How To Setup Big Red Book Payroll

In order to use the Revenue Online Service (ROS), employers must be registered with ROS and have a Digital Certificate.

The Digital Certificate is used to digitally “sign” messages sent to ROS e.g. requesting RPNs and submitting Payruns. This ensures that only authorised persons can send or receive information for an employer.

If you are not registered and/or do not have a ROS Digital Certificate you should take steps to do so as soon as possible. Details of how this can be achieved can be found on the Revenue website on how to get started in ROS.

Details of how and where you should save your Digital Certificate to your computer can be found on the Revenue website for Windows and Mac.

For further information, visit ‘Get ready for PAYE modernisation‘ on the Revenue website.

In Payroll click on the Settings Icon

In Company Information > Revenue Registration click on the folder icon, locate and select the ROS Certificate File obtained from ROS and click open.

The ROS Certificate File should be kept in a safe location on your PC, such as C:\ROS\ROSCerts. This will assist in locating the certificate.

To check Connectivity to the Revenue Online System

Click on ‘Check Connectivity’, you are presented with a screen to enter the password for your Digital Certificate.

Your password will be different for each Digital Certificate you download.

If you wish to see the Password in plain text, click on ‘Show Password’

Click ‘Open’ to check the online connection.

The connection check may be instant but if there is a delay, please wait and do not press any keys.

When the connection is successful a message is displayed.

After you click OK you will see that Certificate Expiry Date is displayed

As an employer, you are required to renew your Digital Certificate before it expires. Details of how to do this can be found here.

After you click on ‘Check Connectivity’ for your ROS Digital Certificate, in Settings > Company Information, the certificate expiry is displayed.

If your digital certificate expires you will lose access to Revenue Online Service (ROS). Renewing your cert is a simple process that will ensure this does not happen.

Follow our helpful video guide to renew your ROS cert. Further information can also be found here.

Once you save your certificate in ROS, it will download to your web browsers download folder. You should locate this file and move it to a safe location on your PC, such as C:\ROS\ROSCerts.

Remember to note that renewing your Digital Certificate will also change your password. Your new Digital Certificate will need to be setup in Payroll in order to continue submitting payroll to ROS.

Employment ID

Once a submission has been made for an employee the Employment ID should not be changed.

From 2019 Revenue require Employers to assign an ‘Employment ID’ to each employee to be used with their PPSN to identify an employment.

This can be any code but once notified to Revenue it does not change. It can be the same for every employee as the unique identifier for an employment will be

Employer Registered Number + PPSN + Employment ID.

We are encouraging employers to assign a simple ‘01’ code to all employees initially.

We have provided a facility in Utilities > Maintenance > Employment ID to generate Employment IDs.

Dual Employments

The exception to this simple ‘01’ are cases where an employee has a ‘Dual’ employment i.e. Revenue was informed that they had two jobs with the same employer and they issued them with an additional PPSN to use for the second job. These second PPSNs have an X or T added to the original PPSN or Z if it is one of the newer 9 digit PPSNs.

When generating Employment IDs we take this into account and give these employments an ‘02’ Employment ID.

From 2019 the second PPSN will no longer be used and will be replaced by the original PPSN with the Employment ID distinguishing the two employments.

The other case where there may be Dual Employment (or more) is where an employer has several business entities e.g. shops or cafes and keeps a separate payroll company for each. Please see Self-managed Dual Employments if this applies to you.

In the example above the Company Employment ID Prefix is blank and ’01’ will be used to give initial Employment ID of ’01’ for most employees.

In the case of employee Anna O’Neill who has a Dual Employment the generated Employment ID will be ’02’ for the PPSN with the suffix ‘X’

At the bottom of the screen a summary is shown – in this case 4 employees have no PPSN and so cannot be assigned an Employment ID, no IDs have been generated yet and there are no changes from the current employee records to update.

To generate IDs click the ‘Generate IDs’ button.

If company employment ID is blank the following appears

Click yes to continue or no to return and use a company employment ID.

Company ID is only necessary when an employer has employees in more than one payroll company using the same Employer Registered Number.

A message is displayed that ‘Generation of Employment IDs is complete.

Click Ok – the New Employee IDs are displayed and an option is given to ‘Update Employee Records’.

If you choose ‘No’ you can change the New Employment IDs individually and click on when happy with the Employment IDs to update the Employee Records.

Employment IDs which are ‘Locked’ cannot be changed unless they are released using ‘Clear ID Locks’.

Once a submission has been made for an employee the Employment ID should not be changed.

If it is changed Revenue will see it as a new employment and an RPN with zero credits will be issued.

