Sep 2020
17
Increase to CWPS Rates on 1st October 2020
The Construction Workers' Pension Scheme (CWPS) is an industry-wide, occupational pension scheme providing pension solutions for employees in the construction and related industries, providing economic pension and protection benefits to both employees and employers.
It is designed to allow construction workers and their families retirement and low-cost protection cover. CWPS has over 30,000 active members employed by over 2,000 employers and is amongst the biggest occupational pension schemes in Ireland.
An increase in the rates will take effect on 1st October 2020 as agreed in the Sectoral Employment Order. The employer contribution total increases by 2.7% from €29.79 to €30.60 and the employee’s contribution total increases by 2.7% from €20.03 to €20.57.
A breakdown of the new rates are below:
| With effect from 1/10/2020 | |
| Pension Contribution Employer | €28.09 |
| Pension Contribution Employee | €18.73 |
| Life Assurance Contribution Employer | €1.17 |
| Life Assurance Contribution Employee | €1.17 |
| Sick Pay Contribution Employer | €1.34 |
| Sick Pay Contribution Employee | €0.67 |
| Total Employer Rate | €30.60 |
| Total Employee Rate | €20.57 |
There are no changes for the additional voluntary extras of Construction Workers Health Trust member contribution of €1.00 and the Benevolent Funds of employer contribution of €0.19 and member contribution of €0.50.
Sep 2020
11
Don't forget about your EWSS July / August Sweepback!
The Employment Wage Subsidy Scheme (EWSS) replaced the Temporary Wage Subsidy Scheme (TWSS) which ended on 31st August 2020. As some employees were excluded from the TWSS, eligible employers can backdate a claim for EWSS to 1st July 2020 in respect of certain employees.
If you are currently eligible for EWSS, you may be entitled to receive subsidies and PRSI credits in respect of employees paid by you during July and August.
- If you previously claimed TWSS for July and August, any employee who did not qualify for TWSS may be eligible for an EWSS claim. Essentially, this means that any employee who started with you on or after 1st March, who was not employed by you at any stage during January or February, should be eligible for EWSS in respect of any payments made to them during July or August. The potential claim can be quite substantial e.g. if you had just one employee qualifying for EWSS being paid by you for July and August, the combined subsidy and PRSI credit could exceed €2,000.
- If you did not previously qualify for TWSS but now qualify for EWSS, any employees paid by you at any stage during July or August should be eligible for EWSS.
In order to make a claim, a CSV file listing the PPSN numbers and Employment IDs for all eligible employees must be uploaded on ROS. Our latest software upgrade (available when you launch our software), includes the ability to prepare the CSV file. It will also calculate the estimated claim value for you. This is available in the 'EWSS' menu in Thesaurus Payroll Manager.
Because of the tight timelines in releasing our upgrade and because we may not have access to all payroll data since the start of the year, we cannot guarantee the calculated claim value and it should therefore be viewed as indicative.
The ROS upload facility is expected to be available from 15th September within the “Employer Services” Section on ROS. All applications must be submitted by the employer or agent through ROS before 14th October.
Following receipt of the sweepback CSV, Revenue will then process these files and validate them against the rules of the scheme. If an employee is deemed eligible, Revenue will calculate the total subsidy due to be paid and will arrange for the subsidy to be paid as soon as practicable after 16th September. Payment in respect of additional submissions received after 16th September in respect of July/August will be made weekly thereafter up until 14th October.
Claims could be quite substantial, so we urge you to run the report and, if applicable, submit your claim as soon as possible.
Revenue guidance on the rules surrounding the sweepback and the claim process can be viewed here.
Free Webinar: Employment Wage Subsidy Scheme
Interested in finding out more about EWSS? Join us for our free webinar on 8th October where we discuss everything you need to know about EWSS eligibility, processing subsidy claims and the new guidance in relation to the July/August Sweepback.
Don’t miss out – Places are limited. Click here to book your place now.
Sep 2020
10
Remote Working Is Becoming The New Normal - What Does That Means For Payroll?
2020 has been a transformative year for most businesses. Many employers have had to take a long hard look at how they manage their employees and make significant changes in the wake of COVID-19 in order to adapt to what is quickly becoming the new normal. For a large proportion of these businesses, allowing employees to work remotely is playing a central role in that change. And this throws up some challenges.
Remote working isn’t a new phenomenon. Cloud innovations have made it possible for people to work from home for many years. However, most businesses have been reluctant to embrace this practice up until now. This is because, when employees are spread out, even the most basic tasks such as distributing payslips, applying for annual leave and internal communication can be more difficult.
Today, however, employers are finding themselves in a position where they must allow employees to work remotely and find clever solutions to these challenges. And Thesaurus Connect is one such solution that makes remote working easier for everyone.
How Does Remote Working Affect Payroll and HR?
