What is an FPS? The Full Payment Submission explained

If you employ anyone in the UK, the Full Payment Submission (FPS) is the report you will send to HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) more often than any other. It is the core filing of Real Time Information (RTI) — the system through which employers report pay and deductions every time they run payroll, rather than once a year. This guide covers what the FPS contains, exactly when it is due, what happens if it is late, and how to correct one that went wrong.

What is a Full Payment Submission?

An FPS is an electronic report sent from your payroll software to HMRC on or before each payday. It tells HMRC who you paid, how much, and what you deducted. HMRC uses the figures to keep each employee's tax record up to date during the year, to work out what you owe as an employer each month, and to feed systems that depend on real-time earnings data — including Universal Credit.

The FPS is one of two regular RTI submissions. The other, the Employer Payment Summary (EPS), covers things the FPS cannot say — recovering statutory payments, claiming the Employment Allowance, or reporting a period with no payments. We cover that separately in our guide to the Employer Payment Summary; for the wider system, see our overview of Real Time Information reporting.

What data does an FPS contain?

Your payroll software builds the FPS from the pay run, so you rarely see the raw submission — but it helps to know what is in it, because every field feeds an HMRC record somewhere:

• Employer details — your PAYE reference and Accounts Office reference, which route the submission to the right scheme;
• Employee identity — name, National Insurance number, date of birth, address and payroll ID for every employee paid in the run;
• Pay and deductions for the period — gross pay, tax deducted under Pay As You Earn (PAYE), employee and employer National Insurance, pension contributions, and student or postgraduate loan deductions;
• Year-to-date (YTD) figures — cumulative totals for each employee since 6 April. These matter more than the period figures, because HMRC treats the latest YTD values as the truth;
• Starter information — start date, starter declaration and tax code basis for any new employee in the run;
• Leaver information — the leaving date for anyone receiving their final payment, which is how HMRC learns an employment has ended (the P45 you give the employee is generated from the same data);
• Payment details — payment date, pay frequency, and flags for irregular payment patterns.

The full field list is published by HMRC — see the GOV.UK guidance on what payroll information to report if you want the complete schema. In practice, good software populates all of it from the data you already hold.

The deadline: on or before payday

The FPS deadline is unusual among tax filings because it is not a fixed calendar date. The rule is simple: the FPS must reach HMRC on or before the date employees are paid. Pay weekly, and you file weekly. Pay monthly on the 25th, and the FPS for that run is due by the 25th. The relevant date is the contractual payday you report on the FPS, not the day the bank transfer happens to clear.

Two practical consequences follow. First, you cannot batch submissions: an employer paying different groups on different dates sends an FPS for each. Second, running payroll late means filing late — the deadline does not move because the pay run slipped.

The three-day easement

HMRC operates a concession for submissions that arrive within three days of the payday. An FPS filed up to three days late is not normally penalised, provided there is no pattern of persistent lateness. This is an easement, not an extension — HMRC has been clear that employers who routinely rely on the three days can be flagged for review and penalised. Treat payday as the deadline and the easement as breathing room for the occasional bad day.

What happens if the FPS is late?

Two things, potentially. First, HMRC's systems notice the gap. If no FPS arrives for a period in which HMRC expected one, it may raise a specimen charge based on your filing history and pursue that estimate until real figures arrive.

Second, late-filing penalties. These are charged monthly and scale with the size of your scheme — from £100 per month for the smallest employers to £400 for the largest — though your first late submission in a tax year is not penalised. If you have a genuine reason for filing late, the FPS itself carries a late reporting reason code, and penalties can be appealed where you have a reasonable excuse. The full penalty table, the one-per-year concession and the appeals process are covered in our guide to late FPS submission penalties.

Common FPS errors — and how to correct them

Mistakes happen: an overtime figure keyed wrongly, a starter put on the wrong tax code, a leaver paid after their leaving date. The correction route depends on when you spot the error.

During the tax year: correct in the next FPS

Because HMRC works from year-to-date figures, most in-year errors fix themselves through normal filing. Correct the figures in your payroll software, and the next regular FPS carries updated YTD totals that overwrite the wrong ones on HMRC's record. You do not resend the faulty submission and you do not need to tell HMRC separately — the corrected cumulative figures are the correction.

If the error affected an employee's actual pay — you underpaid or overpaid them — you also need to put the money right, and the adjustment flows through the next pay run in the usual way.

No further paydays, or after the year end: an additional FPS

If there is no later payday left in the tax year to carry the correction — or you discover the error after the year has ended on 5 April — you send an additional FPS showing the corrected year-to-date figures for the employees affected. This year-to-date FPS replaced the old Earlier Year Update (EYU) as the way to amend a closed year. Your software should offer this as a specific submission type; the key point is that it reports corrected cumulative figures, not the difference.

Errors worth special care

Error	How to fix it
Wrong pay or deduction figure	Correct in software; updated YTD figures go out on the next FPS
Wrong payment date	Send an additional FPS with the correct date; do not simply repeat the run, or HMRC may read it as a second payment
Duplicate employee record	Often caused by changing an employee's payroll ID without flagging it — HMRC sees a new employment. Contact HMRC to merge the records rather than trying to fix it by resubmitting
Missed a leaver's leaving date	Report the leaving date on your next FPS for that employee
Missed the submission entirely	Send the FPS as soon as possible with a late reporting reason code

GOV.UK's guidance on fixing payroll errors covers the less common cases, including correcting an employee's personal details and handling overpayments that span tax years.

Your first FPS as a new employer

Before you can file anything, you need to register as an employer with HMRC and receive your PAYE reference and Accounts Office reference — allow time for these to arrive before the first payday, because the FPS cannot be submitted without them. Your first FPS then includes starter information for every employee: start date, starter declaration, and the tax code you are operating (from a P45 or the starter checklist).

One thing catches new employers out: once you have registered a PAYE scheme, HMRC expects a submission for every tax month — even before you have paid anyone. If registration ran ahead of your first payday, send an EPS reporting no payments for the intervening periods so the scheme does not accumulate estimated charges.

How software handles the FPS

You cannot type an FPS into a web form — RTI submissions go through payroll software connected to HMRC's gateway. In practice that means the FPS should be a by-product of running payroll, not a separate chore: calculate the run, review it, and the submission goes to HMRC with the same click that finalises payday. Taxriva files the FPS (and EPS) directly to HMRC as part of each pay run, keeps the acknowledgement for every submission, and handles year-to-date corrections when a run needs to be amended. See how it works on our FPS and EPS filing software page.

Quick reference

• The FPS reports every payment to every employee — pay, tax, NI, student loans, starters, leavers and YTD totals.
• Deadline: on or before payday, for every pay run, at every pay frequency.
• Up to three days late is normally penalty-free — but persistent use of the easement is flagged.
• In-year errors: correct in software; the next FPS's YTD figures carry the fix.
• After the year end (or with no payday left): send an additional year-to-date FPS.
• No employees paid this period? Send an EPS, not an FPS — and not nothing.