This means that, for both employees and employers, these additional extra bank holidays could greatly reduce your normal working week.

2012 Bank Holidays
• Monday 2nd January – New Years Day
• Friday 6th April – Good Friday
• Monday 9th April – Easter Monday
• Monday 7th May – Mayday
• Monday 4th June – Spring Bank Holiday
• Tuesday 5th June – Diamond Jubilee
• Monday 27th August – Summer Bank Holiday
• Tuesday 25th December – Christmas Day
• Wednesday 26th December – Boxing Day

Employers do not necessarily have to give additional time off for extra public holidays. Employers whose businesses run 7 days a week, for example, will have no option other than to maintain their usual staffing levels for their business.

Employees are entitled to a minimum of 5.6 weeks paid annual leave – 28 days for someone working five days a week (capped at a statutory maximum of 28 days for all working patterns). One thing to remember is that bank and public holidays can be included in your minimum entitlement

If the employee’s Contract of Employment names specific public holidays, then employees have the right to take these specific days off. Additional time off for extra public holidays, in this case, is entirely at the discretion of the company. If the Contract of Employment does not name specific public holidays, then the decision is based more on usual practice – are extra public holidays normally recognised?

Of course you have the option to voluntarily give an extra paid day of holiday to your staff, or even ask that those who wish to have the day off deduct it from their normal holiday allowance, but this may not be a viable option. Giving all your staff an additional paid day off may mean the difference, if you are a small business, between breaking even or making a loss. Plus, employers should still follow usual procedure of “first come, first served” when receiving holiday requests for this time, meaning that not all staff requests can be accepted.

If you feel you need to close your business on the additional public holiday, but will not be paying bank holiday pay to your staff, you should write to all employees at the earliest opportunity informing them that you will deduct one days holiday from their annual entitlement to cover for this time. This is ideally done as soon as possible, giving at least two clear days notice of your intention before the Bank Holiday.

Bear in mind that however you decided to treat the bank holiday for the Royal Wedding in 2011, (paid time off, use holiday allowance or requiring them to work,) you set the precedent for how your employees will expect you to treat the upcoming Jubilee Bank holidays.

A final thing to remember is that if you are processing payroll for your staff, and send payment via BACS, their payments will have to be sent a few days early to allow for bank transfers.

With the change of tax year comes a wealth of changes to legislation. Please see below for some helpful facts and quick pointers to ensure your year end runs smoothly.

The standard tax code for a normal employee is rising from 810L . This means that the weekly tax allowance rises from £144.00 to £156.00

From this year employees standard rate N.I. is 12% and employers is 13.8%
Statutory Maternity Pay, Statutory Paternity Pay and Statutory Adoption Pay are all to rise to £135.45 per week.

Statutory Sick Pay rises to £85.85 per week.

All the above statutory benefits are subject to the increased earnings threshold of £107.00; employees only qualify for statutory payments if their average weekly earnings are equal to or are over the earnings threshold.

If you use a payroll bureau then they will ensure all your year end is submitted in the correct way and on time. If you are filing your payroll year end yourself, please remember that your P35 AND your P14s have to have been submitted electronically by 19th May 2012. HMRC are likely to impose a fine if either are late or inaccurate.

Also remember to issue P60s to all your employees as soon as possible after 6th April. It is a legal requirement that employees receive their P60s before the 31st May, so the earlier they receive them the better.

Remember to continue to action tax forms such as P46s, P45s and P6s as soon as they arrive, however ONLY action P9s on the first pay date AFTER 6th April 2012. The form P9 is an instruction of which tax code to operate during the tax year 2012-2013, so actioning it on a pay date before the 6th April may issue an incorrect tax calculation and possible incorrect rebate.

At the change of tax year, remember to also remove Week1 / Month 1 flags from employees tax codes, ensuring they are changed to a cumulative code on the first pay date after 6th April.

Take the headache out of all the complex payroll legislation by outsourcing your payroll to us.