You might not think that remote working has any impact on processing payroll, especially if you’re a small business with just one payroll administrator. But there are a number of ways that remote working can indirectly impact payroll. It also has numerous knock-on effects on human resources management which need to be addressed in order for a business to thrive.
Here are some examples of the payroll and HR challenges presented by remote working:
- Distributing payslips manually can be more time-consuming, costly and less secure when employees are not located in the workplace, and instead payslips must be posted to their home addresses.
- Making sure that the payroll and any employee leave during that particular pay period are aligned can be tricky, especially if a number of different line managers and/or HR staff are operating from different locations.
- Checking that the information for the current pay period is accurate can be challenging with employers and managers working from home with often unreliable internet connections.
Thesaurus Connect Makes Remote Working Easier
Thesaurus Connect is a cloud portal add-on to our payroll software. While the payroll software gives you everything you need to process your payroll, Connect offers a range of additional features that streamline your human resource management.
The features of Thesaurus Connect include:
- An employee self-service app that’s compatible with both iOS and Android. On the app employees can apply for leave, view and edit their personal data, access a secure payslip library and view HR documents, all from their smartphone or tablet.
- An online employer dashboard. Because payroll information is stored in the cloud with Connect, employers can access their dashboard from their laptops at home. On this dashboard, employers can view a company calendar which displays all past and upcoming employee leave, upload and share documents with employees, and view any outstanding payments due to Revenue. The employer dashboard also shows notifications for any employee leave requests, or requests from the payroll processor.
- Secure cloud backups. With Thesaurus Connect, you don’t need to worry about safely storing your data. Thesaurus Connect prompts you to automatically back up the payroll data to the cloud each pay period. It keeps a chronological history of all backups so that you can restore previous versions if needed. This is a great step towards GDPR compliance for businesses who are trying to modernise their data protection practices. The cloud backup is also extremely useful for remote working because everything is stored and accessible via the cloud from any location.
- Clever employee leave management. Employees can request leave directly from their smartphone app. This is beneficial to remote employees because it eliminates the need for employees to visit their line manager or human resources manager in order to fill out leave request paperwork. The request instantly appears as a notification on their manager’s online dashboard. From here, the manager can use the company calendar to see who else is on leave for the dates requested, and either approve or deny the leave request. A time-stamped log of all leave requests is maintained which is particularly useful when a number of different people are managing employee leave as all of the relevant parties can easily see who approved or denied a request, and when.
Book Your Free Thesaurus Connect Demo Now
If your business is embracing remote working and trying to find ways to facilitate this new practice, then book your free Connect demo today and let our team of experts show you just how much easier remote working can be.
Sep 2020
1
Thesaurus Customer Update: September 2020
Welcome to Thesaurus Software's September update. Our most important news this month include:
-
Revenue to join Thesaurus Software for free webinar & panel discussion
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Temporary Wage Subsidy Scheme comes to an end
-
Thesaurus Guidance - Employment Wage Subsidy Scheme?
Thesaurus Payroll Manager now caters for the EWSS
Although the Employment Wage Subsidy Scheme (EWSS) is a subsidy payable to employers only and will not impact employee payslips, several steps need to be performed within Thesaurus Payroll Manager in order to transition from TWSS to EWSS. Thesaurus Payroll Manager has now been upgraded to cater for this new scheme.
Join Revenue & Thesaurus Software's Free Webinar & Panel Discussion
The Employment Wage Subsidy Scheme (EWSS) will replace the Temporary Wage Subsidy Scheme (TWSS) from 1st September 2020. We have teamed up with Revenue to bring you a free webinar where we discuss everything you need to know about TWSS Reconciliation and the Employment Wage Subsidy Scheme.
Register for EWSS before it’s too late!
Eligible employers will be required to register for the EWSS via ROS. Employers must hold up-to-date tax clearance to register for the scheme and receive the subsidy payments. Where an employer files an EWSS payment submission without first registering for EWSS, it will be rejected in full. The date of registration cannot be backdated prior to the date of application, and so it is imperative that registration is undertaken prior to the first pay date in respect of which EWSS is being claimed.
Benefits of employee apps that you never knew (and why employees love them)
Thesaurus Connect offers a whole host of additional features, from secure cloud backup to employee dashboards. However, the employee app is one of the most attractive of these additional features, and for good reason. It enables you to introduce more effective ways of communicating with employees and streamline everyday processes such as annual leave requests.
TWSS Reconciliation - Coming Soon
During the first few weeks of the Temporary Wage Subsidy Scheme (known as the transitional phase), Revenue refunded a flat rate of €410 per employee per pay period, which, in a lot of cases, exceeded the subsidy that the employee was entitled to receive. Revenue are hoping to commence the TWSS reconciliation in October to address any outstanding subsidy refunds or repayments necessary. TWSS CSV reconciliation files will be uploaded to Revenue to enable them to reconcile the amount of subsidy paid to the employee against the amount refunded by Revenue.
