Year End Summary 2025-26

We have designed this ‘Year End Summary‘ guide to help you complete the necessary year end tasks for 2025-26 and move forward to start processing and reporting 2026-27 payroll information. You can click ‘Help – Online – End of Year Guide’ from the main menu in Payroll Manager to access this guide at any time.

This page covers the following areas:

Filing the last RTI submission for 2025-26
Producing P60s for employees
Creating a new payroll data file for 2026-27
New for 2026-27
Important deadlines

Items 1 and 3 on this list (filing the last RTI submission for 2025-26 and creating a new file for 2026-27) can actually be done in any order, although we strongly recommend that you finish entering data for 2025-26 before creating the file for 2026-27 so that the software can carry forward the relevant data.

1) – Filing the last RTI return for 2025-26

You should send your final Full Payment Submission (FPS) for the tax year, as always, on or before the payment date of your employees. In practice this means that you should have filed all of your FPS returns for 2025-26 by 5 April 2026. HMRC also require that you send a ‘Final Return’ for 2025-26, which Payroll Manager automatically schedules for you by creating an Employer Payment Summary (EPS) return. For full instructions please see the guide Filing the last RTI return for 2025-26

2) – Producing P60s for each employee

The P60 summarises an employee’s total taxable pay and deductions for the year. You must to provide a form P60 (either paper or electronic) to each employee on the payroll who was working for you on the last day of the tax year (5 April). The employee must receive their P60 no later than 31 May. See the P60 guide for more information.

3) – Creating a new payroll data file for 2026-27

Payroll Manager stores the payroll information for each tax year in a separate data file on your computer. In order to continue processing payroll from April 2026 onward, you need to create a new data file. Payroll Manager does this for you and carries forward all of the relevant payroll information from one tax year to the next. The guide Creating a new payroll data file for 2026-27 takes you through this process.

4) – New for 2026-27

There are a number of items that will affect payroll in 2026-27, such as new rates of statutory parenting pay (SMP, SPP etc), new Statutory Sick Pay (SSP) rules, and changes to student loan repayment thresholds. For more information on these and other items please see the New for 2026-27 guide.

5) – Important deadlines

5 April 2026 – You must have sent your final FPS for the tax year 2025-26 by this date (although you should of course still submit FPS returns on or before the final pay date of the year, as per HMRC rules, which might be before 5 April 2026 if you pay your employees earlier than this).
19 April 2026 – You must have sent your final EPS submission for the year by this date. This serves as your ‘Final Submission’ to HMRC for 2025-26.
31 May 2026 – You need to provide a form P60 (either paper or electronic) to each employee on the payroll who was working for you on the last day of the tax year (5 April). You must do this by no later than 31 May. Make sure that you have the payroll file open for 2025-26, then click ‘Forms – End of Year P60’ to produce these.
6 July 2026 – Expenses and benefits annual returns – You should file your P11D/P11d(b) submission online to HMRC by 6 July 2026 where applicable. Please refer to our Expenses and Benefits Guide for more information.