Opening balances for PAYE

Do I need to set up opening balances in the PAYE and NI as my bank payment is paying May’s figures of which are not recorded in quickfile as I have only just set up.

Hi @ESL62

You should ideally record opening balances for your nominals. What were you using prior to QuickFile (e.g. spreadsheet, other accounting software, paper etc.)?

The company was using paper and pen! I am fairly new to the company but want to move forward with a proper accounts package. I have nearly got everything set up from June 1st but I have just paid my HMRC amount from the bank but when I tag it from the bank payment it ony tags to PAYE. How do I split this to NIC and PAYE and also I need the values to be already there so that the payment cancels the May balances out.

Did you do everything yourself with paper and pen, or did you use an accountant?

For things like the opening balances, an opening balance journal would be required. However, if you had an accountant, they may be able to provide you with a Trial Balance report which would make life a bit easier.

If you don’t have that, do you have a balance sheet from before using QuickFile?

This would be done as part of the payroll journal. There’s more information on those here.

When it comes to accounting, we can only really offer generic advice and how to use QuickFile. For more specific cases, I would recommend speaking to an accountant or bookkeeper.

I am happy with everything I have done so far its just this that I am struggling with. So I have paid HMRC out of my bank account. When I tag to PAYE the whole figure goes into 2210. I need to slpit this figure however between NIC and PAYE. Then I also need to have an opening balance in each so that the payment will cancel out the balances. Does that make sense?

You would need to enter an opening balance through an opening balance journal for the nominals.

As you don’t have the payroll journal for May, you would need to create a journal to move the balance from 2210 to 2211 National Insurance as required. Alternatively, you could tag them using the ‘Something else not on the list’ option and tagging them direct to the nominal codes.

Ok I have set up a Salary Journal for May. I have the payment in the bank which at the moment is not tagged. What is my next move?

Should I just tag to PAYE and NI using ‘something else not on the list’

This should be sufficient. This would just tag it directly to the nominal code.

I think this is probably best answered by your bookkeeper or accountant who should be able to help ensure everything is recorded in your accounts correctly.
As I mentioned above, I’m not an accountant, so I’m not able to give specific accounting help, only help with QuickFile. We wouldn’t want to give you advice for it to turn out to be incorrect.

No thats fine you are a great help. I think i have it sorted now. The problem was that when I was tagging the payment to PAYE it was not taking into consideration the amount for NI. If I split them it seems to allocate correctly. This means:

  1. 2211 is shown as a liability in the balance sheet
  2. 7006 is shown as an expense in th P&L

Is this correct looking to you?

Any answer for the above query?

If you owe the money on 2211 National Insurance, then yes, that would be correct. It’s considered a liability as the money is owed.

With 7006, this is a P&L expense code, so appearing on the P&L as an expense would be expected.

Ok. I think there is something wrong with my net wages figure. Could you take this to a private message and I will give you my account number for you to run your eye over it for me. I am not sure if I should have created a salery jorunal or not. I reckonthe figure in my P+L for net wages is far too low?

@ESL62 I’m afraid this is beyond the scope of the support we can offer here. We can’t check and review individual cases, this would really need to be done by a qualified accountant / bookkeeper.

We do have a number of 3rd party accountants who are able to provide more hands-on support. I would recommend maybe posting a quotation request from your dashboard, see the button “Need help with your accounting?”.

Ok. I am happy with everything else that I have brought in to QF but I am unsure about this payroll. I just need to find out wether I need to create opening balances in the journals or just leave as it is.

You must appreciate that these sorts of questions don’t have a one size fits all answer, so it’s impossible to give you any meaningful response without appointing an accountant to look at your case in detail. Unfortunately this is not feasible for us to do given what we charge for this service.

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