This function is only available for the United Kingdom (BRI) legislation.

An employer may be issued an attachment of earnings order (AEO) by a court. An AEO instructs the company to deduct a debt directly from an employee's pay. Attachments are issued for a variety of reasons.

It is a legal requirement for the company to recover the amount stated on the AEO from the employee. Deduct the AEO from the employee's net pay, this is also known as their attachable earnings.

The issuer also requires you to make payments to them, usually on a weekly or monthly basis. To cover your administration costs, you can deduct an administration fee of £1 from the employee each pay period, for each attachment.

The rules about how you treat AEOs vary depending on whether they are issued in England and Wales, Scotland or Northern Ireland.

This function lets you create, or update, attachment of earnings types so that they can be used on employees’ pay plans.

If you delete an attachment of earnings type that has been assigned to one, or more, employees in the Employee setup function (GESHRAEH) it will no longer be assigned to the employees.

Payroll calculations

When you use the Payroll calculation function (TRTCAL) to perform a pay run the employees’ gross and net earnings, without attachment of earnings, are calculated. These figures are then used to calculate and apply the correct attachment of earnings and recalculate their net pay.

The attachment of earnings calculations are performed for each employee in priority order.

If an employee has protected earnings, the attachments of earnings are calculated and deducted from the employee’s remaining attachable earnings. If the remaining attachable earnings are fully allocated no further attachments will be deducted from the employee’s pay in the current pay run. For example, if an employee has 60% protected earnings then the sum of their attachment of earnings deductions cannot exceed 40% of their net earnings.

Any administration fees applied are deducted after the attachment of earnings deductions so may reduce the employee’s net pay below their protected earnings.

    Prerequisites

    SEEREFERTTO Refer to documentation Implementation

    Screen management

    As well as Attachment of earnings types that you have created, the selection pane also includes several predefined types that have fixed values or rates.

    Header

    Presentation

    Use the screen header to enter the details of the attachment of earnings type, if the type has a contribution rates table you enter it on the deduction rate tab.

    Close

     

    Fields

    The following fields are present on this tab :

    Detail

    • Code (field TYPCOD)

    Use this field to give the Attachment of earnings type a unique reference code. You cannot give the type a name or description so consider using descriptive codes such as ‘ChSu_Emp1234’ for an employee’s child support payments.

    This field is mandatory.

    Use this field to enter the type of Attachment of Earnings Order (AEO) that is applicable. Alternatively, you can click the Selection icon to see a list of the available types.

    This field is mandatory.
    The supplied types include:

    71N – Civil debt or maintenance with 1971 Non-Priority, amount. Also, known as a Centralized attachment of earnings payment.

    71P – Fines or maintenance with 1971 Priority, can be amount or percentage.

    CAO - Conjoined Arrestment Order, amount. These are issued if an employee has more than one earnings arrestment or current maintenance arrestment.

    CMA - Current Maintenance Arrestment, amount. An employee can only have one current maintenance arrestment active at a time. Return any further CMA orders you receive.

    CS - Child Support, amount. AEOs issued after April 2012 have protected earnings fixed at 60%.

    CTAX - Council Tax, percentage. An employee can only have two active Council Tax AEOs at a time from the same local authority. Return any further council tax orders to the local authority.

    DEO - Deduction of Earnings Orders, amount.

    EAR - Earnings Arrestment can be amount or percentage. An employee can only have one earnings arrestment active at a time. Return any further earnings arrestment orders you receive.

    EAR06 - Earnings Arrest for bankruptcy and diligence (2006), can be amount or percentage.

    FINEN - Fines Enforcement, issued to ensure court fines are paid.

    HRDIR - Higher Rate Direct Earnings Attachment (DEA), percentage with protected earnings fixed at 60%. Used to collect overpaid benefits. When instructed to deduct a DEA from an employee, you may be asked to calculate the deductions at the higher or the standard rate (see NRDIR).

    ISD - Income Support Deduction Notice, amount.

    NRDIR - Normal Rate DEA, percentage with protected earnings fixed at 60%. Used to collect overpaid benefits. When instructed to deduct a DEA from an employee, you may be asked to calculate the deductions at the higher (see HRDIR) or the standard rate.

    PRE92 – Pre-1992 Community Charge, can be amount or percentage.

    PST92 - Post 1992 Community Charge, percentage.

    • Frequency (field PAYFRQ)

    Use this field to select a pay frequency used by the company (usually weekly or monthly) if this is a generic attachment of earnings type. Alternatively select the pay frequency of the specific employee the attachment of earning is created for.
    This field is mandatory.

    • Effective date (field EFFDAT)

    Use this field to enter the date the attachment of earnings order comes into effect. This will usually be the date the order is issued.
    This field is mandatory.

    • Fixed amount (field FIXEDAMT)

    Select this check box to indicate this attachment of earnings has a fixed deduction amount. The amount will be assigned when the attachment of earnings is assigned to the employee using the Attachment of earnings function (GESHRAEH).
    If this check box is selected the grid in the AE deduction rate tab is not needed and you will not be able to enter any values in the grid.

    Close

     

    Tab AE deduction rate

    Presentation

    Use this grid to create payment bands where the amount or percentage to be repaid varies according to the employee’s net earnings.

    Close

     

    Fields

    The following fields are present on this tab :

    Grid

    • AE from (field AEFROM)

    Use this field to enter the minimum value of a deduction band.
    For example, if an Attachment of Earnings Type (AET) has two bands where if the employee’s net monthly earnings are less than £1000.00 you deduct 3% a month, but if they are between £1000.00 and £9999.99 you deduct 5% a month. In this case, you would enter ‘0.01’ in the AE from field on row 1 and ‘1000.00’ on row 2.

    • AE to (field AETO)

    Use this field to enter the maximum value of a deduction band.
    For example, if an Attachment of Earnings Type (AET) has two bands where if the employee’s net monthly earnings are less than £1000.00 you deduct 3% a month, but if they are between £1000.00 and £9999.99 you deduct 5% a month. In this case, you would enter ‘999.99’ in the AE to field on row 1 and ‘9999.99’ on row 2.

    • Deduction rate (field DEDRAT)

    If applicable, use this field to enter deduction percentage for the band.
    You cannot enter a deduction rate if you have already entered a deduction amount.

    • Amount (field AMOUNT)

    If applicable, use this field to enter deduction amount for the band.
    You cannot enter a deduction amount if you have already entered a deduction rate.

    Close

     

    Error messages

    The only error messages are the generic ones.

    Tables used

    SEEREFERTTO Refer to documentation Implementation