The Employer Payment Summary (EPS) is a key part of Real Time Information (RTI) reporting under PAYE.
It sits alongside your Full Payment Submissions (FPS) and tells HMRC about anything that isn’t captured in your regular pay run—things like statutory payment reclaims, Employment Allowance claims, or months where you haven’t paid anyone at all.
Get it right, and HMRC has everything they need to calculate what you actually owe. Get it wrong (or forget to send it) and you could end up overpaying, underpaying, or triggering a compliance flag.
This guide covers everything payroll professionals need to know about the Employer Payment Summary: what it is, when you need to submit it, what to include, common mistakes, and how to make the process as smooth as possible.
What is an Employer Payment Summary?
An Employer Payment Summary is an RTI submission sent to HMRC through the PAYE system. Unlike the FPS—which you send every time you run payroll—the EPS is submitted separately and on a less frequent basis. It doesn’t report on employee pay directly. Instead, it reports adjustments, reclaims, and situations that affect what you owe to HMRC (or what they owe you).
Your FPS tells HMRC what you’ve paid your people. Your EPS tells them what should be deducted from or added to that bill.
How your EPS fits into RTI
Under RTI, HMRC expects a complete picture of your payroll activity each tax month. The FPS provides the core data; the EPS fills in the gaps. Together, they give HMRC what they need to calculate your final PAYE liability for each month.
If you’re new to RTI or want to understand how the FPS and EPS work together in the wider reporting framework, our guide to Real Time Information has the full picture.
When do you need to submit an Employer Payment Summary?
The EPS deadline
The EPS must be submitted by the 19th of the following tax month (tax months run from the 6th of one month to the 5th of the next). So, if you’re claiming a statutory payment reclaim for the tax month ending 5 May, your EPS must reach HMRC by 19 May. Miss that deadline and HMRC won’t apply the reduction to your bill in time, meaning you could end up paying more than you should.
Payroll Software for every submission
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When you do and don't need to send one
You don’t need to send an Employer Payment Summary every single month—only when you have something to report. Here’s a breakdown:
| Scenario | EPS required? |
|---|---|
| No employees paid in a tax month | Yes—must send a nil EPS |
| Claiming Employment Allowance | Yes—once per tax year |
| Reclaiming statutory maternity pay | Yes |
| Reclaiming other statutory payments (paternity, adoption, shared parental, neonatal care, parental bereavement) | Yes |
| Apprenticeship Levy payment | Yes (if annual pay bill exceeds £3 million) |
| CIS deductions to reclaim (limited companies only) | Yes |
| Closing your PAYE scheme | Yes—as a final submission |
| Owed a refund from HMRC | Yes |
| Nothing to report on that month | No |
A lot of organisations don’t realise they need to send a nil EPS when they haven’t paid anyone in a given month. If you don’t, HMRC will still expect an FPS and may raise a query or issue a penalty.
What's included in an Employer Payment Summary?
The key fields to know
The Employer Payment Summary doesn’t contain employee-level data—that’s what the FPS is for. Instead, it includes organisation-level adjustments. Here’s what you might be reporting:
- Statutory payment reclaims: If you’ve paid statutory maternity, paternity, adoption, shared parental, neonatal care, or parental bereavement pay to your employees, you can reclaim some or all of this from HMRC via the EPS. Most employers can reclaim 92% of what they’ve paid; small employers (those who paid £45,000 or less in Class 1 NICs in the previous tax year) can reclaim 103%.
- Employment Allowance: If you’re eligible to claim Employment Allowance—which reduces your employer National Insurance contributions (NICs) by up to £10,500 per tax year—you do this through the EPS. You only need to submit this claim once per tax year, and it stays active until you tell HMRC otherwise.
- Apprenticeship Levy: If your organisation has a combined annual pay bill of more than £3 million, you’ll use the EPS to report your Apprenticeship Levy payments.
- CIS deductions: If you’re a limited company working as a subcontractor under the Construction Industry Scheme (CIS), you can reclaim CIS deductions that have been made from your payments through the EPS.
- No payment periods: If you haven’t paid any employees for at least one full tax month, you submit a nil EPS to let HMRC know. This prevents them from expecting an FPS and issuing unnecessary penalties.
- Closing your PAYE scheme: When you’re no longer running payroll—because your business is closing, you’ve had no employees for a period, or you’re switching to a different scheme—you mark your final EPS or FPS accordingly.
A quick real-world example
A medium-sized retail business has two employees on maternity leave in April. They’ve paid Statutory Maternity Pay (SMP) of £3,000 in total across those two employees. When they submit their April FPS, it includes those payments as normal. Then, before 19 May, they submit their EPS to reclaim 92% of that SMP (£2,760) from HMRC. Without the EPS, HMRC wouldn’t know the reclaim was needed—and the business would be out of pocket.
