Access Accounting - Blog

Work and Families Act 2006

While the new Work and Families Act 2006 only relates to babies that are due to be born or adopted on or after 1 April 2007, the changes brought about by this act could in fact affect employers much sooner than this as a baby due to be born on or after this date could arrive as early as mid to late November 2006. Payroll software will need to have the legislative rules in place so they can be applied as appropriate, but it also needs to be running the existing legislation for any babies due to be born on 31 March 2007 or earlier.

The changes can be summarised as follows:

• The Maternity Pay Period is extended from 26 weeks to 39 weeks.
• The Maternity Pay Period will be able to start on any day of the week in accordance with the date the woman gives in her notice to her employer of the day she wants her SMP to start. This will allow SMP to align with the start of the woman's maternity leave in all cases.
• A woman will be able to work for an employer paying her SMP for up to 10 days in her maternity pay period and to retain SMP for the week in which any such work is done.
• The weekly rate of SMP can be divided by 7 so that it is easier for the weekly payments of SMP to be aligned with the particular pay practice in the employment (if the employer so chooses).
• The extension of the pay period from 26 to 39 weeks, enabling limited work in the pay period and enabling the weekly rate of payments to be divided by 7 also apply to Statutory Adoption Pay (SAP) where the child is expected to be placed for adoption on or after 1 April 2007.
• Dividing the weekly rate by 7 also applies to Statutory Paternity Pay (SPP) for babies due on or after 1 April 2007.
• All women, irrespective of their length of service will now qualify for Additional Maternity Leave, which will allow them to take up to a maximum of 52 weeks off work. The same does not apply for Statutory Adoption Leave, so employees will still only be entitled to Additional Adoption Leave if they meet the 26 week service test.
• If women want to change the date of their return to work they must now give their employer 56 days notice, instead of 28 days.

So if you've been notified by any employees that they are expecting a baby or are going to adopt on or after 1 April 2007, you must ensure that your payroll software can handle the changes to legislation. What's more, it is likely that you'll need to apply these before next April so the time to act is now.

Pip Trowles

Data Fragmentation in SQL Server 2005

Current commands for index management, as supported in SQL 2000 and discussed previously, are still supported in SQL 2005. However, they will be phased out & are unlikely to be supported in future releases.

With this in mind it is probably worth mentioning a few of the successors:

DBCC SHOWCONTIG - this has been replaced by the sys.dm_db_index_physical_stats ( ) function.
e.g.
SELECT * FROM sys.dm_db_index_physical_stats(DB_ID(N'Database Name'), OBJECT_ID(N'Table Name'), NULL, NULL , 'LIMITED')

DBCC DBREINDEX - this is now dealt with using the ALTER INDEX statement.
e.g.
ALTER INDEX ALL ON Table Name REBUILD WITH (FILLFACTOR = 80, SORT_IN_TEMPDB = ON, STATISTICS_NORECOMPUTE = OFF)

As a final point to mention, there are quite a few parameter options and switches that go along with these new methods. It's therefore advisable to do some research into what is actually available so that you can refine your use of these methods accordingly. SQL Server Books Online is always a good one but you'll find generally find detailed information anywhere on the internet.

Oliver Cox

Reverse Charge VAT Go-ahead to Beat Carousel Fraud

Well, last Friday it was reported that HMRC had received the go-ahead from the EU to bring in a significant change to the VAT rules to combat carousel fraud. Carousel fraud is where goods are continually imported and exported from the UK to generate VAT refunds for inter-trading companies who then disappear.

The Government report believes that this is costing the taxpayer £1.9 billion each year. An independent European report estimated that the cost to the UK could be as much as £18 billion! (That equates to around 3p on the basic rate of tax).

For the accounting software industry, there is a significant challenge in changing the software to meet the new VAT rules, which HMRC are bringing into effect from 1st December this year.

Two major software vendors estimated between 7 – 18 months to implement the new changes in their software. I guess that Access is fortunate in that our size means that we can be more responsive to such demands. The new rules bring in a reverse charge for certain small high-value goods. If you are buying these specific high value goods you will be responsible for both claiming back the input tax and paying the output tax on the purchase. If you are selling such goods in a business to business environment then you will not collect the VAT on the sale but will need to detail the tax for the purchaser to pay. The change will mean that the treasury will not be exposed to the carousel fraud – but the complexity of our UK VAT regime will grow considerably.

UPDATE 31/10/06: Since writing this blog we have issued a press release on the forthcoming launch of our reverse charge VAT functionality.

Kevin Misselbrook