UK Payroll - Calculate national minimum wage to 4 decimal places to avoid false positives.
As of this month, Xero is starting to check for national minimum wage for all employees which I am all for.
However it is very annoying to have several employees flagged as not being paid the NMW when it is entirely down to Xero's rounding. See attached screenshot.
In this example, an employee gets paid for 6.5 hours at £12.21. Xero pays them £79.36 (rounded down from £79.365).
Xero's own NMW checker then flags this as below NMW because £79.36 is below £79.365.
Please can a check be brought in, that if it is just because of Xero's own rounding, then we shouldn't be warned about it, because there is literally nothing we can do to fix it.
I'm all for being warned if it is wrong, and don't want to turn it off, but don't want to be warned for something beyond my control, and in essence correct.
Helen White
shared this idea
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Juliet Bennett
commented
UK Payroll - when the correct hourly rate is entered when setting up an employee, ensuring that it meets the requirement of the HMRC minimum / living wage, Xero should handle rounding in payroll calculations so that it does not create an unnecessary "under minimum wage notification". This notification means the calculation has to be checked, and additional work by adding an line adjustment to ensure the employee is not underpaid.
For example hourly rate £10.85. Hours worked 18.5. Total pay £200.725. Xero round this down to £200.72, which causes an "under minimum wage notification". In all other scenarios £200.725, would round up to £200.73. See picture "under rounding causing a minimum wage alert"
I do not understand why Xero cause this underpayment, when as the employer, I have entered information correctly.
Even when adding a line adjustment (see picture making adjustment) it doesn't necessarily adjust appropriately. It may inadvertently cause a over payment - which may only be pennies, but the old saying "if you look after the pennies, the pounds will look after themselves"
This disparity causes stress and anxiety - when surely the whole purpose of use Xero's software is to facilitate this aspect of payroll with confidence and surety. I have bought into Xero's software because I need to trust that my payroll is done accurately - this does not foster that confidence that Xero is trustworthy.
This needs an urgent fix.
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Ben Andrews
commented
Xero, this shouldn't be something that will only get fixed with enough votes - it is frustrating to constantly get warnings when it's a system error and not a user error. Get it sorted.
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Samantha Paley
commented
I totally agree.
Rounding is basic maths, taught at primary school age. I have never known any system round down on 5. It should always be rounded up.
Come on Xero. This should not take votes from the Community to be fixed.
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Maddy Evans
commented
Just moving over to Xero Payroll and agree, yes this rounding and subsequent NMW alerts are very annoying!
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Hannah Cyrus
commented
I agree, I am having the same issue. I enjoy the alerts but only for actual issues not ones that are incorrect essentially.