC is for the month in question only. If you pay HMRC quarterly, it will not be reflected on this report. Additionally, employees' pay from previous employers will not be reflected on this report.