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How to submit an Employer Payment Summary
Step by step
Your Employer Payment Summary is submitted through your payroll software using your HMRC PAYE Online credentials. The process looks like this:
- Complete your FPS first for the relevant pay period—the EPS is always submitted after your FPS, not instead of it (unless it’s a nil return).
- Log into your payroll software and navigate to the RTI or HMRC submissions section.
- Select ‘Employer Payment Summary‘ or equivalent, depending on your software.
- Enter the relevant figures—this might be your SMP reclaim, your Employment Allowance claim, or a note that no payments were made.
- Check the tax month and year carefully before submitting. An EPS filed in the wrong period can cause reconciliation issues.
- Submit and confirm receipt. Your software should give you a confirmation or reference once the submission has been accepted by HMRC.
If you use a payroll outsourcing service or a bureau, they’ll typically handle EPS submissions on your behalf. But remember, legal responsibility for accuracy and timing always sits with you as the employer.
What if you're submitting through an agent?
If you work with a payroll bureau or agent, they’ll submit the EPS using your PAYE scheme details. Make sure they have all the information they need in good time before the 19th—late data passed to a bureau is one of the most common reasons EPS submissions miss the deadline. Just because they are submitting it on your behalf doesn’t mean it’s not still your responsibility. Any repercussions for late or incorrect submissions will fall on you.
Common EPS mistakes (and how to avoid them)
Even experienced payroll professionals can run into issues with their EPS. Here are the ones that come up most often:
If you haven’t paid anyone in a tax month, you still need to tell HMRC. A missing nil EPS looks the same to HMRC as a missing FPS—they’ll assume something’s been overlooked and may raise a penalty.
The Employer Payment Summary deadline is firm. If HMRC doesn’t receive your EPS before the 19th, they won’t apply any reductions to your bill for that month. You may then need to contact HMRC directly to get the adjustment applied retrospectively.
The EPS is meant to complement your FPS, not replace it (except in nil payment months). If you’ve run payroll but only submit an EPS, HMRC won’t have the employee data they need.
Not all employers can claim. You can’t claim if your employer Class 1 NICs were £100,000 or more in the previous tax year, or if you’re a sole director with no other employees. Claiming incorrectly will need to be corrected and could draw HMRC scrutiny.
Whether you’re reclaiming at 92% or 103% depends on your NIC bill for the previous tax year. Using the wrong rate, even accidentally, creates discrepancies that take time to unpick.
Do you have a regular checklist in place before you submit your monthly EPS? If not, it’s worth creating one. It doesn’t need to be complicated—just a quick run-through of what needs to be reported that month, what’s been claimed before, and whether all figures tie back to your FPS.
EPS and year-end: what changes?
Closing out the tax year
At the end of the tax year (5 April), your final submission—whether that’s an FPS or an EPS—needs to be clearly marked as your final submission for the year. This isn’t an extra task on top of your usual payroll process; it’s simply the last submission you were making anyway, with an indicator applied.
If you’re using an Employer Payment Summary as your final year-end submission (for example, because there were no payments in the final tax month), make sure:
- It’s marked as the final submission for the year
- Any outstanding reclaims for the year are included
- Your Employment Allowance claim is accurate and reflects actual NIC savings taken
Failing to mark a final submission correctly can result in HMRC continuing to expect further submissions, and raising filing penalties that are entirely avoidable.
Setting up for the new tax year
Once the new tax year starts on 6 April, your Employment Allowance claim from the previous year won’t automatically carry over in all cases. Check your payroll software settings and, if needed, resubmit your claim via EPS at the start of the new tax year. Make sure you’re also working with updated NIC thresholds and statutory payment rates—these affect both the figures in your FPS and the amounts you might reclaim through your EPS.
If you’re looking for a full breakdown of what changes at the start of a new tax year, our payroll legislation hub keeps everything in one place.
EPS vs FPS: a quick comparison
To make things easier, here’s a side-by-side summary:
| FPS (Full Payment Submission) | EPS (Employer Payment Summary) | |
|---|---|---|
| What it reports | Employee pay, tax, and NICs | Adjustments, reclaims, nil periods |
| When it's submitted | On or before each payday | By the 19th of the following tax month |
| How often | Every pay run | Only when there's something to report |
| Who it covers | Individual employees | The organisation as a whole |
| What happens if you miss it | Late filing penalty risk | HMRC won't apply reductions to your bill |
Get your EPS right every time
The Employer Payment Summary isn’t complicated, but it does require consistent attention. The key is making it part of your regular payroll process—not an afterthought you catch after the 19th has passed.
A good payroll software solution will prompt you to submit an EPS when it’s needed, validate your data before it goes to HMRC, and keep a clear audit trail of every submission.
See Cintra in action
If you’d like to see how Cintra handles EPS submissions as part of a wider, joined-up payroll process, we’d be happy to walk you through it. Book a demo at a time that works for you—no pressure, just a straightforward look at how it all fits together.
