Most of this advice applies equally to SAP and SPP, but as those absences are much less common than SMP we've referred to SMP throughout this article.

12Pay needs to know all the details of a maternity absence in order to pay SMP. So where you are starting to use 12Pay in the middle of an SMP absence you still give 12Pay all the details, including how much has already been paid. 12Pay will then continue to pay the balance owing as you continue through the weeks and months of the absence.

You'll need the following information:

• The employee's joining date with the employer
• The date that the baby is/was due
• The date that the baby was born (not always essential)
• The date that the employee started their maternity leave
• The employee's average weekly earnings in the 8 weeks of the qualifying period. 12Pay doesn't have this information if you've just started using 12Pay. You need to get it from the previous system.
• The total SMP that this employee has already been paid for this particular maternity leave. Again 12Pay doesn't have this information if you've just started using 12Pay. You need to get it from the previous sytem.

First make sure that the employee has the "Female" button ticked, and has a joining date filled in. Without those SMP cannot be paid. Then proceed to the employee's absence tab, tick the SMP box, and fill in the baby due date, the leave start date, (and the baby born date if known). The other dates on that form should usually be left blank. (Enter 1/1/1900 in them if you've accidentally filled a date in).

Next add a new absence of type "Maternity". Start the absence on the first date the employee was on leave and finish it on the date that you want to pay them up to in the current payroll run.

Initially you get shown an absence calendar which you can "swipe" with the mouse button down to select a date range quickly.....

...but if you're not comfortable with doing that just click on any date on the absence calendar, then alter the dates on the form that appears (image below).

If you've just started using 12Pay the software won't know what the average weekly earnings were during the qualifying period, so you'll have to fill them in. Click the "Override" button next to the "Avg Earnings" box and fill in the average earnings, to 5 decimal places of a pound. You need to get this information from the previous system.

If you've just started using 12Pay the software also won't know how much SMP has already been paid to this employee during this maternity leave. You should be able to add this up from the previous system, or you may even be lucky enough to be able to read a total straight out of the previous system. Click the "Override Button" next to the "Already Paid" box and fill in the total SMP that has already been paid. The system will automatically subtract whatever has already been paid from whatever it calculates is due in SMP.

Now you can click the "OK" button, calculate pay, and see how much SMP the employee gets. If the employee gets none at all then perhaps 12Pay decided that the employee failed one of the qualification tests. You can check this by returning to the employee's absence tab and editing the absence. Perhaps the "Exclude" box has a reason in it. For example in the case shown below the employee joined the company too recently to qualify for SMP. Perhaps their joining date or due date were entered incorrectly, or perhaps they weren't entitled after all!

If the SMP isn't being paid, or if you're puzzled by the amount that 12Pay pays you can check the logic by reading a verbal description of the calculation process in the "Comment" box. If you still can't work out what is going on after that then probably best to contact email us full details (ie the list of data above) to see if we can help you.