Payroll bureaux and agents -pinpointing the pinch-points of GNS and employer prompts

09 September 2016

We recently published a survey on behalf of HMRC to gather your views on the Automated Penalty Appeal Service and your experience of receiving messages via the Generic Notification Service along with a follow up call for evidence of issues.

The survey had returned a very popular comment from payroll bureaux – which has been said many times since the introduction of Generic Notifications and Employer Prompts (and continues to be said) that is:

“It would be exceedingly useful if the Employer's reference was quoted on the emails so that employers with multiple references didn't have to try every reference to discover which one the GNS referred to…”

“Please add in the PAYE reference - with 800 individual in-house companies using the same e-mail address - an e-mail asking me to check for a GNS message is ignored as I do not have the time to check 800 individual online accounts.”

“I am an agent with multiple PAYE clients; the lack of any indication, in the emails received, to which client the notice relates is a major flaw. It would be extremely helpful to include the employer's name in the email notification in future.”

Thanks again to everyone who responded to this survey and thank you for responding with follow up comments and evidence.

This is a last call for evidence that provides some screen shots or descriptions of the agent's process so as to establish the point at which the problem occurs and where an enhancement would help for both GNS or e-mail alerts.

Thank you once again in advance for any and all examples you can send marked for the attention of Samantha Mann, CIPP Senior Policy & Research Officer to Policy.