What's new

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Court orders from Scotland and Northern Ireland, under their official names

• Four new order types. Current maintenance arrestment (CMA) and conjoined arrestment order (CAO) in Scotland. Attachment of earnings order (Northern Ireland) for fines, and from the Enforcement of Judgments Office. Each is worked out the way its own law sets, including whether student loan is taken alongside it. The Northern Ireland fines order works for every pay frequency: its weekly and monthly tables are applied for each week or month in the pay period.
• Official names everywhere. For example “Deduction from earnings order (DEO)”, “Direct Earnings Attachment (DEA)” and “Attachment of earnings order (AEO) – non-priority order”. Badges and filters use the abbreviation, and payslip lines now read “DEO - AB/123456”, “AEO priority - AB/123456” and so on, with the admin fee line named the same way. Lines from earlier pay runs keep their text.
• Two ways to choose the order type. I know the order type lists every order by its official name. Help me choose asks who sent the order. Each answer brings the next question into view, and every field explains where to find its value on the paperwork. Values the law fixes, such as the deduction table, protected earnings and the payment deadline, are shown read-only rather than asked.
• AEOs for maintenance or a debt use the court’s own figures. You enter the Normal deduction rate (NDR) and Protected earnings rate (PER) printed on the order (Attachment of Earnings Act 1971, section 6(5)). Orders for fines keep using the official tables. Orders you added before keep working as they were set up until they are paid; if the court sends new figures, use Update to the amounts on the court order.
• The right table, every time. The deduction table follows the employee’s pay frequency. A DEA takes the standard or higher rate from the DWP table, or the fixed amount DWP sets. A CTAEO needs you to say whether the council is in England or Wales.
• Record a variation. When a court or DWP changes an order, edit its figures: the percentage or amount, the PER, the DWP rate, a daily rate, the ordinary debts, an agreed higher rate, or a Northern Ireland order’s rates.
• Simpler statuses. An order shows as Active, Paused, On hold or Ended.
• Orders end on time. An order now ends by itself once its last deduction date has passed, as well as when it is paid in full.
• Take-home pay never goes below £0 because of court order deductions.

• An earnings arrestment (EA) now rounds an exact half penny down, as the Debtors (Scotland) Act 1987 (Schedule 2) requires.
• No student loan is taken in a pay period with an earnings arrestment, as HMRC’s guidance sets (CSLM18020).
• A DEA at the standard rate could take 1p less than it should, because its 20% maximum was rounded differently from the deduction. Both now round the same way.
• A Northern Ireland fines order at a higher rate the employee agreed to can take pay below 60%, as the regulations allow.
• A Northern Ireland Enforcement of Judgments Office order applies its rates to the time since the last pay day.
• A DEA and a Scottish arrestment are taken in the order the DWP regulations set (regulation 29(10)).

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Webhooks: connect your systems to payroll as it happens

• Choose exactly what to hear about, from 59 kinds of event, or whole groups such as every payslip event.
• Bureaus can use one address for every client, or pick which clients it covers.
• Nothing is lost when a system is down. Deliveries are retried for over a day, every attempt is logged, and anything can be sent again.
• Every delivery is signed, so a connected system can prove it came from Flow Payroll.

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Decide what happens to salary during statutory leave

• The days on leave are taken back automatically. A separate line on the payslip removes the salary for the days the statutory payment covers, at the rate the salary line paid them. It names the leave, the dates and the days, for example “Salary adjustment for maternity leave, 16 to 30 April 2026 (15 of 30 calendar days)”.
• Top up statutory pay. Add tiers that run from the first day of the leave, such as 100% of salary for 6 weeks and then 50% for 12 weeks. Or choose Full pay, which tops every day of the leave up to 100%. Statutory pay counts towards the percentage.
• Sickness and family leave are set separately. You can also set one family-leave payment apart, for example topping up maternity pay but not paternity pay, and give one employee their own setting.
• The lines follow the statutory payment. Edit or delete the payment and the adjustment and top-up change with it at the next recalculation. Like salary lines, they cannot be edited on the payslip.
• A change to the settings recalculates open pay runs for the employees it affects.

