Hi Tina,

SSP, SMP and other statutory payments in Sage 50 Payroll pay in arrears of your process date. Therefore, any statutory payments you pay will be paid up to and including the Friday of a particular week. It isn't possible to change this in the software, as this is what HMRC recommend.

Under RTI, the deadline for submitting a Full Payment Submission (FPS) is on or before the employees are paid. HMRC use the process/pay date contained in the submission to determine if you've submitted late or not.

HMRC state that when you calculate PAYE and NIC you should calculate them 'when you actually make the payment', and that 'the point of payment is when the earnings are placed unreservedly at the disposal of the employee', which is when the employees receive their money. To ensure you're adhering to this you should set your process date to the date that the employees get paid for the relevant pay period, therefore you shouldn’t pay your employees a week in hand.

Full info on what date to use when processing under Real Time Information (RTI) here.