Account codes for pensions

Question asked by Benjamin Snipe 6 years ago

This is a very basic question on account costs for pensions.

I have one employee. The default account codes in Clearbooks include: Payroll (PAYE & NIC) liabilities Employees' NICs Salaries

The four amounts that i pay each month relating to my employee are: PAYE & NIC (er and ee) Employer's pension contribution Employee's pension contribution Salary

I pay PAYE, employer's NIC and employee's NIC all as one payment, so the Clearbooks account code for "Payroll (PAYE & NIC) liabilities" makes sense for that.

I don't know what employee's NIC account code is for in that case.

Most importantly, I don't know what account code to use for pensions contributions (which seem best lumped together).

Any help would be appreciated.

2 Replies

Hi Benjamin - are you using CB's payroll for this?

If so you have to allocate the postings in Payroll advanced settings so that the system knows where to put the costs. The liabilities for staff net pay, PAYE and Pension total contributions all appear as unpaid bills. This is how I and my clients assign the costs in payroll:

Salaries = Salaries P&L PAYE = Salaries P&L EE's NIC = Salaries P&L ER's NIC = Employer's NIC P&L EE's pension = Salaries P&L Er's Pension = Pensions P&L

CB is the only system I know that separates out net pay and employee deductions to P&L and, to be honest, it's daft, added together you get the person's gross pay, which is what you have to show in the P&L.

If you create the payroll outside CB then you enter the number's via journal entry and, simplistically this is as follows:

Debit Salaries P&L with Gross pay Debit ER's NIC P&L with ER's NIC Debit Pension P&L with ER's pension Credit Net pay control - BS current liability - with net pay Credit PAYE (or Payroll liabilities) - BS current liability - with total PAYE liability Credit Pensions payable - BS current liability - with total pension contributions.

This may mean you adding some account codes.

Some businesses credit all liabilities to "Payroll liabilities" but I like to see the three elements separated out.

Hope that helps

Thanks for your comprehensive answer.

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