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Send enrolment letters straight from the compliance list

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See whether a scheduled report is still arriving, and who has been running reports

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Build your own reports, and see what has run

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Keep on top of enrolment letters, opt-out forms and re-enrolment

• Adding someone to a pension without choosing a date now starts their membership on the first day of the next pay period, rather than part way through the current one. You can still pick any date yourself.
• Nobody is charged a contribution for a pay period that ended before they joined.

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Tell us who sends your enrolment letters

• Flow now answers it from what really happened: a letter we sent and the email provider accepted, or your own declaration that you handle it. With neither, we leave it blank rather than confirm something we cannot show.
• A new setting for employers who issue the information themselves, by post or through your own systems. Set it once and we record who set it and when, so there is an audit trail of your declaration rather than an assumption of ours.
• A letter that bounced no longer counts. The worker was not told, so nothing is declared for them.

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See the opt-out dates before you refund anyone

• A timeline on the opt-out screen showing when they were enrolled, when their opt-out period ends, and when they are leaving, so the decision is visible rather than something you work out.
• The refund box follows the dates. It starts ticked only when the leaving date is certainly inside the period. Outside it, you can still refund, and we ask you to say why and keep that note on the leaver record.
• This is advice, not a ruling. Where we have no record of when the enrolment letter reached someone, we count from their enrolment date, which is the earliest the period can close, so it may run later. Your provider’s letter states the exact dates. The final call is yours.
• Enrolment letters now show their status on the employee’s pension record: when it went out, to which address, who sent it, and whether it arrived. A letter that bounced is shown as failed rather than as sent.
• Send the enrolment letter automatically when Flow enrols someone: a new switch in Settings → Pensions. Off by default, because many employers rely on their provider’s own welcome pack.

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Keep a director out of auto-enrolment without switching it off

• Mark exempt on the employee’s Benefits & loans tab: pick the reason — director, office holder, LLP member, HMRC tax protection, left a qualifying scheme in the last 12 months, winding-up lump sum, or under notice of termination — and add a note if there is evidence worth keeping, such as which protection certificate you saw.
• While exempt, the employee is not assessed, is never automatically enrolled — including at your three-yearly re-enrolment — and stops appearing in the pay run’s enrolment alerts.
• The exemption shows on their pension record with the reason and note, so the answer to “why isn’t this director enrolled?” is on screen rather than in someone’s memory.
• Their right to join survives. The exemption removes your duty to enrol, not their right to a pension: enrolling them manually from the same tab works as normal.
• Remove the exemption and assessment resumes on the next pay run, picking up where it left off.

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Salary is a history now, and the pay run pro-rates it

• A salary history on every employee. Open a person under People, go to the Employment tab, and the Salary card shows what they earn now and every figure before it, each with the date it took effect, the reason if one was given, and who recorded it.
• Add a change, or correct a record — they are different things. Add change records a new salary from a date and leaves the old one in place, which is what a rise is. Editing an existing row corrects a figure that was recorded wrongly, and changes what that period was worth. The last remaining salary cannot be deleted; set it to 0 instead, which says the person is not paid a salary.
• The pay run pays the salary in force on each day. A full period is the annual salary divided by the number of pay periods in the year. A part period — a joiner, a leaver, or a month with a change in it — is pro-rated across the days, and a change part-way through produces two lines, so the payslip shows the old salary up to the day before and the new one from it.
• Choose how part periods are counted. Under Settings, open Employment and set Salary calculation to calendar days or working days. Calendar days count every day of the period. Working days count only the days that person works, from their working pattern, so somebody on a three-day week is not short-changed by a five-day assumption. You can override it for one employee on their own Salary card.
• Fixing a start date fixes the salary with it. The starting salary is recorded from the start date, so correcting that date moves the first salary version too and the joiner is paid from the right day.
• Salary lines are worked out, not typed. They appear on the pay run like any other line but cannot be edited or removed, the same as statutory payments, so a later salary change or a corrected record always reaches the pay run. To pay somebody more or less than their salary in a period, add a separate line for the adjustment.

