1. Finance Brief July 2016

2. Reminder of management responsibility when approving expenses & pay claims
There have been several recent cases of fraud and other cases of over claiming.
In each case the claims had been approved for payment by the manager.
When approving the manager is verifying that each individual claim is correct, is in line with Ts & Cs and NHSBT policy and is due for payment.
Approving managers are responsible for knowing and applying Ts & Cs and policies and they must act on behalf of NHSBT.
Managers found to have authorised fraudulent or incorrect claims may be subject to investigation.
If you don’t know the relevant policies please do get to know them.
‘Top Tips’ for approvers can be found on People First.
Book onto the “Introductory training for Managers & Supervisors - Finance and Procurement” if you are uncertain of your responsibilities as an approving manager.

3. Booking annual leave - pilot
We are currently running a pilot using EASY to request and approve annual leave.
There are more than 400 people and 10 departments participating.
The key benefits are;
automated leave entitlement calculations (including 5/10 years service, buying extra annual leave and non-standard leave years)
a robust, auditable, link between leave entitlement, leave booked and leave taken
automatic transfer to ESR as leave is taken
visibility and audit trail of leave requests and approvals.
We will be sending surveys to gather feedback from all bookers and approvers to support our review of the pilot.
Our aim is to finalise the pilot outcome report in the autumn and, subject to success and approval to proceed, we hope to be in a position to roll this out across NHBST for April 2017.

4. Direct Debit for Blood Customers
In July Direct Debit will be introduced. 60 Trusts will pay by this method and a further 3 on Standing Order. Automating the collection of £5.6m of debt each month.
This will save Trusts time in processing payments and ensure debt is collected promptly.
Blood contract values will be collected in this way
This will allow our Accounts Receivable Team to focus on collecting our other debts.
Thank you to our customer service colleagues, Mike White, Maxine Spivey and all the team who worked to get this up and running!

5. EASY – timesheet and absence approvals
During June and July we are undertaking an audit of EASY data access.
We have provided budget managers with details of current access, asking them to review this and advise us if any should be removed.
The data covers approvals for:
Timesheets/claims
Absence recording
If you have any questions about this process contact NHSBT Pay Support on (54455)

6. Reminder for everyone to check their payslips
We have recently seen a fall in calls to Pay Support and SBS Payroll around payday
This has happened since the introduction of e-payslips
Remember that payslips are readily accessible remotely as well as on NHSBT sites
You can access from PCs, tablets and smart phones (NHSBT and/or personal)
We will be directly contacting those individuals who haven't accessed their e-payslip accounts
It is our responsibility to access our own payslips and check our pay promptly each payday. It’s important to do this to identify any potential errors promptly to avoid on-going under/over payments

7. Annual Report and Accounts
The Accounts were certifed on the 29/6/2016 by the Head of the National Audit Office.
The Accounts will be laid before Parliament in early July.
Thank you again to all who have helped in this process this year.

8. Pay Support Helpline number – 14th July
On Thursday 14th July the Pay Support helpline phone line will be unavailable due to a key staff training event.
You may, of course, continue to raise any queries by to
Pay Support - Helpline
We will respond to all queries raised on the 15th July.
Please accept our apologies for any inconvenience that this might cause.