Full Payment Submission

The FPS reports the people who were paid

A Full Payment Submission tells HMRC which employees the employer paid and gives the pay, deductions and year-to-date information for that run. It also carries relevant starter, leaver, tax-code, National Insurance, student-loan and other payroll fields.

The report belongs to the payday, not the date someone remembers to press submit. HMRC's reporting guidance says it is normally due on or before the employee's payday unless a specific exception applies.

Check the run before submission

Confirm the payment date, employee identifiers, payroll IDs, starter and leaver information, pay, deductions and year-to-date totals. A changed payroll ID needs the correct change indicator; otherwise HMRC can treat one employment as two.

Send the report through payroll software and retain the submission response. The detailed HMRC payroll-field guide is the right place to check a field or an exception rather than guessing from its label.

Correct the source, then the report

If a figure is wrong, identify whether the problem is employee data, a pay input, a calculation or the submission itself. Correct the payroll record and use HMRC's current correction method for the affected tax year. Do not patch only the payslip or bank payment and leave HMRC with different year-to-date figures.

An Employer Payment Summary has a different job. It reports employer-level reductions, inactivity and certain other adjustments; it does not replace the employee payment detail in an FPS. The HMRC RTI manual keeps those submission types distinct. Store both where they contribute to the same tax-period liability, so the amount owed can be traced back to the employee reports and employer adjustments that produced it.