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Send payroll journals and invoices straight to Xero

• One connection, both uses. Sign in to Xero once for the organisation. A journal template can then be pointed at it, and the billing screens gain a send action. If your Xero login reaches several organisations you choose which one this employer’s payroll belongs to.
• Post the payroll journal as a draft. A connected template sends the journal to Xero as a draft manual journal for somebody to approve in the ledger, with your split levels mapped onto Xero’s tracking categories. A journal that does not balance is refused before anything leaves. Re-issuing a pay run sends the replacement and voids the one it supersedes, so a pay run leaves one entry rather than two.
• Map against the real chart of accounts. With a connection in place, the account-code and tax-rate pickers read live from Xero, so you pick codes that exist instead of typing them and finding out later.
• Send invoices, credit notes and contacts. One at a time or in bulk. A credit note carries its allocations with it, so the customer’s balance is right in one step. Attachments on an invoice and its line items follow the invoice across.
• Nothing sends itself. Closing an invoice sends nothing. Finalising a journal sends nothing. Every send is a person pressing send, on a document they can see, and asks to confirm first. This is the same model pension submissions already use.
• Refusals in plain words. A contact with no email address, too many attachments for one document, or Xero asking us to slow down — each says what happened and what to do, rather than passing Xero’s own wording through.

• Connecting an accounting system has moved from Settings → Billing → Integrations to Settings → Integrations, alongside every other connection. Existing billing features are unchanged.
• Invoices and credit notes are no longer pushed automatically when they are closed or authorised. Press Send when you want them to go.

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Send pension data straight to NEST

• Connect NEST from the scheme. Go to Settings, open the Pension tab, edit the NEST scheme and click Connect NEST. Enter the employer’s NEST sign-in and employer reference; they are checked with NEST straight away and stored encrypted. Pick the connection under Send to NEST directly, and the scheme’s Payment source becomes a list of the payment sources NEST actually holds.
• Send from the pay run, a step at a time. On a completed run’s Reporting & documents step, open a report in the Pension reports card and the steps for that scheme sit at the top: enrol new members, send the contribution schedule, approve the payment. Each is its own button with its own status, and each asks you to confirm before anything leaves. NEST’s answer shows against the step it belongs to: Sending…, Accepted by NEST with the schedule reference, or Not accepted with NEST’s own reasons listed underneath, in NEST’s words and with NEST’s codes.
• Approve the payment separately. Once NEST has accepted the schedule, the Approve payment step asks you to confirm the amount. It is the step that moves money, and it says so.
• Every submission says who sent it, and when. Each step records the person who pressed send and the time they did it, and shows NEST’s reply as a separate moment underneath. So a step reads as the whole story: sent by whoever sent it at one time, answered by NEST at another. Nothing reaches a provider without a name against it.
• Fix a refused member without re-running payroll. When NEST refuses somebody for a detail rather than an amount, such as a National Insurance number or postcode added after the run was locked, the refusal offers to re-read those members from their records and leaves the step ready to send again. Only the people NEST named are re-read, and every amount stays exactly as the locked run calculated it. The pay run’s pension files are rebuilt at the same time, so the download carries the correction too, whether you send through the connection or upload the file yourself.
• Nothing is lost when NEST is slow or down. A submission NEST cannot take is retried automatically over several hours, then flagged with a Send again button and the reason. A schedule NEST only partly accepted is flagged, never shown as done. A corrected pay run goes as a new submission; unchanged figures are never sent twice.
• Opt-outs and stopped contributions come back, and wait for you. Flow Payroll reads them from NEST when a pay run is opened, again at the moment it is locked, and every day in between. It never applies them on its own: an opt-out changes what somebody is paid and carries a refund duty, so each one waits under Settings, Integrations, Changes with a count on the tab and on the pay run’s Alerts step. Apply it, mark it handled elsewhere, rule it out, or delete it. Until it is applied, that pay run deducts as normal. No payroll refund is ever made automatically, because NEST refunds the member directly; what NEST reports is shown for you to check.
• The due date comes from NEST. Contribution schedules carry the date NEST published for that earnings period, rather than a date payroll guessed, so a schedule sent late is still due when NEST says it is. If NEST has published no schedule to read, the scheme has a When contributions are due setting to fall back on, and Flow Payroll refuses to send a guess NEST would reject.
• Import from NEST on the scheme reads what NEST already holds for the employer, so an existing NEST employer starts from what NEST already has.
• Settings, Integrations is the new home for provider connections: test the sign-in, update it, pause the connection, and see every submission and every check of NEST under Activity, with a Retry on anything that stopped.

