Automated Payments: How it works

Net Pay Payments

Our main focus is ensuring your employees get paid on payday. Here are the steps to make sure that happens smoothly:

1. Confirm your payroll with a verification code. For guidance on how to do this, please refer to our help article How to confirm payroll with Automatic Payments.
2. Ensure there are enough funds on the account by 23:59 on the night before payday.

Funding your account

Each customer has a unique bank account set up with Modulr in order to process payroll payments, you will need to fund your account as per point 2. above. To find the account details of your Modulr account, please follow the steps below:

1. Navigate to the Payments page from the left sidebar
2. Select Fund your account 
3. You will need to transfer the funds from your bank to the account details provided on the pop up modal

You can watch a video on finding the account details to fund your account here.

Insufficient funds on the account

Our Support team check the payment statuses each payday and will contact you to let you know if any payments have failed due to insufficient funds on the account. In some cases, you may have already contacted us before we managed to reach out to you.

Note – Our support working hours are 09:00 - 17:00, therefore you will be contacted at/shortly after 9 am on payday.

If the balance on the account was £0

Our support team will contact you and let you know that there were insufficient funds on the account. Once you have transferred the monies, the payment request will reset automatically for you.

Once reset, it should take 5–10 minutes for the payments to be made, at which point the payroll status will update to submitted. The Employee Payslips & HMRC FPS submission will also be sent automatically.

If the account had some funds available

From time to time, payments may error if there weren't enough funds on the account to cover the total Net Payments.

You will be able to see the status on your Payments page:

Instead of Scheduled, it would show in red as Error. 

Payments to staff will start to go out until the balance has reached £0, at which point, the remaining Employees will error.

In this scenario, we will either need to make manual payments to the remaining employees or ask our Engineering team to assist. This is because we can't reset a partial payment request, and therefore we kindly request that you ensure your account is fully funded to avoid unhappy Employees and manual intervention.

We will then submit the payslips and HMRC submission for you manually.

Incorrect Bank Details

If any of your employees have incorrect bank details, we will receive an error message and contact you with the Employee's name and request the bank details to be amended on Pento. Once you have updated their details, you will need to let a member of support know so they can make payment to the affected Employee/s manually.

The payslips and HMRC submissions will not be affected and will be submitted as normal.

Transferring Funds After 23:59 the Night Before Pay Day

Payment requests generally activate between 00:00 & 01:00. If the funds arrive on the account after a payment request has been activated, it may cause your payment to error. We will reset your payment request for you on the morning of payday.

Once reset, it should take 5-10 minutes for the payroll to update to submitted, and the Employee Payslips & HMRC FPS Submission will be sent automatically.

HMRC Payments

Payments to HMRC are sent out on the 18th of the following month, irrespective of weekends. E.g. July PAYE liabilities are paid on 18th August.

To ensure the HMRC payment goes out automatically, you will need to have:

1. Confirmed your payroll with a verification code – For further guidance on confirming payroll with payments, please refer to our help article How to confirm payroll with Automatic Payments
2. Ensured there are enough funds on the account by 23:59 the night before payment.

Insufficient Funds on the Account

If you have insufficient funds on the account, we will contact you to let you know the day before the payment is due to be made. 

If you are able to fund the account by the 18th/payment date, the payment request will reset automatically and no further action will be required. Once the funds are available, it should take 5-10 minutes for the payment to HMRC to leave the account.

If you are unable to fund the account until a later date, you will need to let a member of support know once the monies are available so they can reset the payment request manually for you. Once reset, it should take 5-10 minutes for the payment to HMRC to leave the account.

We recommend ensuring there are enough funds on the account in the first instance, as late transfers do not automatically resend the payment, this can be open to error and may result in HMRC issuing a late payment penalty.

You can see a payments timeline on the summary page of each months' payroll:

Frequently Asked Questions

If I submit the payroll by 11:59 the night before payday, what time will it be available in people's accounts? Is this a specific time period? 

If payroll has been confirmed before payday, employees will usually get paid just after midnight on payday, with a possible delay of a few hours (the latest being around 4 am). 

Can I transfer the funds for Net Payments and HMRC separately?

Yes, as long as the funds for each of the payments are on the account by 23:59 the night before payment, they will go through automatically.

What if I can't fund the account on time?

Not to worry! You can let us know as soon as the funds are available and we can reset the payment request for you. The deadline for HMRC payments is the 22nd of each month. 

What if I want Pento to pay Net Payments, but not HMRC?

You will need to contact our support team who will be able to disable the automated payments to HMRC for you. It can be re-enabled at any point. 

What if I accidentally confirm payroll without payments?

We have taken steps to verify you want to confirm the payroll without payments, if you accidentally select Confirm payroll without payments, you will see the following screens:

If you select Yes, I will pay my employees outside of Pento, and change your mind, you will need to contact a member of support to assist you. They will walk you through the steps on how to rectify this and get the payments sent out for you.