How do I align my pay periods to the tax year?

A pay period tells us how often you pay your workers. This could be weekly, monthly, fortnightly, four weekly, tax weekly or tax monthly.

The tax year starts on 6 April each year. There are two ways you can align your pay periods with the tax year depending on what pay period you’re using.

If you pay your workers weekly or monthly, you’ll need to select ‘Tax Weekly’ or ‘Tax Monthly’ respectively as the payment frequency when you’re setting up a group with Nest. This will automatically align your payment frequency to the current tax periods and update it every year in line with the new dates.

If you pay your workers fortnightly or four weekly, you’ll need to set the pay period from Saturday to Friday for the tax year 2024/25. This is because 6 April 2024 was a Saturday. At the end of the tax year you’ll need to create a new group with a pay period from Sunday to Saturday and move your workers into that new group. This is because the 2025/26 tax year will start on a Sunday.

Setting up pay periods is part of creating the worker group or groups, that you’ll need in order to enrol your workers into Nest. You’ll need to let us know the frequency you pay your workers. For example, monthly. You’ll then need to add the dates of your pay periods and the contribution rates you’ll be using to calculate the contributions that you’ll send to us. 

Please see how to setup tax weekly, fortnightly, four weekly and tax monthly group on Nest for more information.