DPs Work keep reporting wages early

[Workquestion11]

OK I know I'm not U on this one but what the heck can I do
We receive a small amount of uc. Dps work have now twice reported his wages early
Last month he was paid on the 30th but was reported on the 28th meaning it affected our assessment period on uc

This month he is due to get paid on the 31st, so tomorrow but it was already reported as paid on Friday so affected us again!

Dp says the lady that deals with the pay is only there once or twice a week so difficult to get a hold of and he doesn't seem enthusiastic to keep bothering them about this but we've now lost hundreds of pounds and the stress is really starting to get to me.

I know its his work and I can't get involved but what the heck can I do or do I just accept they'll continue to do this and mess up our uc

It can be normal to have a payslip on 28th and be paid on 28th. Getting payroll dated 28th but not paid until 2nd is an error though, see the HMRC links above.

You're only earning just over 1k a month for working full time? That's not even minimum wage surely? That can't be right.

Well I work 30-33 hours so not exactly full time

There was an HMRC circular about this a few years ago (well before the pandemic, so 2018 or 19, possibly even earlier). It advised employers that they should report the date of payment as the normal pay day, even when it's paid earlier, to stop this happening.

I haven't heard of a case where this has gone wrong for ages, so I assume that most employers are managing it correctly. I work in welfare rights, so get told about a lot of UC problems, including from staff who work in the same organisation as I do.

Funnily enough, our employer was a bit tardy changing the way they report, and my manager had to do a bit of arse-kicking.

It's easy to alter, although the first month payroll were inundated with queries about why we weren't being paid early in a bank holiday month. Our payslips now have a note on them saying that the actual payment date is the last banking day of the month, and I've seen others that say similar, eg "15th or last banking day prior to 15th".

So neither of you is working full-time and you’re relying on UC?

You both need to up your hours so that your need to rely on the state is minimal.

You’re noticing the difference in income because you’re both only working part time and are relying on UC for a huge chunk of your income.

Why are you both only working part-time?

Because doing it this way means we can both get out to work

@Cloverforever remember it's after tax. 120 hours a month and £1000 coming in means she's getting £1200ish before tax which is £10 an hour. Minimum wage round abouts.

I was working on full time hours of 40 per week as previously stated. Not 30, which is part-time.

A lot of f/t jobs are only 35 hours pw. Full time where I work is 36 hours.

They are working p/t because there would be childcare costs if one or both of them increased their hours. Any saving to the DWP from the increase in earnings would probably be wiped out by the DWP paying a chunk of the childcare costs, which for 4 children would be considerable.

I did a benefit check for a couple with 3 kids last week, and even though they were working 70 hours pw between them, they were still entitled to nearly £1,300 a month in UC, because rents are high in this area.

I'd say 30-33 hours per week is pretty much full-time or as near as dammit. No need for condescending posts.

Hope you manage to get it sorted.

Just off the phone from uc, it took them a while to figure out what I was trying to say
In the end they've said
"As your partners wage was reported as the 28th, unless his work place changes the date themselves then we cannot help"

A message from our payroll software provider made it very clear that we need to use the usual reporting date even if we for example pay people early for Christmas (we have a 2 week shutdown)

Completely irrelevant to the problem.

OP, if I were you, I'd draft a very simple email with bullet points detailing the issue and the impact. Get DP to send the email to payroll, cc'ing his line manager, asking them if they could please amend their processes because it has cost the family £500.

Just ask his payroll to rollback his wages and change the date to correct one , it's really simple to do. Once it's done she cal do another RTI submission will HMRC will see

Depends on your software. My current one can’t do this.

If have to load a backup and re—run for everyone.

Tbf, to receive no uc we would have to have earnings of over 3.5k a month
That's just not doable for us.
I even tried to take on a second job in the evening at Tesco and they told me I was too over qualified to be stacking shelves 🙄

Don't feel the need to justify yourself to dickheads on the Internet. Honestly, save yourself the hassle as it's a pointless waste of time.

You have 4 kids and I'm sure you're busy enough without trying to explain yourself to people to whom you owe absolutely nothing.

Op head over to the website universal credit essentials and post this. The admin will whizz you a reply to copy & paste on your journal and get this sorted out for you. Good luck!

So DP spoke to his manager who agreed that this shouldn't be happening and does not happen to anyone else who works there
Manager is contacting HR so should be resolved by the end of next week 🤞

A monthly payroll needs to be reported on the same date every month, to avoid two payments within one UC period.

I really don’t think it’s possible to report a pay on June 2nd, July 31st etc. it might suit your circumstances, but it will not suit everyone.

But they should be reporting it on the actual day it gets paid!
I'm due wages on the 15th August, they've been added to my hmrc page but it says 15th August, not today's date!
And as I said in my update, nobody else is having this issue so it definitely is wrong

I've heard about this problem on Radio 4 in the past. Part of the problem is that while most employees including OP and her DH get paid monthly, Universal Credit is paid in 4 week blocks.

OP's DH's payroll has made this worse. OP isn't asking that they vary the date just to suit her and her DH, but that payroll reports the correct date.

OP, I'm glad your DH has spoken to his manager and seems to have got a sympathetic response.

I would say, I think the responses might have been more helpful and umm, reasonable in a different section, though I know a lot of people seem to look more at AIBU. I tend to see AIBUs from Active threads or hot topics and those threads which are busy tend to be be AIBU type threads much more often.

I had a similar thing happen when applying for a mortgage. I had to get a document from HMRC declaring my annual earnings, can't remember what the document was called though. But you partner needs to let work know asap how it's effecting your income and tell them exactly how he needs to be paid. I do the wages sometimes for the family business and I don't mind someone contacting me to make sure they don't lose UC. Actually had it once and it's no problem to sort once made aware.