People First: Payroll Month End Reports

People First Payroll

Overview

This article explains how to access and understand the month-end payroll reports available in People First. These reports are produced at the end of each payroll period and stored securely within People First at school or payroll level.

The following month-end reports are available:

Report Format
Nominal Journal Summary Report Excel and PDF
Combined Report Excel
Pension Summary Excel and PDF
FMS File Text file (.txt / .s) — Essex schools only

People First also provides a range of real-time reports that can be accessed at any point during the month, including the Changes report, BACS report, HMRC information, Payroll Dashboard reports, Insights, Exports, and HRM Dashboard reports. These are covered in People First: Payroll system reports and data exports.

How to access month-end reports

Month-end reports are stored per school or payroll. Follow these steps to access them.

  1. From the home screen, select the grid icon (nine dots) in the top left-hand corner.
  2. Select the Org chart icon. This opens the organisation chart:

  3. Select the school icon for the relevant school:

  4. This opens the school's Details page

  5. On the left-hand side, confirm the header reads Profile and Details:

  6. Scroll down to the Month End Reports section. This lists the available reports by month:

  7. Select the relevant month to expand it and display the available reports:

  8. Select Download next to each report you need:

    The files are saved to your computer's Downloads folder, where they can be opened, moved, renamed, or saved.

Month-end reports are stored securely in People First and are not password protected. Bear this in mind when saving downloaded reports to your computer or shared drives.

Multi-academy trusts (MATs)

If your school is part of a multi-academy trust, follow the same steps as above. When you open the organisation chart, expand the organisation structure to locate the relevant school. Each school's reports are accessed individually.

Month-end Report

Select each item below to see a description of its contents.

  • This report is provided as both an Excel and a PDF file. It is split into two sections.

    Section 1: Debits (costs)

    Lists costs per finance reference number (FRN) or cost code, grouped by:

    • Apprenticeship Levy
    • Pay (salary, basic hours, allowances, and so on)
    • Expenses
    • Overtime
    • Employer's National Insurance
    • Employer's Pension

    The total of this section represents the total cost of the payroll.

    If your school has claimed Employment Allowance, this is not currently included on this report.

    Section 2: Credits (payments out)

    Lists what is paid out, for example HMRC, net pay, pensions, court orders, and unions. The total of the credits section matches the total of the debits section.

    The per-employee detail behind this report can be found in People First under Payroll > View more payroll data > By costing transaction.

  • The FMS file is available to Essex schools only. It provides a summary of monthly employer costs in the specific format required to load directly into FMS finance software.

    The file includes all costs except apprenticeship levy and any Employment Allowance claimed. It is provided as a text file and may need the file extension changing from .txt to .s before importing into FMS.

    The current version of the FMS file includes full gross pay. The previous version deducted union fees, childcare vouchers, and court order fees from the costs. This is no longer the case.

    Prerequisites for using the FMS import file

    The following must all be in place for the file to load successfully into FMS.

    • The school uses the FMS finance system.
    • The FMS chart of accounts uses the historic 8-character Essex ledger codes (for example, 0139RB01 for Teaching Assistants Pay, 0401RB01 for Teaching Staff National Insurance). The file cannot be produced with other nominal code structures as Juniper does not hold that data.

    • FMS is set up to import payroll journal files in the required format:

    • FMS is linked to personnel records in SIMS using the correct People First job reference numbers. For employees migrated from Catalyst to People First, the legacy Catalyst job reference number can be used instead. There is no need to update personnel records with the new People First reference number.
    • The historic Essex cost centre structure is reflected in the Finance Reference Numbers (FRNs) stored against departments in People First (for example, 01 for Teaching Staff, 32 for Technician). FRNs are combined with the appropriate transaction code to create the ledger codes included in the file. A different cost centre or FRN structure will not create the required ledger codes for import.

  • Covers all employees in a pension scheme, listed per job. Available as both an Excel and a PDF file.

    Excel version

    Lists current period and year-to-date (April to March) values for employee and employer contributions, split by:

    • Main scheme
    • 50/50 scheme
    • AVCs
    • Added years / buy out
    • Faster accruals
    • APCs

    Also includes current period pensionable pay and employee / employer contribution percentages. There are no pre-built totals, but the Excel format allows you to total and manipulate the data as needed.

    PDF version (contributions only)

    Lists the same current period and year-to-date contribution values, grouped and totalled by pension scheme (for example, LGPS and TPS), with overall totals at the bottom.

    The employee and employer current period totals on the PDF version match the values included in the second section (credits) of the Nominal Journal Summary Report.

  • Provided as an Excel file. Contains two types of tab: Payroll Summary and Totals.

    Payroll Summary tabs

    Available as either year-to-date from April or from September. Each row represents an employee (not a job). Where an employee has multiple jobs, the information for each job is separated by a comma within that row.

    Section Header colour Contents
    Section 1 Blue Summarised gross to net for the current period - basic pay, allowances, overtime, total gross pay, deductions (tax, NI, pension, and so on), and total net pay.
    Section 2 Green Employer costs for the current period - National Insurance, pension, and total employer cost.
    Section 3 Yellow Year-to-date values for the summarised gross to net (as Section 1).
    Section 4 Orange Year-to-date employer costs (as Section 2).

    Totals tabs

    A summary sheet available as either year-to-date from April or from September. Includes HMRC payments, net pay, pension, and other third-party payments.

    Year-to-date values only include data from the date Juniper began processing your payroll. If you transferred mid-year, earlier values will not be included.

Tips and best practices

  • Download and file your month-end reports promptly at the end of each payroll period. Because the reports are not password protected, store them in a secure, access-controlled location on your system rather than in a shared or open folder.
  • If you are part of a MAT, consider setting up a consistent folder structure across all schools so that month-end reports are easy to locate and compare across the trust.

Next steps

Once you have downloaded your month-end reports, use the Nominal Journal Summary Report as your primary reconciliation tool, cross-referencing it against the Pension Summary and the Combined Report totals tabs. If you need per-employee detail behind the nominal journal, run the By costing transaction report from the Payroll Dashboard.

Updated