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Payslips explain a pension deduction taken without tax relief

• Add the employee’s National Insurance number. Relief then applies from the next pay run.
• Contributions already sent to the pension provider are not changed by adding it, and the provider is not updated automatically, so update the member in the provider’s own portal if the relief is to be reclaimed on earlier contributions.

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Pension you can explain, adjust and refund

• Every pension amount is its own payslip line, labelled Pension, Additional voluntary contribution, One-off additional voluntary contribution or Pension refund, with a note underneath such as “5% of qualifying earnings, employer 3%” or “overridden for this pay run only”.
• Regular additional voluntary contribution on the employee’s Benefits & loans tab: an extra employee contribution, as a percentage or a fixed amount, paid every pay run on top of the scheme contribution.
• One-off additional voluntary contribution in the pay run: on the Payments step, a Pension button sits above the employee’s payments and deductions. Add an extra contribution for this pay run only, for example putting part of a bonus into someone’s pension. Nothing carries over to next month.
• Override pension this run in the same menu, for the months that do not fit the rules: unpaid leave, a part-period, a correction. Set employee and employer figures as percentages or fixed amounts for this run only, and any additional voluntary contributions still apply on top. If an override would take an enrolled member below the automatic enrolment minimum for the period, Flow Payroll asks you to confirm first.
• End a pension membership now asks why, not just when. An opt-out, a ceased membership and an administrative correction are three different things, and the employee’s record now says which one happened rather than calling every ending an opt-out.
• Refunds you can see before you commit. When you end a membership, Flow Payroll shows exactly what would be paid back, per pay period, before you confirm. Choose to refund through payroll and it appears as a Pension refund payment on the employee’s next payslip.
• A refunds history that outlives the enrolment. The employee’s pension section keeps their membership status, the opt-out or end date, the amount refunded to them, and the amount due back from the provider, so “what did we refund, and when?” is answerable months later. The same records list across the whole organisation for reconciling against provider statements.

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Find anyone on your team by how they are taxed

• Eight new filters on People → Team: Tax code, Tax basis, NI category, Student loan, Postgraduate loan, Starter declaration, Start date, and Director.
• Tax basis separates Week 1/Month 1 (non-cumulative) from Cumulative, which is how you find everyone taxed on the emergency basis regardless of their code.
• Student loan covers Plan 1, Plan 2, Plan 4, Plan 5, and No student loan. Plans that have already ended are excluded, so the filter matches what the pay run will actually deduct.
• Filters combine, so you can narrow to something specific — everyone on a cumulative basis with NI category C, say — and the count above the table tells you how many of your team match.
• Each filter only offers the values your organisation actually uses, so there are no dead ends in the list.

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The CSV importer, fully documented

• A new importing data from CSV guide covering the shared wizard: Excel and CSV upload, automatic column matching, default values, combine columns, and error handling.
• Saved mappings, explained end to end — save a column mapping once and Flow offers it automatically whenever a file with the same structure is uploaded, restoring column matches, defaults, and tags for your whole organisation.
• Every import’s mandatory and optional columns spelled out — employees (new starters and migration), pay run payments, pay elements, journal templates, and statutory payments.
• A dedicated pay elements guide — what pay elements are, how their tax, NI, and pension treatment drives payslip lines, and how to create or import your own.
• The exact import templates reproduced in each guide, identical to the wizard’s Download template files, ready to copy.
• The payments import’s wide layout (one row per employee, a column per pay element) and tag mappings, documented in running a pay run.

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Leavers are never missed on the FPS

• An employee stays on your pay run list until their leaving date has actually been reported to HMRC, rather than dropping off the moment you record it.
• A leaving date recorded too late for its own pay run is picked up on the next one, as a zero-value payslip carrying only the cessation.
• A new Leaver on this pay run alert on the alerts step shows who is being reported as leaving, with the leaving date. Employees who left before the pay period started are raised as a warning, so a late cessation is easy to spot.
• Cancelling a leaving date is now blocked once it has reached a finalised payslip, so your records and HMRC’s cannot drift apart.

