Maternity Pay Advice Please - apologies if wrong section

[Iona1651]

Hi all

I'm not sure if I'm in the wrong part of the site but can't find anywhere to post in money or work so thought I'd try here.

I need some advice re. my maternity pay and would be grateful if anyone could help.

I started my maternity leave on Monday 9 June 2014, my last day at work being Friday 6 June 2014. I have now received my payslip from work who have paid me pro-rata for the first few days of June. However, I cannot work out how they have done this.

I have been on the Government website to calculate my maternity pay based on dates and earnings and, which I discovered, increased in April (my employer writing me a letter in March and using those figures prior to April). My maternity pay is correct so far, being based on 90% of my earnings but later pay will have to be increased.

It's just the pro-rata days for working I need help calculating, my employer has this as 0.238 days of my monthly salary amount.

I'd be very grateful if anyone could help/advise me.

Sorry for rambling and thanks for reading. x

Different places work out salaries differently:

One way would to take your yearly, divide it by 12, then by the number of days in the month (so 30 in June), multiplied by 8 (since you started mat on the 9th)

Another would be the salary/12/the number of working days in the month (around 20) multiplied by the 5 working days you did.

Others might do it based on a daily salary figure, so salary divided by number of working days in the year multiplied by the number of working days in that month.

Do any of those figures match your amount?

Your best bet would be to give payroll a call and ask them how they came to that figure. It could be that they were given the wrong start date.

Either way they'll be able to tell you how they calculate salary.

Thanks for your reply. I think they've done it by ?/12/working days in June (21) x 5 working days = amount I have been paid.

However, the ?/12/30x8 comes out at over 50 more - so why is there no set way?

I did it by 52 weeks/yr x 5 days/wk = 260 working days/yr / 12 months = 21.667 average working days/mth.

21.667 - 16 (working days I was on maternity leave for June) = 5.667 days.

5.667/21.667 = 0.261 ratio of working days x my monthly salary amount.

They have paid me 0.238 as a ratio.

Does any of this make sense to you?

I have a call in to them to check it and explain for me but still confused as to how there are so many differening outcomes, not just be 5 or so.

There's no set way because there's no "right" way as such. Basically when you're paying a lot of people, not everyone will be working the same shift pattern etc. so the 52 weeks at 5 days a week may not actually apply, and since salary is paid a 12th at a time, you can't base it on the weeks.

I think some companies are more generous and consider the payment as for every day, others are more "accurate" and only pay for the days actually worked that month. Unfortunately it sounds like you're in the latter group.

Does that make any sense at all?

NB: I've never been a part of making the rules or choosing the system so could be completely wrong! :)

Not wrong about the method, but about the reason for the method!