Changes To SSP Regulations
New regulations for Statutory Sick Pay come into effect in the 2026/27 tax year, and Site Manager has been updated to take these into account. Employees are now entitled to sick pay on the first day of absence, so waiting days are no longer accounted for. Also, employees are now paid the lower of 80% of their Average Weekly Earnings or the standard rate of £123.25, regardless of whether they earned more or less than the Lower Earnings Threshold. These changes come into effect on April 6th 2026.
Please note that these changes will have a significant effect on employees whose SSP overlaps the changeover date. The rules on which days are classed as waiting days and the SSP rate that applies could change part way through a period of sickness. Site Manager will deal with most of these situations automatically, but there may be exceptional cases where you should take care to review the SSP being paid and adjust if necessary. Particular care must be taken where an employee has AWE that is just above the LEL. This would currently entitle them to full SSP, but under the new regulations they would only be entitled to 80% of their AWE, which may be slightly less than the full rate. The government has introduced Transitionary Protections for overlapping periods of sickness to ensure employees do not receive a reduction in SSP, and these will need to be checked manually after a calculation run.
Payroll> In-Cycle SSP Import
To assist with the anticipated increase in demand, Site Manager now includes an import for SSP.
This will allow you to gather details of employee sickness into a CSV file and import that directly into an open pay period, prior to calculation. A Template button on the options screen will provide you with the required format.
Statutory Parental Bereavement Pay (SPBP) for Northern Ireland
For payroll processing of employees in Northern Ireland, additional information must be included in the FPS submissions sent to HMRC to comply with new reporting requirements for SPBP. These will be handled automatically but it has resulted in a new ‘Miscarriage’ indicator on the SPBP screen, to be used for those employees unfortunate enough to require bereavement pay after a miscarriage.
Pay Calc – Improve performance of partial calculation
We have found a significant performance improvement when running a partial calculation for selected staff. This will be particularly noticeable on large payrolls.
Setups> Advanced> Import/Amend Data> Rebuild Holidays
The holiday rebuild function has been updated to include Irregular Holidays.
Calculation of holiday accrual for irregular workers
Holiday accruals will now be calculated for irregular workers using a 12.07% accrual method.
Invoice Sales Analysis report> Print Sales Codes
When run as a ‘summary’, this report had stopped showing sales codes or descriptions. This information has been restored.
Invoicing> Post Receipts> Batch Posting
The batch posting screen was incorrectly removing VAT from payment amounts when adding a new invoice. This has been fixed.
Stock> Reports> K. Stock Movements
The Movement Cost has been added to the CSV output of this report.
Quality Control> Q. Import Areas (with templates)
A ‘Template’ button has been added to this import. It will produce and open a template of the CSV format required, with an example included.