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Reports API (Beta)

• Query datasets across the whole platform — payslips, payslip lines, payroll runs, statutory payments, court orders, holiday, payments, pensions, journals, invoices, and clients — with a field catalog that tells you exactly what each dataset can filter, group, and aggregate.
• Run reports synchronously and get the rows straight back, or queue CSV/JSONL exports of up to 5,000,000 rows behind a download link.
• Save a report definition once and reuse it everywhere — re-run it by ID, export it, or put it on a cron schedule delivered by signed webhook or email.
• Relative-period filters (@currentWeek, @currentMonth, @currentTaxYear) that resolve at run time, so a scheduled “this month” report never needs editing.
• A full run history that doubles as an audit trail, including access to sensitive fields.

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Payroll journals

• A journal is generated in the background as soon as payslips are calculated, and it locks together with the pay run — there is no separate finalise step.
• Journal templates in Settings → Journals define your nominal code mappings, control accounts, and cost splits by department, cost centre, NI category, or any tag group.
• Import existing mappings from Sage, Xero, Staffology, IRIS, and other systems, and move templates between companies — particularly useful for bureaux managing multiple entities.
• Every journal is balance-checked before it locks, and exports as Xero Manual Journal CSV, generic CSV, or PDF.

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June 2026: payslip email tracking and bulk tax forms

• See whether each payslip email arrived. The payslip list shows each email’s delivery status, and when a delivery failed it says why.
• Email P45s and P60s in bulk, with progress updating live as they go.
• Find an organisation quickly. When you can reach more than eight organisations, the switcher gets a search box and a keyboard shortcut.
• Monthly pay schedules take an offset, as weekly ones already did.
• The pay run’s alerts step flags NI category changes.
• Export pay elements from Settings → Pay elements.
• Search people by employee code.

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May 2026: tax forms, and year-end checks

• Checks before you finalise the tax year tell you what still needs attention.
• P60s in bulk: email them one at a time or in bulk. The last-emailed date shows on each, and they’re gathered on a tax documents page.
• P45s: preview one with a leaving date and reason of your choice, then download or email it. All of them are listed on the Tax forms tab.
• Set up or cancel leavers in bulk.
• P32 as a PDF.
• Alerts on each payslip, including National Minimum Wage checks based on age.
• Imports accept tag columns, and line items can come in a column-per-pay-element layout.
• Forms keep a draft on this device, so a half-finished form survives a closed tab.
• Court order payment history shows protected earnings and the deduction that was expected.

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April 2026: FPS downloads and pay runs in order

• Import statutory payments that started before Flow, including the weeks already paid, and preview the calculation first.
• Download the FPS as a PDF or CSV, and payslips as a single zip.
• EPS picks the tax month for you and takes final submission details.
• Retry a failed payment file, and put the pay period’s dates in the payment reference.
• Pay runs open in order. The next one can’t open until the latest is completed and locked.
• Recurring line items take start and end dates, and a shortfall setting.
• Choose whether zero-gross payslips go on the FPS.
• Payslip PDFs match the emailed payslip, and show the tax period.
• Email invoices and credit notes, choose from several due date options, and build invoice references from a formula.
• Find invoices faster: search by invoice number and filter by several clients at once. The accounting provider’s details show on each invoice and credit note.
• The pay run summary shows the total charge and VAT for billed line items.

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March 2026: year-end finalisation and P60s

• Finalise the tax year for each pay schedule, from Pay.
• P60s, finalised and in preview, on the employee’s record.
• Import from Excel as well as CSV. Templates now come with example values, and imported line items are checked against your pay elements.
• Tax code and NI category fill themselves in from the starter declaration and the employee’s age.
• Employee data is checked against HMRC’s FPS rules as you enter it.
• Rolled-up holiday pay.
• Invoice templates and finance defaults for the organisation. Tax rates and account codes can be archived, deleted and filtered.
• Line items carry a charge description, and invoices flag lines that are missing a PO number or an attachment.
• Student Loan Plan 5.
• BACS files as CSV, and payment references built from a formula.
• Net pay arrangement as a pension type.
• Year-to-date earnings show gross for employee and employer NI.

