Preparing for Your P60: A Reminder for Employers Ahead of 31 May

With two weeks left until the 31 May deadline for issuing P60s, this is a good moment for employers to check their year-end payroll process is genuinely on track, rather than assuming it will simply happen automatically without a final review. It's also a useful prompt for employees to understand what's coming and what to check once it arrives.

For Employers: A Final Two-Week Check

If you haven't already confirmed that your final payroll submission for the 2025/26 tax year was processed correctly, this is the moment to do so, since accurate year-end figures are the foundation everything else depends on. Check that every employee who was on your payroll at 5 April is accounted for, that any leavers during the year have already received their P45 rather than being mistakenly included in this process, and that your payroll software or provider has confirmed P60s are ready to be generated and distributed with time to spare before the deadline itself.

Double-Checking Employees With Changed Circumstances

Employees who changed personal details during the year - a name change, a new address, an updated National Insurance record - or who had any unusual payroll events, such as a period of statutory leave or a mid-year change in working pattern, are worth checking individually rather than assuming the standard process has captured everything correctly. These are exactly the cases where errors tend to concentrate, since they fall outside the routine, straightforward pattern the majority of your payroll follows.

For Employees: What to Do When Yours Arrives

Once your P60 arrives, take a few minutes to actually check it rather than filing it away unread. Compare the total pay and tax figures against your final payslip of the tax year - they should match exactly. Check your personal details, particularly your National Insurance number, are recorded correctly, and make sure your tax code looks reasonable given your circumstances. If you had more than one employer during the year, remember your P60 only reflects the employer you were with at 5 April, so keep any P45 from an earlier employer in the same tax year safely as well, since you may need both when completing a Self-Assessment return or checking your overall tax position for the year.

Why This Matters Beyond Simple Compliance

Beyond the legal obligation itself, an accurate and timely P60 genuinely matters to your employees in practical terms - it's often needed for mortgage applications, loan applications, and tax queries, and a delay or error can cause real inconvenience at a moment that may be entirely unrelated to your business, but still reflects on your organisation's administrative reliability. Treating this deadline with the seriousness it deserves, rather than as a minor administrative afterthought, protects both your compliance position and your relationship with your staff.

A Quick Reminder for Recently Departed Staff Too

If anyone left your employment earlier in the 2025/26 tax year, they should already have received a P45 rather than a P60, but it's worth double-checking this actually happened correctly at the time, particularly for any leavers where the process may have been rushed. A former employee chasing a missing P45 months after leaving is a far more awkward conversation than getting it right at the point they departed.

If You Spot an Error This Late in the Process

If a final review at this stage uncovers an error, it's better to identify and correct it now, even under some time pressure, than to issue an inaccurate P60 and deal with the correction afterwards, which creates additional work and can undermine employee confidence in your payroll accuracy. Most payroll software allows corrections to be made relatively straightforwardly at this stage, provided the issue is caught before final submissions are locked in.

Using This Deadline as an Annual Prompt

Whatever state your preparation is in this year, it's worth using the 31 May deadline as a recurring annual prompt to review your payroll year-end process as a whole, rather than only thinking about it in the final couple of weeks each time it comes around. A little structured preparation, built into your calendar every year, turns this from a source of last-minute stress into a routine administrative task. If you'd like help getting this year's P60s finalised accurately, or want to build a better process for next year, we're happy to help.