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Sometimes money is owed to someone after they have already left and had their P45. A commission that lands a month later, a service charge, an outstanding holiday balance. HMRC calls this a payment after leaving, and it has its own rules. Flow Payroll handles those rules for you. You add the person to an open pay run and add the payment as normal, we take care of the tax code and the reporting, and we ask you one question about the payment that decides how National Insurance is worked out.

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Add a former employee to a pay run

  1. Open the pay run and go to the Payments step.
  2. Above the employee list, select Former employee.
  3. Pick the person. The list shows everyone on this pay schedule who has left and is not already on the run, with the date they left.
  4. Select Add to pay run.
Their payslip is prepared in the background. Once it appears in the employee list, add the payment the same way you would for anyone else.
You can only do this while the pay run is open. Once a pay run is locked its payslips are frozen and feed your FPS, so people cannot be added to it.

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The one question you need to answer

When you add a payment to a former employee, we ask how National Insurance should be worked out. It is the only thing we cannot decide for you, because it depends on what the payment was for.
1

A one-off they were not expecting

An outstanding holiday balance, a late commission, a service charge, an unexpected bonus, or back pay after a pay rise.National Insurance is worked out on weekly thresholds. This is the answer for almost every payment after leaving, and it is what we use unless you say otherwise.
2

Something they were expecting on their normal pay cycle

A bonus they were always due, or pay that was always going to reach them on their usual pay date.National Insurance stays on their usual thresholds, the same ones they had while they were employed.
Why it matters: the two answers produce different figures. A £1,000 one-off to someone who was paid monthly attracts £58.66 of employee National Insurance on weekly thresholds. The same £1,000 on monthly thresholds attracts nothing, because it falls short of the monthly threshold. Picking the wrong one moves real money, so pick the one that describes the payment. If you are not sure, leave it on the first option. That is the safer of the two: it deducts National Insurance rather than missing it, and a refund is easier to put right than an underpayment to HMRC.
The question only appears for a former employee who has already had their P45. HMRC’s rule exists only for payments made after the employment ended, so you will never see it for someone still on your payroll.

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What we do automatically

Once the payment is on their payslip, we apply HMRC’s rules without you having to do anything.
HMRC requires payments made after a P45 has been issued to be taxed at 0T on a week 1/month 1 basis. That means no personal allowance, so the tax will look higher than the person is used to. This is correct and expected.Scottish and Welsh taxpayers get S0T and C0T so the right rates apply. Their saved tax code is not changed — the override applies to this payment only.
We apply the answer you gave to the question above. A one-off uses weekly thresholds whatever the person used to be paid on, so a £350 payment to someone who was paid monthly still attracts National Insurance. A payment they were expecting keeps their usual thresholds.A payslip has one National Insurance calculation, so if you add several payments and any one of them is a one-off, the whole payslip uses weekly thresholds. That is the only answer HMRC’s rules allow when the two are mixed.Student loan and postgraduate loan deductions come off as normal.
The payment goes on your next FPS with the payment after leaving indicator set, alongside their original leaving date and payroll ID. That is how HMRC matches it to the employment they have already closed.
HMRC is explicit that you must not issue another P45. We do not generate one, and the person’s leaver record is left exactly as it was. Their payslip is the documentary confirmation of the payment that HMRC expects you to give them.

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Spotting these payslips

A payslip that is a payment after leaving is flagged as Paid after leaving in the employee list and in the alerts for the run. Hover the flag and it tells you the leaving date, the tax code applied, and which basis National Insurance was worked out on, so anyone reviewing the run can see why the figures look different from usual.

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If they have not been reported to HMRC yet

If someone left but their leaving date has not reached HMRC on an FPS yet, you can still add them to a pay run the same way. In that case it is not a payment after leaving, it is a late final payment, so:
  • their normal tax code applies
  • their leaving date goes to HMRC on this FPS
  • no payment-after-leaving indicator is set
Flow Payroll works out which of the two applies. You do not need to choose.

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Paying someone in a later tax year

If the payment falls in a tax year after the one they left in, the year-to-date figures reported to HMRC cover only that payment, which is what HMRC asks for. Nothing extra to do.

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Things this does not cover

  • Termination payments over £30,000 and other end-of-employment packages have their own tax and National Insurance treatment.