For employers wishing to test the accuracy of their payroll system or to give staff practice in performing gross to net calculations, HMRC's volumes of payroll test data are a useful tool. The tests are provided to help payroll software developers check that their systems give accurate results, particularly in connection with the Payroll Standard Accreditation Scheme, but they have other practical uses within the payroll department.

The first of the three volumes of test data for tax year 2006/07 has been updated and may be downloaded from HMRC's Online Services website. The changes are to general validation only, as follows:

• HMRC Office Number - end of year errors are being caused by employers duplicating the HMRC Office number in the Employers PAYE Reference field. Text has been added below the test to make developers aware of this fact and tell them to let their users know.
  
  
• 2nd forename - the previous test was incorrect because it stated that an error should be produced if this field is blank. This is an optional field and blank is acceptable when the employee has one forename.
  
  
• Date of Birth/NINO/Gender - text has been added to the expected result to ensure the Date of Birth field does not default to 01/01/1901. This value must only be entered in the end of year file and must not be displayed on the screen.
  
  
• Employees Address - the test for the blank line in the middle of the address has been removed.
  
  
• Final Tax Code - the test for "NI" in the tax code field was shown as an error. "NI" is not a valid tax code but it can be used in the tax code field on a P11 in certain circumstances. The test results have been amended to clarify that "NI" is an acceptable entry in the tax code field as long as it is not submitted in the end of year file.

...back to 8 June 2006

Sources:
Online Services: Payroll Test Data

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