Real Time Information FAQs

The ‘Employer RTI Schedule’ shows which RTI returns need to be sent together with the date that they are due, as well as showing a record of all RTI returns that have already been made during that tax year .To see how it operates please see our guide.

You need to send your RTI submissions to HMRC on or before each pay day.

There a number of RTI submission types, the main ones being the Full Payment Submission (FPS) and the Employer Payment Summary (EPS).

The Full Payment Submission (FPS) is the ‘main’ submission type, and is sent each time that an employer pays their employees. So if employees are paid monthly you send 12 FPS submissions per year, if employees are paid weekly you send 52 FPS submissions and so on. The FPS contains details of all employees that are being paid in that particular pay period including their tax code, gross pay, tax deducted, NIC, sick pay (SSP), student loans and parenting pay (SMP, OSPP, ASPP etc.) together with their year-to-date figures. Each FPS also contains details of employees that have joined or left during that pay period.

The Employer Payment Summary (EPS) Is used to inform HMRC of any statutory payments recovered in any month (e.g. maternity or paternity pay), or CIS deductions suffered by the company. This is sent on a monthly basis when appropriate. Payroll Manager is able to determine whether or not an EPS is due, and if so prompts you to send it alongside the relevant FPS submission.

If you make a change to a pay period after you have submitted the RTI return for that period (e.g. because you needed to correct a mistake in the payroll), then you have 2 choices. You can either make the relevant changes and re-submit the return or, because each RTI return contains year-to-date totals, you could make the amendments and the error will be corrected when you submit the return for the next pay period in the normal way.

The small minority of UK employers that pay their employees using either Direct Bacs software or via a Bacs Bureau will need to generate a ‘hash tag’ for each employee as part of the FPS submission. The vast majority of employers do not pay their employees this way, for example those using Bank Transfer, Internet Banking, cheque or cash. Payroll Manager can be set to automatically generate this ‘hash tag’ for employees that are paid via Direct Bacs software or via a Bacs Bureau. The hash tag is used by HMRC to cross-reference the FPS submission with the corresponding Direct Bacs payment submission.