The Government's latest guidance states:
"Statutory Sick Pay (SSP) will now be available for eligible individuals diagnosed with COVID-19 or those who are unable to work because they are self-isolating in line with Government advice. This is in addition to the change announced by the Prime Minister that SSP will be payable from day 1 instead of day 4 for affected individuals."
This change is effective for SSP beginning from Friday 13 March 2020.
The Government will work with employers over the coming months to set up the repayment mechanism for employers as soon as possible. We'll let you know as soon as we have more information on the reclaim process.
As Sage 50cloud Payroll calculates SSP to start on the fourth day, after serving the first three waiting days, for any employees affected by COVID-19 that you want to pay SSP from day one, you need to set up and assign a pay element called Coronavirus SSP to your employees. You can then record the amount of SSP that you want to pay the employee in Enter Payments. To record the absence in the employee record, you can set up a custom absence type called Coronavirus.