Many employers advise that after adding a new employee and lodging a printed IRD Approved Employer Monthly Schedule from Ace Payroll, the IRD version of the schedule comes back the following month showing the new employee's IRD number with "name required" where the name should be.

The following advice has been seen and approved for publication by the IRD.

There is no problem with the report you are sending - the fact that the new employee's IRD number appears on the schedule tells you that it has been correctly received and noted by the IRD.

The reason for the issue is that the IRD system for handling these schedules was originally set up to handle handwritten schedules. As a result, the way the system their end knows you have a new employee is that you have handwritten the employee name and IRD number on the schedule.

When the IRD see the handwritten name they key that name in their system so next time they send the schedule to you for the next month, that new employee's name is printed on the schedule so you don't need to handwrite it every month.

When IRD processes schedules, they don't re-type the names of employees in to their system every month when the name has been pre-printed on the schedule. They don't need to because it's the employee's IRD number that is important for their systems.

However, it isn't the same with schedules printed from a payroll package because you never need to handwrite the name. For this reason, the IRD system doesn't pick it up as a new employee and doesn't add the name to the next months schedule. It does, however, add the IRD number.

The official word from the IRD in the above situation is not a problem if you are printing an IRD approved schedule from Ace Payroll each month.

In other words, the fact "name required" is shown is irrelevant.