Hello Julian, we've attracted a lot of MYOB users since the switch to Mamut.

I take it that you pay occupational sick pay, or SSP Offset wouldn't be an issue at all and you just turn the feature off entirely. To us it seems very clear that where there is OSP SSP shows as both a payment and a deduction (really just for your records rather than the employee's since the entire issue is irrelevant to the employee) and the employee still gets their normal basic. I daresay it would be a perfectly plausible option in the software to have the offset taken off the Basic, but this is the first time in 3 years that anyone has expressed any disquiet over the way we do it. It seems to me that an employee might just as well ask, "Why has my basic reduced when I've been sick?" as "Why is SSP being both paid and deducted?"

One option even if you do operate OSP is to turn off the Offset (Payroll advanced tab) and offset Basic pay manually yourself. How much of an issue that would be depends on how often your employees are sick for the 4 days in a row that is required to activate SSP.

Anyway, you haven't missed anything. That is really the way it is meant to be, and like all criticisms of the software if we hear any significant number of users or potential users repeating those criticisms we'll take action in a future release. That is how many of the current features in the software have appeared over the years. We do try to listen.

I don't think you should be surprised that this hasn't come up before. For it to come up as an issue you need:

1. The employer to offer occupational sick pay
2. Employees frequently going sick for more than 4 days
3. The employer to be bothering to record SSP absences (in larger companies offering OSP usually SSP Recovery will be zero so many such companies don't necessarily bother to put them through the system since they don't affect employee pay)
4. Employer or employee preferring a different method such as the alternative you mentioned.
5. Anyone caring enough about (what is on the face of it) a pretty arcane point to report it to us (in our experience, based on other issues, few employees look beyond their "net pay" figure)

But if other users raise this as an issue we'll take action. Naturally we'd offer "SSP Offset to Basic Pay" as an option, if for no other reason than to avoid confusing the existing users who are used to the way that 12Pay does it currently.