Statutory Adoption Pay (SAP) is available for qualifying employees (all genders) who adopt either through an adoption agency or via a surrogacy arrangement. They will need to notify you of when they want their leave to start and for adoption the 'matching date' and surrogacy the 'baby due date'.
Statutory Adoption Pay is payable for a maximum of 39 weeks.
To pay SAP you need to go into the Employee Details> Statutory Payment screen. You then need to click the green 'Add' button on the top right of the page which will allow you to select SAP from the dropdown menu.
Complete the tick box to confirm if the adoption is a surrogacy adoption or not, this will change the 'matching date' to 'baby due date'.
Once you have selected the start date and either of the adoption dates the system will automatically calculate the entitlement and pre-populate any amounts due.
- The employee must have earned over the lower earning limit (LEL) for the relevant period in order to be eligible for SAP. If you need to override the employee's earnings (you may be transferring payroll software mid year) you need to tick this box and type the average weekly earnings figure in the box. You can then adjust the number of SAP weeks already paid to reduce the total SAP weeks payable.
- If you click the 'View Log' it will display the information used to calculate eligibility including the employees start date and average weekly earnings calculation.
- Calculation type can either be 'weekly payments' or 'align with pay period.' Weekly payments can start on any day of the week and will be applied in full weeks, if payment starts on a Tuesday it will be applied the following Wednesday. Aligning with pay period will make payments according to your pay period dates.
- If you offset the SAP you need to tick this box. This has the effect of reducing any salary payment by the amount of SAP paid so no net effect to the employee's pay. If left unticked then the employee will only receive the SAP payment.
Any payments due will be listed with the status of the payment i.e. pending or processed.
Under 'Advance Settings' you have 4 options:
- Set employer pension protection - Any figure entered here will override the employer pension amount in the pay run.
- Do not pay - If you select this option you can choose a reason from the dropdown menu. This will then create a link to the SAP1 form for you to complete and give to your employee.
- Pay lump sum - If you wish to pay SAP in one lump sum.
- SAP Adjust - This can be used to apply any adjustment to SAP within the pay run, useful if a backdated pay rise has affected SAP amounts.
- HMRC Advance Funding: If you have received an advance for the statutory payment from HMRC, enter that here. It will then be added to the P32 Report each month until fully repaid.
You can then if you wish add an attachment and add any notes to the employee's record. When this has been saved it will create an entry against the employee which can be edited by clicking on the pencil icon, deleted if no payments have been made by clicking the bin icon or a payment schedule can be downloaded in PDF format or sent to the employee's portal.
Payments will be applied automatically in each pay run and the record will be updated after the pay run has been finalised.
If you wish to edit the SAP being applied in the pay run you can click the edit button (as below) which allows you to include any additional unpaid weeks and apply the offset option as discussed earlier.
You can also apply keeping in touch days (KIT days) in the pay run, for more information click here.
To view the amount of SAP recovered from HMRC you need to go to Reports> P32 Report> then click on the NI Deductions Summary tab.
When your SAP spans a tax year the new rates will be changed automatically for the new tax year. It is worth checking when these rates are applied and the previous payments you have made. If the new SAP rate is higher than the 9/10ths earnings (first 6 weeks payments) of SAP HMRC rules are that the lower rate is applicable. You would need to make the appropriate adjustment using the SAP adjust field as referred to earlier.