Since 2014, the RTI initiative has meant that PAYE payroll information must be submitted electronically to HMRC. This can be achieved by utilising a cloud based payroll service (such as KashFlow Payroll), or by accounts software, if HMRC approved.
Having decided to investigate returning to processing our own payroll (rather than employing the services of an accountant), we looked around for a (hopefully Linux based) solution.
We did find Stansoft, which is a Linux based accounts package with a payroll module that is actually text based.
However, surprisingly, HMRC themselves provide a Linux version of their Basic PAYE Tools. It doesn’t print payslips (although it does create P60s), but exports a CSV with data you can use to populate a spreadsheet or document with your own designed layout.
Basic PAYE Tools is only available in 32-bit (for Windows, Mac and Linux), so to run on our 64-bit Ubuntu 18.04 LTS desktops we had to install 32-bit libraries:
dpkg --add-architecture i386
apt install libcomerr2:i386 libfontconfig1:i386 libfreetype6:i386 libgl1-mesa-glx:i386 libgssapi-krb5-2:i386 libk5crypto3:i386 libkrb5-3:i386 libreadline5:i386 libsqlite3-0:i386 libstdc++6:i386 libx11-6:i386 libxext6:i386 libxrender1:i386 zlib1g:i386 libxslt1.1:i386 libxml2:i386
It then installed OK, using
./payetools-rti-19.1.19116.1393-linux --mode text
Then by following the user guide, https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/basic-paye-tools-user-guide/basic-paye-tools-user-guide, we were able to generate the necessary payroll data for our employees and perform the monthly electronic Full Payment Submission to HMRC (it connects to your company’s GOV.UK account).