Self-managed Dual Employments

Where an employer uses the same Employer Registration Number in more than one Payroll Company it is possible for an employees to be in more than one company. Prior to 2019 we refer to this as ‘self-managed dual employments’ as Revenue are only issuing one Tax Certificate to the employer and the employer is taking responsibility for ensuring that the correct tax credits and cut-offs are assigned.

From 2019 this type of self-management of dual employments will not be possible.

There are two ways to ensure that Revenue is informed of the second (or more) employment so that management of tax credits and cut-offs among employments is facilitated:

(1) Use a different Employer Number for each Payroll Company

This is the option we recommend as it ensures that only the Revenue Payroll Notifications (RPNs) for employees registered to that company will be returned when RPNs are requested from Revenue.

There will be no possibility of a mix-up between employments as the Employer Registration Number is different.

There is a very simple procedure to transfer all employees in a company to a different Employer Number, see Transferring all employees to a new Employer Registration Number.

(2) Use Company Employment ID Prefix

If you wish to use the same Employer Registered Number then you must ensure that if an employee is in more than one company that they have a different Employment ID in each.

To facilitate this we have added a ‘Company ID Prefix’ which Employers can enter and it will be used when generating and defaulting Employment IDs e.g. if there are two shops and they are given A and B as ‘Company ID Prefix’ the employees in Shop A will have Employment IDs of ‘A01’ and employees in shop B will have Employment IDs of ‘B01’ and Employers will not have to worry about giving an employee the same Employment ID in both.

In the example above the Company Employment ID Prefix is ‘A’ and it will be added to ’01’ to give initial Employment ID of ‘A01’ for most employees.

In the case of employee Anna O’Neill who has a Dual Employment the generated Employment ID will be ‘A02’ for the PPSN with the suffix ‘X’

At the bottom of the screen an summary is shown – in this case 3 employees have no PPSN and so cannot be assigned an Employment ID, no IDs have been generated yet and there are no changes from the current employee records to update.

To generate IDs click the ‘Generate IDs’ button. A message is displayed that ‘Generation of Employment IDs is complete.

Click Ok – the New Employee IDs are displayed and an option is given to ‘Update Employee Records’.

If you choose ‘No’ you can change the New Employment IDs individually and click on when happy with the Employment IDs to update the Employee Records.

Employment IDs which are ‘Locked’ cannot be changed unless they are released using ‘Clear ID Locks’.

Once a submission has been made for an employee the Employment ID should not be changed.

If it is changed Revenue will see it as a new employment and a RPN with zero credits will be issued.

It is strongly recommended that Employers use a different Employer Registration Number for each Payroll Company to facilitate how Revenue Payroll Notifications and Statutory Submissions will work in 2019.

Procedure to move all employees to a new Employer Registered Number for 2019:

1) In the ROS portal request an Additional Employer Number – this will be updated overnight

2) Process last payments for employees in 2018

3) In Payroll 2019

Import the 2018 Company

Change the Employer Registered Number to the new one obtained at Step 1.

Select the Digital Certificate File for the new Employer Registered Number.

Ensure all Employees have an Employment ID

4) In Payroll 2018

Cease all employees giving them a cease date of 31/12/2018

Generate a ROS P45 File for with all the ceased employees.

5) In ROS

Upload the ROS P45 File – this will only be allowed on or after 31st December 2018 (as per rules in place on 15/11/18)

Allow at least one hour for the P45s to be applied, freeing up employees tax credits and cut-offs before the next step.

6) In Payroll 2019

Select ‘RPN Lookup’

– All employees will be listed in ‘Employees with No RPN’ and all should be Selected (PPSN and Employment ID are required)

Enter a Request ID (can be anything e.g. ‘AllFrom2018’)

Click ‘Register New Employees’

Enter ROS password

A notification for each employee is sent and a RPN will be returned from Revenue for each one.

‘No RPN’ will be returned if a PPSN has not be previously registered with Revenue.

This will result in all employees receiving an RPN under the new employer number and not being returned under the original number.

Company Data for SEPA

SEPA OIN (SEPA Originator Identifier Number)

This is provided by your bank when you register for SEPA, sometimes referred to as ‘Creditor Identifier’.

File Reference

Each SEPA file must have a unique File Reference, this enables the bank to check for duplicate files being

submitted and is also used when reporting any issues with a transaction.

When a file is being submitted the system will append the date and time to this reference.

Bank Account Name

Treatment of non-standard letters varies by bank.

The options are to Leave, Replace or Strip Out any characters outside the standard character set.