Pay count report

The ‘Pay count report‘ displays the pay history of an employee over a specified period of time, and disregards any ‘blank’ pay periods from the totals.

It can be useful if you wish to calculate the average pay of an employee over a specified period of time, and wish to disregard periods for which the employee was not paid.

If for example you are looking to determine the total amount paid in the ’52 week holiday pay reference period’ in order to manually calculate the holiday pay for an employee with variable pay, then this report can help (see Calculating holiday pay for workers without fixed hours or pay – GOV.UK (www.gov.uk) for HMRC guidance on calculating holiday pay).

How to produce the Pay count report

1. On the ‘Pay Details‘ screen, select the relevant employee, and highlight the pay period up until which you wish to run the report. In this example, the employer wishes to determine the holiday pay to pay an employee in week 40, and needs to report on the last 52 occasions that the employee was paid, starting with week 39.

2. From the main menu click ‘Analysis‘ then ‘Pay count report‘.

3. The report shows the pay in each pay period from week you have selected, back to the first pay period of the year. It is then necessary to choose which particular pay elements to include/exclude from the calculation. Click on the ‘Select Elements‘ button at the top of the report.

Choose the pay elements that you wish to include and click ‘OK‘. In this example the Basic pay and certain other additions and deductions have been included, but Statutory Pay and Holiday Pay have been excluded.

The report shows the total amount of pay over that particular range of pay periods, and gives a count of the number of periods that the employee received (non-zero) pay. In the example above, the total amount paid over the 39 week period was £26,680, and the number of weeks in which the employee received pay was 33.

In this example, the employer wishes to report on the last 52 times that the employee was paid, so it is necessary to open the payroll file for the previous tax year and produce another report showing the previous 19 times that the employee received pay.

4. Click ‘File‘ then ‘Open‘ and open the file for the previous tax year.

5. Click ‘Analysis‘ then ‘Pay count report‘ from the main menu.

6. Click on the ‘Select Elements‘ button at the top of the report, and select the relevant pay elements to include, as per step 3.

7. By default a report for the previous year will show all pay periods in that year. Click on the ‘Date range‘ button at the top of the report, select the range of pay periods that you wish to include (by clicking and dragging your mouse pointer across the range of periods), and click ‘OK‘.

It may take a bit of trial and error to get correct number of pay periods, especially if some of these periods contain zero pay for the employee. In the example above, it was necessary to go back to week 29 in order to report on the most recent 19 weeks in which the employee received pay. The total amount paid to the employee in these 19 weeks was £21,190.

8. If you wish to calculate an average figure for the pay received over the period then you should add the total from each report together, and divide by the number of pay periods. In this example, the average for the last 52 paid weeks is (£26,680 + £21,190) / 52 = £920.58 (rounded).

Notes

Payroll Manager does not automatically calculate holiday pay. You will need to manually establish how many days holiday employee is entitled to, according to various other rules. The ‘Pay count report’ helps to calculate the pay in the ‘reference period’. See ‘Links’ below for HMRC guidance on calculating holiday pay.

Links

Calculating holiday pay for workers without fixed hours or pay – GOV.UK (www.gov.uk)