O2 Payroll Enhancements
The O2 Payroll module has been significantly enhanced primarily in the areas of tax credits, statutory sick pay (SSP) and statutory maternity pay (SMP). A further enhancement enables the Payroll module to work in conjunction with an external nominal ledger if the Pegasus Opera II Nominal module is not being used.

SSP
The Payroll product now caters for ‘full’ SSP processing which includes the ability to automatically calculate an employee’s SSP entitlement for the pay period. You can choose whether you want to use the full SSP capability or maintain the manual processing employed in previous O2 releases.

Where the full SSP processing facilities are being used, the program includes an SSP Absence command to record employee sickness days; a facility shared with the Personnel module if also used. Historical records are maintained and a new SSP report is included.

SMP
Similarly, the Payroll module caters for ‘full’ SMP processing; again being able to automatically calculate an employee’s SMP entitlement while they take maternity leave. If the facility for full SMP processing is used the SMP Details command stores the details of an employee’s pregnancy. Historical records are maintained and a new SMP report is included.

Tax Credits
Further improvements have been introduced for recording and management of tax credits. Using a new Tax Credits command, you can define start and end dates and other settings that the program uses in the calculation of period tax credit payments. A new report is also provided specifically for tax credit records.

Calendar
To develop the SSP and SMP features of the Payroll and enhance the existing tax credit recording, a new Calendar command is provided so that the program has a complete period calendar for each Income Tax year. The Calendar form also indicates which periods have been updated.

Payments and Deductions
The previous maximum number of payment and deduction profiles within the Payroll module was 50 of each. This has now been increased in this release to 999 of each. An employee’s profile can have a maximum of both 50 payments and deductions specified, but an individual employee record can now cater for the addition of up to 999 payments and deductions.

External Nominal Integration
If you do not have the Pegasus Opera II Nominal module activated, you can now record nominal account codes and cost centres using new commands on the Maintenance submenu in the Payroll module. When running the NL Analysis command, you can now choose to export the nominal analysis information to a comma separated values (CSV) file which you can be used as a source for importing information into an external nominal ledger application.

Personnel Module
If you are using the full SSP processing capabilities in the Payroll module as described above, you can also record SSP absence within the Personnel module.