February 2023 Newsletter

This is our first newsletter of 2023, so we would like to take the opportunity to wish all of our customer (and followers) a successful year and provide assurance that we will work hard to continue to provide the very best service we can as well as great value for money.

The general economic climate is not the best that we have seen and not only is it challenging for our customers, we as a business are seeing the effects of ever increasing prices. As we have reported for some time, we are continually taking steps to reduce our costs which enables us to keep price rises to a minimum.

There is little to report in the way of changes to legislation, stability seems to be at the forefront of the Governments thinking and as such we do not anticipate much to change for the new tax year, we do of course await the forthcoming budget with anticipation.

Our updating of the LivePay system continues, with some new features becoming available now, and more planned for later in the year. We are also busy onboarding a number of new customers ready for the new Tax Year. The new Tax Year is always the most popular time to change provider but this year seems to have reverted back to pre-pandemic levels and has been busier than previous. The feedback from new customers seems to indicate that other providers are cutting costs by reducing service levels at the same time as increasing prices.

We have conducted a review of the pattern of support calls we have received over the last twelve months and have noted that virtually no calls are received after 17:00. Due to Health & Safety, we have to have more than one staff member in attendance at all times so having staff in attendance until 17:30 does not appear to be the best use of our resources, we have therefore changed our office hours to be 08:30 to 17:00.

Web Portal Change - Employee Documents

We are always looking to improve our technology to compliment our service and we have been working to add several new features around HR data storage.

The latest change released is the ability to load individual documents to an employees' profile, these are then linked to the employee's payslip portal. Adding these documents is as simple as logging into our employer portal, selecting the employee amend option and the "Employee Docs" section.

Users can choose the amount of data they wish to store within an employees profile, the default is 25MB worth of data. As a file is uploaded the status bar on the screen is filled up to show the amount of storage space used.

When files are uploaded these will automatically be visible to the employee through the payslip portal. If necessary there is the option to "hide" these documents from employees and only make them visible to staff with access to the employer portal.

This area is intended to be used for employers to upload documents such as contracts, training certificate and other personal documents. These employee documents are not notified to our Bureau team, so anything relevant to payroll processing still needs to be uploaded through the standard "Uploads" feature of our portal.

This employee document storage facility is not automatically available and, dependent on the exact requirements and storage, may be subject to an additional cost. If this feature is of interest to you then please contact support@ccmlpay.com for how to get this implemented.

From our Support Team

Whilst we do not expect this to affect many users, we have been notified of major works by our communications connection provider. This will result in a small period of downtime overnight (for one night only). This happens very occasionally but in this instance it is on the last Friday of the month so may be at a time that some night workers and people operating in different time zones access our service.

The outage window is 24/02/2023 at 00:01 until 24/02/203 at 06:00, the works are anticipated to last for approximately 3 hours.

Statutory Changes

As we draw towards the end of another Tax Year, HMRC have begun to release the intended thresholds and percentages for the new Tax Year. At present these are only intended figures so may be subject to change following the budget in March.

England and Wales - Tax and NI Changes

There is only one change to the tax parameters for 2023/24, the 45% tax threshold has been reduced to ï¿¡125,040.

The tax free annual allowance remains at 12,570 and the National Insurance rates and thresholds are remaining the same.

More details around the change to the 45% bracket can be found here.

Scotland - Tax and NI Changes

The National Insurance rates and thresholds are remaining in line with England and Wales, however, Scotland has made changes to its tax thresholds. A full breakdown of these changes can be found here.

Benefits and Pension Rates

HMRC have also released a document that highlights the new Benefits and Pension rates. Within the document it highlights how Statutory Sick Pay (SSP) will rise to ï¿¡190.40 per week and Statutory Paternity Pay (SMP/SPP) will rise to ï¿¡172.48, the full document can be found here.

Fuel and Van Benefit

A full breakdown of the fuel and van benefit charge can be found here.

The main thing to note is that the flat-rate van benefit charge will increase to ï¿¡3,960. The multiplier for the car fuel benefit will increase to ï¿¡27,800, with the flat-rate fuel benefit charge increasing to ï¿¡757.

National Living and National Minimum Wage

HMRC have announced the new NLW and NMW rates, which apply from 1st April 2023, with the full details being found here.