One of the demands that COVID-19 has placed on businesses is the need to be flexible in the number of staff under their employ at a certain period in time. We at SimplePay appreciate this and so the blog today is aimed at informing you on what you need to do to accommodate your situation through the system to ensure accurate submissions, enable employees to claim benefits and prevent unnecessary billing.

Employees Leaving your Company

Ending Employees Service

If for any reason, one or more of your employees are no longer able to work for your business, whether only for a period of time or indefinitely, it is important to end their service on SimplePay for the following reasons:

1. Ending employees’ service correctly provides them access to accrued unemployment insurance (UIF) benefits or TERS benefits.
2. SimplePay’s pricing model is based on the number of active employees on the system at the start of your monthly billing cycle. Therefore, if the employee is still active on the system when your invoice is generated, you will be charged for the employee even if no payslips have been processed for that employee. 

Information on ending an employee’s service is detailed in this help article, including steps to follow, the end service checklist and which UIF status code to use.

If you have several employees whom you have to end service for, you can do this in bulk, as detailed in this blog.

If you are ending employees’ service in order to apply for TERS benefits for them, the correct UIF status code to use is given in the COVID-19 UIF Quick Reference Guide.

What Must be Provided to Employees Upon Ending Their Service

Having ended an employee’s service, there are a number of forms which you must provide them with. SimplePay generates the following forms on your behalf, saving you the added paperwork (click on the link for each for further information): 

• Individual UI-19
• UI 2.7 (for employees expected to return to work).
• IRP5

More information on these forms can also be found in the COVID-19 UIF Quick Reference Guide. By furnishing employees with the above forms, this means that if you are not participating in the TERS scheme, employees can claim UIF benefits. For information on how to assist employees in this process, refer to this help page.

If whilst still under your employ, an ex-employee was sent invoice emails from SimplePay, the billing email list needs to be amended. To do this, click on the Profile Icon > Billing > Update Billing preferences and remove the relevant billing email(s). 

The final thing which you must check before your employees can claim UIF is that you are up to date with UIF declarations and payments. SimplePay has recently released several new features to ensure that you have all the information you could possibly need. As detailed in our blogs you can now download submissions, responses and view reasons for any error responses, allowing you to correct any issues that may have arisen. 

If you pay your and your employees’ UIF contributions directly across to SARS, SimplePay automatically details the UIF amounts owed in the generated monthly EMP201s. If adhered to, this should mean that you are not in any arrears. 

By following the above, this should result in a smooth transition and lessen the stress for all parties involved.

Shutdown of Business

Lockdown or other reasons might mean you sadly need to close your business on a temporary or permanent basis. Your intention on whether to reopen your business or not determines the appropriate actions to take.

Closing For A Period of Time

If it becomes necessary to close your business, but you intend to reopen, you should end the service for all employees and provide them with the necessary forms (as detailed above). 

As you are charged per active employee, ending the service for your workforce means that you will not be billed until they become active again.

Permanent Business Closure

In the unfortunate event that you need to close your business permanently, the following steps  need to be followed:

1. End Service for Employees and Furnish Them with Forms – as described under “Employees Leaving Your Company” (above), the employees’ service should be ended and they should be provided with the forms to facilitate claims for UIF benefits.
2. Deactivate Admin Users on your Account – if you have provided administrative privileges of your company to any ex-employees, we would recommend that these are deactivated upon ending their service. To do this, click on the profile in the top right corner > Manage Users >Delete. Should you wish for an ex-employee to retain access, you can leave their access rights unamended.
3. (Optional) Remove the Company From SimplePay – If you wish you can delete your company from SimplePay. We strongly recommend against this as it will mean you no longer have access to information assimilated on SimplePay, which might come in useful e.g. should you have any documents requested from SARS. If you wish to delete the company details of how to can be found here

Closing User Account on SimplePay

It may be the case that you have come to the decision to close your account on SimplePay. If you are sure that this is the right decision for you and there is nothing we can do to change your mind, you will need to do the following:

1. Get in touch with SimplePay at support@simplepay.co.za and request they close your account. It would be greatly appreciated if in this email you include:
   1. The reason(s) for ending your SimplePay membership
   2. Method of payment used (direct debit / EFT etc.)

N.B.  SimplePay provides you with the option of freezing your account, meaning you can still access SimplePay for three months. This provides you with ample opportunity to ensure that there is not any information that you need which is still on SimplePay.  If though, you are certain that you have all the information you need, you can also opt to close your account with immediate effect.

2. If there are any outstanding sums, these must be paid. If you are not in a position to do so, please advise us of this so that our billing team can engage with you on the best course of action.

We appreciate that this must be an extremely stressful and turbulent situation for you, with many hard decisions to make. If this is the end of your use of SimplePay, thank you for the support. We wish you well and hope that we will get the opportunity to work symbiotically with you again in the not-so-distant future. Should you have any questions on the above, please do not hesitate to contact us at support@simplepay.co.za.

Keep well and stay safe.

Team SimplePay