How to set up statutory maternity pay (SMP).

Follow these instructions to set up maternity leave correctly in your software.

• Select the employee’s name and then the ‘Absences‘ tab,
• Tick the radio button to calculate SMP,
• Fill in the ‘Baby Due Date‘, the ‘Baby Born Date‘ (if known) and the ‘Leave Start‘. All other dates on that form should usually be blank,
• Select ‘Add Absence‘ and then ‘Maternity‘,
• Click on the leave start date on the calendar that appears,
• A form will appear with the leave start date on it as the ‘From Date‘ and ‘To Date‘. Alter the ‘To Date‘ to the expected return date of the employee (An employee is entitled to take 52 weeks of leave, of which 39 are paid Statuatatory pay).
• Tick the ‘Truncate‘ options as required. ‘Pay up to payroll date‘ automatically truncates SMP absence payments to the ending day of the current payroll. So you can enter the entire expected duration of an SMP absence at the start of the leave, tick this box and the system will automatically pay the employee each period. This box means that each period you’ll just get this period’s SMP rather than the software paying the whole lot at once, and is the usual preferred method. ‘Pay part weeks‘ allows the system to pay partial weeks of SMP.
• Click the “OK” button at the top of the Absence form to save your entries,
• Next time you calculate you should get some SMP for the employee as long as they qualify,
• You may need to alter the employee’s basic pay. The system will not necessarily dock them their normal pay while they are on SMP because the system does not know your contract with them.