PAYEpeople – ‘Helping you pay your people’

HMRC are changing the way Pay As You Earn (PAYE) is reported to them, replacing the Employers Annual Return with the submission of Real Time Information every time a payment is made to employees.

The details that are currently submitted on P35/P14 forms at the payroll end of year will be submitted every pay period whether it be weekly, fortnightly, four weekly or monthly with up to 100 other items.

This information includes, employee name, NI Number, Date of Birth, Employee Address, Gross Pay, PAYE, NIC and the number of hours worked (in bands) to name just a few.
The information will be submitted using the government gateway. Your payroll department, accountant or bureau should be currently preparing for this change.

PAYEpeople will be opting into the trial to ensure that clients are ready for mandatory submission so as to avoid any penalties that the HMRC will issue for incorrect data.
Allan Pearson, Director of Payroll and HR at PAYEpeople says, “This is possibly the largest change to payroll in recent memory, and unlike the change to electronic submission of end of year returns, it has had less press, and less time to prepare. I think it is important to be involved in the trial to ensure that the payroll information you hold is correct, I can see a lot companies falling foul of the HMRC Penalties for incorrect information”

The timeline for RTI is shown below

Innventory for Innovation…

Innventory is a new name in the industry and is geared to deliver real, profit-boosting licensed trade stocktaking and accounting solutions. Innventory is the most dynamic and exciting new brand to hit the market for years.

Managed and staffed by key people from the industry, Innventory provides highly professional and specialised pub accounting, stocktaking and payroll services as you would expect. What you may not expect is a fresh, innovative approach to serving the market.

Victor Wood, Managing Director of the EKW Group of companies that own the Innventory brand said, “We have a clear vision of how our organisation should look in the years to come and have developed positive strategies to make sure the pub industry enjoys the service excellence it both demands and deserves.

“We’re very pleased to present Innventory to the market and we’re extremely confident that clients, and the industry as a whole, will rapidly come to regard it as the best of breed. One of our first operational tasks was to secure a client base and we are pleased to announce we’ve already engaged literally hundreds of clients and we’re extremely grateful for the support we’ve received from pub companies as well.”

Neil Foster, Director of Sales & Marketing, added, “A vital strategic component was to bring something new and exciting to the market and we feel we’ve really hit the bulls eye here. We wanted to launch a product to dramatically improve the profitability of pubs, either singly or throughout entire estates, while providing a platform for significantly reduced professional fees.

“The result of that is a whole new pub management concept utilising what is known as cloud computing. So what we’re looking at here is web-hosted Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) which is recognised as a rapidly growing sector within IT. No huge investments, maintenance or security issues to worry about.

“Simply put, it is a web-based database application designed to help you run your pub business. It is made up of a series of ‘modules’ each of which covers a major business function. Because the application is web-based in can be accessed from anywhere in the world, at any time of the day (or night!). Customers can choose to subscribe to as many or as few modules as they wish, on an annual basis. In addition there are a number of ‘linking’ modules that are free to all customers. These are used to set up common information that may be used by more than one module. This allows you to set up detailed cost centres and departments, supplier information and stock locations for example.

“Then the power of the application really starts because you can add other modules. The Recipes and Menus module provides your business with all the tools necessary to control your costs and maximize the profitability of your food service operation. With our extensive feature list you are able to construct food offerings from the simple to the extremely complex.

“There’s even a stocktaking module, for wet, dry and combined stock, which puts you firmly in control of this costly asset and you can choose to undertake counts yourself or select from a variety of options to work with an Innventory stocktaker. By the time you add in POS links and electronic financials to link straight to Innventory accounting services you’ve got a really powerful tool to make serious money for around the equivalent of the profit on a filled jacket potato or a bowl of soup per day – that’s just fantastic value. It helps you work at your business, not just in it!”

Innventory – a brand built on traditional values and professionalism, but with an innovative approach to control systems for any leisure business. In fact, we like to think we take the pain out of number-crunching. Now I bet you didn’t know accountants could do that!

Contact Innventory on (CALL FREE) 0800 7317692 or visit www.innventory-lta.co.uk