Key concepts

Documentation Index

Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://docs.flowpayroll.ai/llms.txt

Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

Flow Payroll is organised around a few core ideas. Understanding how they connect makes everything else easier.

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Organisation

Your organisation is the top-level account that everything belongs to — your people, pay schedules, settings, and submissions. All data is scoped to your organisation, and your HMRC references live here. If you run payroll for several companies, see clients below.

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People

People (your employees and workers) are the individuals you pay. Each person has personal details, employment details, a tax code, an NI category, and pay information. People move through a lifecycle: you onboard them, pay them each period, and eventually process them as a leaver.

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Pay run configuration

A pay run configuration (or pay schedule) defines how and how often you pay a group of people:

• Pay frequency — weekly, fortnightly, four-weekly, or monthly.
• Pay day and the periods that follow from it.
• Defaults that apply to everyone on that schedule.

Each person is attached to a pay run configuration. Most organisations have one; you can have several if different groups are paid on different cycles.

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Pay run

A pay run is one execution of a pay schedule for a specific period — for example, “Monthly, June 2025”. In a pay run you enter or import each person’s hours and adjustments, Flow Payroll calculates gross-to-net pay (tax, NI, pension, and other deductions), and you review and approve the results. You can preview a pay run at any time to see calculated figures on real data. Once you lock the period, final payslips are generated and the pay run is ready to report to HMRC.

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Payslip

A payslip is the per-person, per-period statement of pay. Before a period is locked, payslips are previews based on the latest data. After locking, they’re final and can be shared with your team.

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RTI: FPS and EPS

Real Time Information (RTI) is how you report payroll to HMRC. There are two submissions:

• FPS (Full Payment Submission) — sent on or before each pay day. It tells HMRC what you paid each person and the tax and NI deducted.
• EPS (Employer Payment Summary) — sent monthly when you have something to report at the employer level, such as statutory pay recovery or a nil-payment period. Due by the 19th of the following tax month (the 22nd if you pay electronically).

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Statutory payments

Statutory payments are amounts you must pay employees in certain circumstances, set by law:

• SSP — Statutory Sick Pay
• SMP — Statutory Maternity Pay
• SPP — Statutory Paternity Pay
• SAP — Statutory Adoption Pay
• ShPP — Statutory Shared Parental Pay
• SPBP — Statutory Parental Bereavement Pay
• SNCP — Statutory Neonatal Care Pay

Flow Payroll calculates eligibility and amounts, includes them in pay runs, and reports them via RTI.

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Pensions and auto-enrolment

UK employers must automatically enrol eligible workers into a workplace pension. Flow Payroll assesses each worker every pay run, enrols those who qualify, applies contributions, and produces the files and letters your pension provider needs.

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Court orders

A court order (attachment of earnings) requires you to deduct money from an employee’s pay and send it to a third party — for example a CMS DEO, AEO, DEA, or CTAEO. Flow Payroll applies the right calculation, respects protected earnings, and tracks the outstanding balance.

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Client

If you run payroll for more than one business — for example as a staffing agency or bureau — each business you serve is a client. Clients let you separate people, pay runs, and reporting per business, and invoice them for your services.

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Tags

Tags let you classify people and pay data — by department, cost centre, project, or any category you choose — so you can group and report on them flexibly.

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How it fits together

A typical monthly cycle ties these together: