Deadline Day at P11D Organiser Support

The Plan

Arrive at the office quite early, as there are bound to have been support tickets arriving overnight, so my plan is to try and deal with as many as I can before the phones start ringing at 9am. For context, call volumes go from about 10 a day to over 150 a day at this time of year!

8:15am

Based on the support tickets. it appears some customers have not even run the P11D Organiser so for this year, as they are just realising that they have ‘lost’ their installation or have no idea about their username or password.

I run through the tickets sending out responses, helping where I can with where we think the software was installed and how to reset a password. However there are also a number of ‘creative’ IT solutions which are going to cause issues – they have tried to move the software to OneDrive or SharePoint, and that isn’t going to end well. We do everything we can to advise against this, but it seems more frequent. I arrange a bunch of calls for later in the day to try and resolve issues.

The last overnight tickets are the ‘suspended accounts’ – although we deal with some of the largest organisations in the UK, there seem to be an alarming number that ignore the agreed payment terms, and simply don’t pay. This is difficult for us, as we want our customers to be able to submit their P11Ds, but we also need to get paid!

9:00am

The phones start ringing and the calls fall into six main categories:

1. I’ve tried really hard but I’m struggling with an element of the software
2. My software has crashed and doesn’t work
3. I’m scared to press the submit button, can you watch me please?
4. I’ve never used your software before and I want you to run me through how to use it
5. Can you log onto my system and import all my data for me please?
6. I’ve got a problem (of some form) and I want you to fix it NOW.

We do our best to assist our customers, so the first three of these are why we are here – we’ll help you understand the software, assist with any software issues, and do our best to look over your shoulder and give to confidence. However, the latter three are more challenging…

Whilst we appreciate that you have been ‘dumped’ with the task of submitting P11Ds, and your employer has offered you no assistance, we just don’t have the time to start providing ad-hoc training this late in the season. We do offer training, and that can be delivered on a pre-arranged, and chargeable basis, but there has to be some planning involved. If you are dumped in front of an Adobe product, you wouldn’t dream of phoning them up to  ask for free training! However, where we can, we will offer some guidance.

The people that expect us to do the work for them are painful – we do want to help, but working with your data, and doing things that can effect the tax codes of your employees needs to be your responsibility – that’s just not our role.

Then we have the people that simply expect instant support, even to the exclusion of other customers – what surprises me is that it is usually the people who have the smallest licences (and therefore pay us the least) that expect the highest level of service. We treat all customers with the same respect, be they large or small.

11:00am

The support desk and phones are red hot now, and they are ringing faster than we can answer them. We don’t want our customers in ‘queues’  or holding, so when the phones are too busy, we have them answered by real humans that can take messages for us – we then call the customers back as soon as we can.

Most of the calls are fairly quick to resolve – people with calculation questions or having difficulty understanding the import process for example. However, there are some that are just finding out that the IT staff have ‘improved’ systems since last year, which means things plain don’t work anymore. Everyone appreciates that security is important, but I do feel that sometimes it can be self defeating – we had one customer who simply can’t mail their own employees due to the updated IT restrictions, so might have to resort to posting them – how is that even remotely secure?

1:00pm

Normally we’d be thinking about lunch about now, but we all work through at this time of year. However, every deadline day we get the call from someone that actually wants to buy the software and use it that day to submit – that call has just come in. Order form sent, licence setup and they are entering the data now – result!

3:00pm

It is getting closer to ‘panic time’ now, and people are trying to submit and realising that they don’t know their Government Gateway username and password. These are pretty much the crown jewels of a payroll team’s knowledge – they will have them somewhere, it is just where? Way too many customers expect us to know their details – that is not how it works I’m afraid.

4:30pm

We are now in the closing stages – most customers have been helped and have managed to get their submissions off to HMRC, but there are still a few ever-more frantic people who are struggling. We try very hard to be calm and peaceful on the phones, a slow and measured approach is always the best way forward. Normally, this means that the customers relaxes a little, and we can work together to get the submission completed.

4:59pm

All the support staff release a sign of relief – another P11D reporting season has drawn to a close, and things can start to calm down again. However, we can always rely on there being just one last call, and true to form, the phone rings. This time we have a Finance Director that has been told all the work has been done, all he has to do is press the submit button, but they have never used the software before and needs a little help. So one last time we go through the process – they have some duplicate NI numbers to deal with, so we talk them through the process – eventually, they hit the submit button and the task is complete – it is now 5:35pm…

6:30pm

Although the phone lines close at 5pm, I’ll have one last look at the tickets from home – just in case there is something that has come up that we can help with. Just a couple of simple clarifications, and a person that has exceeded their licence – all sorted.

7:00pm

Time for a beer!

Last Thoughts

Is there a moral to this story? Not really anything earth shattering, but just a couple of thoughts and hints:

• The P11D season comes round every year between April 6^th and July 6^th – you don’t have to leave things to July the 1^st…
• Make sure somebody knows your Government Gateway Credentials nice and early.
• Even if you don’t have the necessary data, why not check everything is working and up to date early – put a diary entry in for May 1^st to test everything.
• The support team will always try to help, but try to treat the team with a bit of respect – they will always do their best, but they are pushed for time and what they are allowed to do.
• If you don’t know how the software works, please start with our support site and the YouTube videos – we have done our best to put information out there which will help. We had one customer that purchased the software and submitted 7,500 P11Ds without one support call, but we also had one that couldn’t produce 10 P11Ds without numerous calls!
• Try not to use the support team as a ‘crutch’ – if you have used the software and submitted in previous years you can do this without one of the team watching you! Many of you run payrolls for thousands of employees on a weekly basis – this is small fry and you do have it covered!

Just for laughs

Here are some of the more interesting calls we got:

• “I’ve just received something called a P11D and I don’t know what to do”
• “How does the software actually work?”
• “IT have replaced my laptop, where is my data?”
• “We had a cyber-attack, you don’t happen to have a copy of our payroll data do you?”
• “Is that HMRC?”
• “Can you let me have my Government Gateway credentials please?”
• “My software says I have exceeded my licence, what does that really mean?”
• “My licence has expired and I’m not renewing, can you just extend it for free so I can just do this year’s return?”
• “IT have put the software on a machine with no internet connection, can it still send information to HMRC?”
• “I’m very late getting my data ready, can someone just hop on my PC and import everything for me please?”
• “I have been deleting employers , got a bit carried away and have deleted everything, how to I get them back?”