Basic PAYE Tools - missing submissions

I've been using HMRC's Basic PAYE Tools for a couple of years without any problems.

But this morning I've just tried to finalise the 2019-2020 year. When I launched it, it wanted to install an update, so I let it install - maybe that was the cause of the problem...

I am the only employee, and when I printed my P60 I noticed that the total amount was far too small for the year. So I looked at the list of "Successful Submissions", and the most recent one shown was October 2019. This is complete nonsense as I had made successful submissions every month since then, but these seemed to be missing from the list. This list of failed submissions was empty, so no failures.

That seems to explain why the P60 amount was too small, but I have no idea how to fix this as it seems to be a problem either with their software on my computer, or HMRC have lost the submission data on their servers. I wish I had kept a copy of the receipt number each time I did a submission, but I've never encountered such a problem before.

It is impossible to contact the HMRC help line as they are operating with reduced staff and the line just cuts off after a brief announcement. They are probably being deluged with Covid19 issues so this is understandable.

But because of this problem I'm unable to close the year, and won't be able to until I can contact HMRC which might take weeks. So I might be fined for late end of year submission. (Also I won't be able to submit any future pay periods.)

The only thing I can think of is to write to them explaining the problem and send it by postal recorded delivery. Of course they won't be able to help by post, but it should at least document that it is their own system that has prevented me submitting the end of year (and any subsequent pay periods).

Has anyone else encountered a similar problem with the Basic PAYE Tools?
 
OK, I done some searching around on my hard drive, and on the net.

There is a folder called "C:\Users\Username\AppData\Roaming\HMRC\payetools-rti" that contains a .db database file, and a "backup" subfolder which contains several RTI*.ZIP files which appear to be automatic backups from the Basic PAYE Tools software. In my case there are no RTI*.ZIP files between last October and today.

So it sounds like a system restore that I had to do a few weeks ago must have restored the whole of the Windows partition back to last October. That would explain why the submissions are missing in the software locally, even though the submissions WERE actually transmitted OK to HMRC.

I found the following thread on Accountingweb which seemed to be discussing the same problem. The poster said that HMRC's helpline said to re-enter the missing transactions but NOT submit them to HMRC. This sounds very flaky, and will probably leave you with several "Outstanding submissions" in the reminders list that you can never get rid of.

(Apparently this forum won't allow me to post URLs as I haven't clocked up sufficient posts yet, so you will need to prepend the accountingweb.co.uk address )

/any-answers/help-hmrc-basic-paye-tools-lost-data

But in the absence of any help from HMRC, I guess I'll just have to try that. :(

Unless anyone has any better ideas?
 
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Scottishgifts4u

Free Member
Jul 6, 2017
191
58
Not quite the same but I went to do my last ever submission and the end of year it wouldn’t go through.

I tried everything including rolling back my computer to before the update but for some reason it wouldn’t roll back either.

The work around for me was backing up then installing basic tools on my laptop and download the backup onto the laptop.

It then went through okay.

If you do that maybe the missing submissions will be on it.

Maybe.....
 
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