How to do a penny test on Cintra iQ?

Penny test is the payment of £0.01 to an employee’s bank account. It is done to test the connection between the Bureau and the client’s SUN number to ensure the BACS payment can be transmitted. This payment should be done for any new client being onboarded or for any new SUN number the client has.

To do a penny test on Cintra iQ:

1. Start by putting an advance amount on the employee’s payslip to reduce the net pay value to a £0.01.

2. Create a payment run for the selected employee. 

Note: It is very important to ensure the payment run due date is correct. You might need to override the default date so that the payment run due date reflects the actual date the employee should be paid.

3. Cintra iQ will classify any payment run with a value of £0.01 as a penny test and the FPS submission will not be required.

4. Once the payment run has been created, you need to authorise and close it off on Cintra iQ. 

5. Once the penny test payment has been closed on Cintra iQ, the Bureau will then submit the corresponding bank file through the Cloud Bank File portal.

6. For the payment to be processed via Cintra Cloud, you need to activate the Bacs for your organisation. See instructions on this article to enable the BACS on Cintra Cloud: How to do a penny test using the Bank File Portal on Cintra Cloud

7. If the payment is successful, the advance amount from the payslip can be removed. 

8. The payment run for the penny test should not be overridden by the main run, instead, it is left on Cintra iQ in the same way as the supplementary run.

8. If the payment run failed, it will need to be cancelled via the Cintra Cloud Bank file portal, which will also delete the payment run on Cintra IQ

9. A new payment run for the value £0.01 and the correct due date will need to be created on Cintra iQ.