As the lead user researcher on the apprenticeship service, I spend most of my time with employers and training providers, testing the service and trying to understand how to make it as easy to use as possible.
Most of the employers I talk to are keen to understand as much as they can about how the service will work and how they should set up their accounts. These are the questions they most commonly ask.
1. Where do I get my Government Gateway details from?
As part of the registration process, you’ll need to enter the Government Gateway username and password associated with your PAYE scheme. This is so that we can link the amount of levy you’ve paid to your account. Depending on the size and complexity of your organisation, this might be more straightforward for some than others. The first thing to do is to talk to your payroll department. Hopefully, they should have access to the credentials and should be able to help you set-up the account.
If your payroll is outsourced, you might find that the Government Gateway account your agent uses is not suitable for use on the apprenticeship service. If this happens, you’ll need to set up a Government Gateway account before you can register. To do this, you’ll need your Accounts Office reference and your PAYE scheme number. Your agent should be able to provide you with this. Find out more about setting up a Government Gateway account. Doing this won’t affect the way you currently manage your payroll, your agent can carry on as normal.
If your payroll department or agents are worried about the security of the site or what information it might give you access to, the next question should give them some reassurance.
2. Is there any sensitive PAYE information visible in the account?
Once the PAYE schemes are linked to the account, the only information that is shown in the account is the amount of levy paid against the scheme. There is no access to any other payroll information within the account. The Government Gateway user name and password entered during registration can’t be accessed from the account, and they only need to be entered once during registration.
3. Should I set up one account or more?
That really depends on how you want to manage your levy. If you have more than one PAYE scheme, you can add them to separate accounts if you wish. The benefit of this is that you have a greater degree of separation between the funds, and it might be easier for you to manage if you have subsidiaries or areas of the business that are managed autonomously. The disadvantage is that you can’t move funds between accounts, so if you would prefer to manage your levy as one amount across all of your connected companies, it would be best to add them all to the same account.
4. Should I add my connected companies to my account or not?
To receive levy from your connected companies, you only need to add their PAYE schemes to the account. Whether or not you add your connected companies as legal entities to the account depends on how you contract with your training provider. Only legal entities who contract with training providers need to be added to the account. The legal entity that is named on the contract with your training provider should be added to the account under the 'organisations' section.
5. If I give staff in my connected companies access to the account, will they be able to see information from other connected companies?
At the moment, they will. There is currently no way to section your account to control spend or access against connected companies or sites, however we know that this is something employers would like, so we're looking into how we could do this in the future.
If you are an employer and due to pay the apprenticeship levy from April, you can register now for the apprenticeship service. If you are not sure whether or not you will need to pay the levy, use our levy calculator to find out.
Follow @ESFAdigital on Twitter for latest updates on the apprenticeship service.
11 comments
Comment by Megan O'Keefe posted on
How do you register for a digital apprenticeship service account if your PAYE scheme is linked to an agency for the purposes of providing your payroll service?
Comment by Duncan Nayor posted on
Hi Megan
If your payroll service is provided by a payroll agency (such as your accountant) it may be that they use their own Government Gateway "Agent ID". You will not be able to register using this ID and will need to apply for your own. Either click the link on the Apprenticeship Service account registration page to get a Government Gateway ID, or ask your payroll agent to assist you.
Comment by Megan O'Keefe posted on
Thanks Duncan, I really appreciate you taking the time to reply. We already have our own Government Gateway ID but when we tried to register with it, the system just says 'you don't have any PAYE schemes attached to this employer' because our PAYE scheme is linked to the Payroll agency Agent ID. Someone from HMRC is looking into it for us so hopefully we'll have it resolved this week so that we can register for our account. Thanks again
Comment by Presh Sekaran posted on
Hi Megan,
My organisation is also having a similar issue. Which department in HMRC did you contact?
Comment by Emma Lewis posted on
Hi Megan
Did you manage to resolve this? I am having the same issues and would really appreciate some advice from someone who has completed this?
Thanks
Comment by Jackie Hammer posted on
Hi,
We have also tried to register using a current Gateway ID but also have an Agent with their own Gateway ID linked to our PAYE. The HMRC system is not allowing us to link ourselves to the PAYE to then go on to the Apprenticeship registration.
Thanks.
Jackie
Comment by Anisha Desaur posted on
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Comment by Kate Bryant posted on
I have just tried to link another PAYE scheme to our Apprenticeship account, and again it is a scheme run by an agency.
I am also getting a reply that no schemes are linked to this additional PAYE scheme.
Does anyone know when this will be fixed?
Comment by Lilley Deevey posted on
Hi All,
I had similar issues but have managed to resolve them. My company had three different PAYE schemes all managed by external agencies. If the PAYE scheme is already linked to another government gateway account (you can check this through HMRC employer helpline) you will need to find out those government gateway details, if you cant get the gateway details (ours was created by someone who had left the business) you can request a new gateway ID through the post from HMRC if you have the companies house number, accounts reference and PAYE number, then request a separate new password by post.
If your PAYE scheme isn't linked to a gateway account (one of ours wasn't) you need to set up a new gateway account yourself, add the PAYE scheme and they will send you an activation code through the post to the address the PAYE scheme is registered to. This won't affect how your PAYE is paid 🙂
Hope this helps!
Comment by Lisa posted on
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Comment by Cory Jefford posted on
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