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February 2026: holiday, and credit notes

• Holiday: set a holiday policy, and track each employee’s entitlement, holiday taken, history and opening balance. You’re warned when hours taken exceed the balance, and the 52-week average rate is worked out for you.
• Credit notes: raise them and allocate them to invoices. A credit note that comes from an employee’s negative line item names the employee.
• Connect Xero from the integrations tab and sync your clients and contacts.
• Invoices can be grouped by tags and filtered by status, show VAT and account codes on each line, and take default values for new clients and invoices.
• Opening balances are simpler to add and change, in Settings → Opening balances.
• Government Gateway credentials are only asked for when you need them. They depend on whether you submit directly or through an agent.
• Read-only payslip lines open in their own view, so it’s clear what can and can’t be edited.
• Row actions sit in one menu.

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January 2026: auto-enrolment

• Auto-enrolment: organisation-wide auto-enrolment and postponement settings, opt-outs, enrolment dates, and enrolment letters sent one at a time or with a batch enrolment. Letters that are due appear in the pay run’s alerts.
• CSV imports remember your headers. Flow saves how your file maps and matches it automatically the next time.
• Attach files to line items.
• Tags, grouped into a hierarchy, to organise people and pay.
• Open an employee straight from the pay run, with a link you can share.
• A cleaner, lighter design across the app.

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December 2025: court orders, statutory payments, billing and CSV import

• Court orders: add attachment of earnings orders, with their deduction settings, remittance and payment history.
• Statutory payments: record sick, maternity, paternity and other statutory pay, and edit the employee’s details inline.
• Import from a CSV: line items in batch on the Pay page, and employees.
• Billing, for bureaux: Clients and Invoices pages, and line items that carry a charge rate, PO number, client and attachments so they can be invoiced.
• Pension postponement, and an opt-out button on the employee’s pension.
• An alerts step in the pay run brings together what needs checking before you lock it.
• Class 1A NI is supported, and PAYE liability management was corrected.
• Address fields are no longer required on an employee.

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November 2025: employee codes

• An employee code of your own on each employee.
• HMRC notices are easier to work through.
• Sort tables by clicking a column header.

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October 2025: several organisations, and HMRC notices

• Work across several organisations from one sign-in, and switch between them from the sidebar.
• HMRC notices (tax codes, student loans and others) are retrieved from HMRC and applied to the employee they belong to.
• Tax codes and NI categories keep their history, so a change can start from a date.
• Recurring deductions, as well as recurring payments, clearly badged as one or the other.
• Choose the pension group’s earnings basis.

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September 2025: recurring pay, P32 and RTI history

• Recurring line items carry pay from one pay run to the next.
• Every FPS and EPS in one list, with a viewer for the XML that was sent.
• P32, the monthly summary of what you owe HMRC.
• An employee checklist during onboarding shows what’s still missing.
• Pay periods are shown on pay runs and payslips, and weekly schedules take an offset.
• External reference IDs on pension schemes.

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August 2025: leavers, P45s and PAYE liability

• Record a leaver and download their P45.
• PAYE liability: see what’s owed to HMRC for the tax year, and record your payments against it.
• Pension export files for each pay run.

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July 2025: Flow Payroll goes live

• People: add and edit employees, including starter, director and leaver details, bank accounts, student and postgraduate loans, year-to-date figures and payroll ID. Tax codes can be edited, including Week 1/Month 1.
• Pay schedules: pay dates and payment method for each payroll, in Settings → Pay run.
• Pay runs: run payroll, lock it with a record of who locked it and when, and submit the FPS to HMRC. Submission errors are listed so they can be fixed.
• Payslips: email them to employees and download them as PDFs.
• Payments: download the BACS payment file for a pay run.
• Pensions: set up pension schemes, add employees to them, and download the provider file.
• Reports: a gross-to-net report, downloadable as CSV.
• Running balances and HMRC settings for the organisation.
• Sign-in with email verification and password reset.