Taking on an employee who has just stopped claiming JSA

Rozzi Rainbow

I came across an unusual situation at work this afternoon - one of our client's employees gave us her P45 which was issued by the benefits office. PAYE reference begins 921. When I tried to enter the details on Sage Payroll, I got an error message stating the tax office code mustn't be 921. But it was 921 on the P45, there was nothing I could do about that!

Has anyone else encountered this situation, does it happen on other payroll software? It didn't matter too much really as when the employee started she signed a P46 and we put her on 647L M1 which is the same code as on the P45. No total pay to date details and no SLDs so nothing I needed from the P45 so I just didn't send it in as Sage wouldn't accept it!

Can't find anything on the HMRC website about this - are we not meant to process P45s issued by the benefits office?

Thanks for reading!

zara5034

It's been a while since I used Sage so I can't remember if I ever entered a P45 from the jobcentre, but you are correct that they usually have the PAYE reference 921/LDN

I currently use TAS and 12Pay and that definately lets me enter the 921 PAYE ref

Monsoon

My gut instinct is to blame sage but thats probably unfair!
921 is rinnging bells as being a dedicated office for benefits (but that might be just me!)

I don't know why you shouldn't use it though. Does it give the same error message if you put in., say 000, I.e. I it a generic "this is not a valid office code" error, or is it specific to 921?

Rozzi Rainbow

Thanks for your replies.

Monsoon, The message was something along the lines of "the tax office code must be between 001 and 999 but not 921" so it seems like it's just 921 it doesn't like! I think I'll blame Sage too, might drop them an email about it next week, I couldn't be bothered with trying to ring up and being on hold all afternoon, I had better things to do!