Start of Year Archive Process

You can run this process at the beginning of a new payroll tax reporting year to clear down (reset to zero) employees' previous taxable pay and tax paid amounts and reset their tax basis to cumulative.

The Start of Year Archive process also produces an audit report showing the process results.

The process updates the employee records that meet any of these conditions:

• Non-cumulative tax basis

• Nonzero P11 previous taxable pay

• Nonzero P11 previous tax paid

  The process sets the P11 values to zero. And, it sets the Tax Basis to Cumulative, effective from the 06 April of the tax year.

Use the Submit a Payroll Flow task to run the Start of Year Archive process.

Before You Start

The updated values are stored in the Pay As You Earn component details of the PAYE component on an employee's Statutory Deductions card. For employee records to be considered for clear down:

• The previous taxable pay or previous tax paid for the PAYE component must be greater than zero or the tax basis must be non-cumulative.

• The PAYE component can't have any future dated changes.

When you submit the flow, you must select the payroll statutory unit for which you're updating employee records. Optionally, you can select a tax reporting unit within that payroll statutory unit for updating. In addition, you must provide these parameters.

Start of Year Archive Process Parameters

Parameter	Description
Year	The year for which records will be updated. For example, if you're running this process for the tax year starting on 6 April 2022, then enter 2022.
Batch Name	A user-defined name that describes the contents of the batch file that's created by this process. For example, 2013 Start of Year Batch. This name must be unique within your legislative data group. The batch file is retained after the upload process completes, and you can query it by this name.
Submission Type	Indicates whether the submission is Test or Live. If you select Test, the process generates the audit report with results. But it doesn't save updates to the database. If you select Live, the process saves the updates.

Process Results

You can view the process results on the payroll flow page. You can verify the updated data in the PAYE component on the calculation card for a specific person. If the process completed successfully, click Go to Task for the start-of-year task on the checklist. Then click View Results on the Processes and Reports tab to access the audit report.

Note: The start of year archive report output is a .CSV file. You can also view it as a spreadsheet, if required.

Errors and Warnings Report

If an error prevented the processing from completing successfully, select Go to Task for the start-of-year task on the checklist. Click the Errors and Warnings tab to view the error. Correct the underlying problem identified on this tab and then rerun the process.

Note: The Errors and Warnings report is a .CSV file. You can also view it as a spreadsheet, if required.

Audit Report

The audit report lists each employee whose tax information was successfully cleared down. The report also lists each employee whose tax information couldn't be updated and the reason for the error.

If the report contains errors, correct the underlying data problems identified in the report, and then rerun the process. The process won't update a person's record more than once on the same date. It processes only records that weren't already updated on the effective date of the process.

Note: You can't roll back or undo this process.

After the successful completion of this process, you can view the updated tax information for an employee using the Calculation Cards task. After clear down:

• Taxable pay and tax paid are zero.

• Tax basis is Cumulative.

• Authority is P9X.

• Authority date is 06 April of the tax year

• The last update process is set to one of these:

  • Clear down: If no changes existed on the 6 April for this record.

  • Clear down uplifted: If the Tax Code Uplift Archive process has already run for the employee as at 06 April.

  • Clear down with effective date change: If the tax code or tax basis or P11 figures had been changed as at 06 April, but not through the Tax Code Uplift Archive process.

Next Steps

Run the Tax Code Uplift Process to uplift tax codes for the upcoming year.

How to Run Start of Year Flows

Here's how you can run the start of year flows:

• Load P6 files
• Run Start of Year Archive process
• Run Tax Code Uplift Archive process
• Load P9s

HMRC doesn't issue P6s HMRC with an effective date of 06 April. HMRC stops issuing P6s mid-March to ensure that no P6 is issued after the point where it can be applied for month 12 or the week 52 payroll. As you run the Start of Year and Tax Code Uplift flows after the final pay run for the year, there won't be an issue with P6s that haven't been applied before running these flows.

HMRC starts issuing P6s by late April or early May, so there is no issue with future P6s in relation to Start of year flows processing. The P6 gets overwritten on 06 April by a P9. P9 overrides the Tax Code Uplift on the same day.