I know I'm working from home but come on HMRC this is ridiculous

[Comefromaway]

I already ran payroll for this week/mont. I've spent all after noon getting the figures together ready for Monday on calculating furlough amounts, particulary the pro rata amounts for part week/month (our staff were furloughed on various dates throughout one week as work dried up). Working out the national insurance and pension amounts to be claimed back took ages.

So at 10 past 8 on a Friday night I get an email from HMRC detailing exactly how they want it calculating. I reckon they are trying to slow everyone down so they are not ready to log on straight away on Monday.

Still got to do the CIS as well by tomorrow.

You are aware that most of them are also working from home, and trying to process a totally unprecedented national scheme for many thousands of employers in a few weeks? Give them a break. Chancellors and Ministers can announce whatever the hell they like, but they don't have to implement what they announce. HMRC is not some organism. It's a bunch of equally stressed out workers, trying to do their best.

But everyone still had to be paid by today.

How does that fact change any of the other facts? They are just employees trying to do their jobs too. They are also working from home in many cases, juggling other responsibilities and dealing with staff shortages. You received an email at 20:10 on a Friday - do you think those are normal office hours for HMRC staff? They are doing the best they can.

We have not yet seen an email. How do they want it calculated?

It wasn't a personal email sent to you on a Friday evening by a human. It's part of a batch of several million which have been sent out over the past couple of days. I'm an accountant, all our payroll clients are set up with our email address. We're getting them through at the rate of 1 or 2 per hour throughout Thursday and Friday, day and night. It'll be their automated system sending them out gradually so that their and other servers don't crash with the sheer number of them!

Oh shit I dont normally do payroll and thought there might be help with the calculations. I'll have to get the work laptop out today and check.Thanks for the heads up OP.

It'll be going to my accountant then... what info do they need? I ask because I guarantee my accountant will phone expecting me to have the info to hand and I won't- it'll all be at work! So if I know what they need, I can get it together today iyswim. Thanks in advance peeps! X

The government website states that also available from Monday is a calculator to help ensure you are calculating the correct figures before you apply.
We've waited this long for the scheme to be set up and a lot of people will be using it. I'm not stressing about it, I'll gabs a look at the calculator on Monday double check things then get cracking.
<a class="break-all" href="https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=www.gov.uk/guidance/work-out-80-of-your-employees-wages-to-claim-through-the-coronavirus-job-retention-scheme&ved=2ahUKEwij3_y6tfHoAhVlRBUIHUtFC9oQFjAAegQIBxAC&usg=AOvVaw1nehbQp7ydMx2cmQwMb1bQ" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=www.gov.uk/guidance/work-out-80-of-your-employees-wages-to-claim-through-the-coronavirus-job-retention-scheme&ved=2ahUKEwij3_y6tfHoAhVlRBUIHUtFC9oQFjAAegQIBxAC&usg=AOvVaw1nehbQp7ydMx2cmQwMb1bQ

It'll be going to my accountant then... what info do they need? I ask because I guarantee my accountant will phone expecting me to have the info to hand and I won't- it'll all be at work! So if I know what they need, I can get it together today iyswim.

The details needed are at the bottom of the HMRC webpage - if your accountant does your payroll, they'll already have most of that information.

www.gov.uk/guidance/claim-for-wage-costs-through-the-coronavirus-job-retention-scheme

But don't assume your accountant will be making the claim 9am on Monday morning. There's going to be a queueing system as millions of employers are expected to want to claim and the system can't handle all those at once. Accountants/payroll bureau will have dozens/hundreds of claims to make. So, they'll be doing it over several days if not weeks. We don't even know if their system will even work yet. We don't know if we can claim for all our clients in one session after queueing or whether we have to go back into the queue for the next client after we've made a claim.

What certainly won't happen is your accountant phoning up asking for immediate information whilst he's half way through your claim. So there'll be no urgency in that respect.

I've got a hand full of clients ready to claim for in my first batch. I'll try Monday to see if I can even log into their system and how long the queue is. If not, then I'll try Tuesday. And so on. Accountants aren't expecting this to go smoothly. HMRC systems are a mess at the best of times, and this has been hastily thrown together.

My top tip is do not even bother trying to access the portal on Monday. Not worth the inevitable hassle. Wait until Tuesday at least.

I've just looked at it. I hoped it would calculate NI and pension contributions automatically but I cant make sense of it. Might have to leave it to our accountant but I appreciate they might have to do it later in the week.

Flowery - what exactly is a non discretionary bonus. Me and my boss disagree on this. I think the salaried employee who gets an extra £175 per month bonus every month as long as certain conditions are met is non discretionary but the one who got £2000 last summer because he worked a month lodging away and another £2000 at Christmas because he did well on a difficult project doesn’t count.

(boss told him we could average all his bonuses out over the last 12 months to calculate the 80 per cent.) He thinks it’s not fair that the hourly paid site staff get all their overtime averaged but the salaried office staff didn’t have the payments calculated as exact overtime hours. They were recorded as bonuses and were figures the boss decided on.

I've been looking at this as well, and my payroll software has had an update to give me the caluations

I spent all Friday afternoon calculating NI contributions but I used a slightly different method so will have to do it over again. Plus work out the contributions for last tax year which we can claim, and this tax year which we can’t because of Employment Allowance.

Our accountant doesn’t do payroll.

My payroll software has had an update, and it's got a file for my calculations on there

I use moneysoft.

This is what Moneysoft have on their support area

"UPDATE 18 APRIL 2020
At 17:10 on Friday 17 April 2020 (less than 72 hours before the claim portal is due to go live) HMRC contacted software developers by email to inform that they will be making major changes to the methodology used to calculate claim amounts under the CJRS.
In the meantime we have removed the step-by-step instructions to producing the claim report from this guide. We will update this page again as more information becomes available."

Bugger I use money soft too, looks like I'll be back to the drawing board Monday as well.
This was always going to be harder than expected.
I only started payroll in January as well.