Bulletin, 7 April 2022 (Incoming email issue, Year-end, Rent prorating, IPSA Timetable, Training and Support)
Date published: 8 April 2022
Our phone lines will be closed tomorrow, 8 April for training.
If you have an urgent query, please email us and state in the subject line that it is urgent. Otherwise, normal service will resume on Monday.
All year-end forms must be completed and sent to us by Thursday, 14 April 2022.
As part of year-end, all IPSA payment card transactions from March and before must be reconciled by 29 April 2022.
March transactions have now been uploaded to IPSA Online.
Log in to IPSA Online to make sure you are up to date.
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Incoming email issue
Last week we identified a technical issue with some incoming emails. The issue has been resolved and we are contacting anyone affected.
For non-urgent Payroll queries please contact us after the current Parliamentary recess. We appreciate your patience and apologise for any inconvenience caused.
Year-end 2021-22
The last financial year ended on 31 March 2022.
There are a number of tasks for you to complete to move from one financial year to another including completing all IPSA tasks for the previous financial year and submitting information to us by certain deadlines.
If you need to complete a year-end form, please do so and submit it along with the necessary supporting evidence on IPSA Online, to info@theipsa.org.uk by Thursday, 14 April 2022.
All payment card transactions from March and before should be reconciled by Friday, 29 April 2022.
Any reimbursement claims for 2021-22 that you have included on your year-end form must be submitted on IPSA Online by Friday, 13 May 2022.
The year-end process is an important part of the accounting calendar and applies to all organisations. Information provided at year-end is part of the annual reporting summary which underpins our work to provide assurance to the general public that MPs’ use of public money is well regulated.
We will write to you by the end of August if it appears you have overspent on any of your 2021-22 budgets, asking for repayment where necessary.
If you are concerned about your budgets for this year, please contact us.
Rent prorating – April rents paid in March
Rent payments are made twice a week to cover any payments due in the following seven days.
This can mean rent payments due for April are paid at the end of March, and therefore in the incorrect financial year. Just like the prepayments on a year-end form, these April rent payments will need to be moved to the correct year.
Our finance and property teams work together to prorate and move rent payments made by IPSA into the correct financial years.
Until those movements are completed, your spend for 2021-2022 will be artificially larger than it should be.
This is a result of making rent payments in a timely manner and happens at the end of every financial year. We will be moving these payments into the new financial year once our checks are complete.
We are working on improving the visibility and accuracy of the spend and budgets available to view on your dashboards. Please be assured that we will take action on any instances where the spend on rent in 2021-22 exceeds the annual rent for your property.
We appreciate your patience and if you have any questions in the meantime, please do not hesitate to contact us.
IPSA timetable and key dates
As you know, we've been working hard to make sure that working with us to manage your budgets is as easy as possible so you can spend more of your time doing the important work that you do.
To mark the start of the new financial year, our Finance team has created a timetable of key dates to make it easy to see what needs to be done and when.
Access the timetable and key dates calendar.
The calendar is designed to work both online and printed out. We hope this will be useful for you.
If you have any feedback or suggestions for the timetable, please let us know.
Training and Support
We have a wide range of webinars available to help you with our rules and processes. In the spotlight this week are our regular IPSA Online training sessions and the managing your properties, payment card and staffing budget webinars.
Details of all the training sessions can be found on our Training and Development page.
IPSA Online
This session is designed to give you confidence in using our expenses, finance and payroll system, IPSA Online. They take place every Thursday at 2pm using a virtual platform.
Managing your properties: the IPSA property lifecycle
This webinar will take you through managing your IPSA offices and accommodation including what to consider while looking for a property, registration and amendment.
Payment Card
An IPSA Account Manager will provide an overview of the IPSA payment card and how to complete the payment card reconciliation process using IPSA Online.
Staffing budget
During this session, a member of the Payroll team will talk through the Staffing Budget Report including how to run and understand the Staffing Budget Report.