Finalising is the last step of a payroll run in Moonworkers: it closes the period, sends your employees their payslips, and reports the pay to HMRC. This article explains what happens when you finalise, how the Full Payment Submission (FPS) works, and why you cannot simply edit a period once later ones exist. A companion article, "Running a payroll run in Moonworkers," covers the earlier steps.
What happens when I finalise a run?
When you are happy with the run, click Finalise. This opens a pop-in that lets you complete the period in one place: you can send all the payslips to your employees by email, and you can submit your Full Payment Submission (FPS) to HMRC for the period. If the submission is going in late, you can add a reason to explain why the payroll run was reported late. Finalising is what turns the draft payslips into the final documents for the period and locks in the figures.
What is the FPS and when should I submit it?
The Full Payment Submission is the report you send to HMRC each time you pay your employees, containing their pay, tax, National Insurance and other deductions for the period. HMRC's rule is that the FPS must be sent on or before the date you pay your employees, so the recommended approach is to finalise the run and submit the FPS on or before payday, not afterwards. Submitting on time each period is what keeps your PAYE record accurate and avoids questions from HMRC. Moonworkers lets you submit the FPS directly from the finalise pop-in, so reporting to HMRC is part of closing the period rather than a separate task.
What if my FPS is late?
If for some reason you report after payday, you should still submit as soon as you can, and you can add a late-reporting reason on the FPS to tell HMRC why it is late. Valid reasons are limited (for example a genuine system issue), so the reason should reflect what actually happened. Reporting late without a valid reason can lead to penalties, so the safe habit is always to finalise and submit on or before payday. Where a run has genuinely been reported late, adding the reason is better than sending nothing.
When do I pay HMRC?
Submitting the FPS tells HMRC what you owe, but it is not the payment itself. You pay the PAYE tax and National Insurance you have reported separately, and the deadline is the 22nd of the following tax month if you pay electronically (or the 19th if you pay by post). So the FPS reports the figures on or before payday, and the payment follows by the 22nd of the next month. Keeping the two steps in mind, report on time and pay on time, is what keeps your HMRC account clean across the year.
Can I send the payroll journal to my accounting software?
Yes. If you have a supported accounting package connected, you can submit the payroll journal to it directly from the run, so the pay cost is posted into your accounts without re-keying the figures. If you do not have accounting software connected, you can still download the journal (including as a CSV) and use it to post the entries yourself. Sending the journal each period is what keeps your books in step with what you have actually paid and what you owe HMRC and the pension provider.
What do I get when the run is finalised?
Once you finalise, you get a digest for the period from which you can download all the payslips and related documents together, and your employees receive their payslips if you chose to email them. At that point the period is closed: the figures are fixed, the FPS has been submitted, and you can start the next period. In practice, finalising, emailing payslips, submitting the FPS and starting the next run form a single clean sequence you repeat each pay period.
How do I start the next period?
After a period is finalised and closed, you simply start the next payroll run for that schedule, exactly as you did for the current one, from Payroll > Payroll Run. Because each period is closed before the next begins, your runs follow one after another in order, which is important for the way PAYE is calculated (see below). You do not need to carry anything forward manually; Moonworkers keeps the year-to-date figures running from one period to the next.
Why can't I just edit an earlier period?
If you need to change a period that has already been finalised, you cannot edit it in isolation: you have to delete the later periods first and then re-open the period in question. This is because payroll is cumulative. PAYE tax in particular is normally worked out on a cumulative basis, meaning each period takes account of the pay and tax for the whole year to date, so the figures in every period depend on the periods before it. If you changed an earlier period while later ones still existed, their year-to-date figures would no longer line up. Deleting the later periods, correcting the earlier one and then re-running forward keeps the cumulative calculation correct, which is why the values on a payslip can change from one period to the next as the year-to-date position updates.
Get started
To finalise a run, sign in, open the payroll run from Payroll > Payroll Run, review it, then click Finalise and complete the pop-in to email payslips and submit your FPS. Sign in at https://payroll.moonworkers.co.uk/auth/login.