Reflections on the early days of payday filing

FlexiTime’s payday filing with IRD has been racing for four months now and we thought it was time we updated you on how it’s going so far. FlexiTime launched the country’s first payday filing software and even now, months later, we’re the only system doing it with any volume.

After ploughing ahead with over 300 companies back in May, we’ve now got over 500 lined up for September. Given the numbers supplied by IRD last week (400ish payday filers nationwide if you can’t be bothered reading their article), the vast majority of companies currently payday filing are doing so through FlexiTime. Since we launched we’ve sent over 6,000 payday reports to IRD and its fair to say we’ve learned a lot in that time.

As a company we’ve always favoured smart technology-based solutions over repetitive manual processes so we were keen to work with Inland Revenue to launch payday filing software as early as possible and give our customers a head start on the change.

Up until now it has only been available to a select group of early adopters in FlexiTime. We’ve been content to sit back for the last few months while IRD irons out a few kinks in their processes before promoting it more widely.

Our goal has always been a zero-touch solution where, after the initial connection, our customers need have no interaction with IRD. There have been a couple of aspects where transitional issues at IRD have made this harder than it need be.

We’ve been working closely with IRD to eliminate the need for our customers to do a monthly filing of an IR345. After all, this is payday filing, not payday and monthly filing. That has resulted in some extra effort as we file the IR345s on behalf of our customers while the IRD are working on a solution.

The other issue has been with way IRD allocates payments that are made with each pay. You’d think that immediately paying exactly the amount you’ve just told them you are going to pay would be the best possible outcome for IRD. Unfortunately, for a while yet they’re still dependant on their old system and the monthly cycle. To their credit, they’ve taken on board the requirements of our customers and we’re expecting a fix for this issue soon.

Aside from those process issues, the technical aspects of payday filing have been working very well.

We’re quite surprised at how slow other providers have been with developing payday filing. We know that some of the older desktop solutions are not planning on implementing payday filing and we anticipate others may find it takes a bit more time to bed in than they planned.

Some payroll companies are saying they won’t be ready until April 1, 2019. That’s a risky proposition given payday filing will be mandatory from that date. If there are any delays or issues with going live you could find yourself in a spot of bother. If I received that response I would start hunting for a different payroll system. We expect quite a flurry in the market as customers hunt out newly compliant payday filing software.

Meanwhile, our early adopter customers are now enjoying an automated, zero-touch process with regards to IRD, and we’ll soon start gently nudging the the majority of customers across so that all FlexiTime users are payday filing compliant well before the 1 April 2019 deadline.

Find out more about payday filing or sign up today.