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are self employed you should be processing their pay through a payroll and, if appropriate, deducting PAYE and NIC. If you fail to do this, HMRC will be require you to pay over all the PAYE and NI that The Revenue have lost not only for the current year but for the preceding years as well. You will also have to pay interest on these amounts and penalties on top. It
is very unlikely that you will be able to recover these amounts from the employees concerned - it will be a direct cost to the institute
Check references. Never rely purely on a written reference - they can be forged. A telephone call to a named referee may help. It will con rm that the referee is bone de and they may well say things over the phone which they would be unwilling to put in writing
There have been wholesale changes to the controls over immigration
in the past few years. It is a criminal offence to employ someone who is not in this country legally. Relevant documents should be checked for all employees and potential employees - checking for only those who look or sound foreign could mean that you are contravening the law which could now result in a prison sentence
Ensure someone in authority, and certainly not the person responsible
for preparing the payroll, reviews the payroll before it is paid. This review should be evidenced by that person signing the payroll. When reviewing the payroll they should look for bogus employees, duplicate names and unusual or large payments. Many charities have lost money by nding that they have been paying someone who doesn’t work for them or that they are paying an employee excessive amounts as a result of that employee deliberately overstating their hours on a timesheet
Ensure annual pay rates are properly authorised by the trustees each year
Wherever possible insist that employees are paid via the banking system
rather than in cash or by cheque
IT controls
Take regular back-ups of all data. This includes nancial data, databases, correspondence, registers etc. In fact, everything. These backups should be stored off site to avoid them being destroyed in any disaster
Take a back up each day
Have a separate back up disk for each day of the week
Take at least two weekly backups and store one off site. Again use a different back up disk for alternative weeks
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Chapter 4
