Payroll update 21 January 2026
Kia ora koutou
Ngā mihi o te tau hou pākehā ki a koutou katoa. Happy new year to you all. We’re looking forward to working with you again to keep the schools’ payroll accurate, timely and secure.
Start of Year (SOY) 2025-2026
Key dates
SOY checklist
Please check that you’ve completed these five Start of Year tasks before the SOY screen closes on 26 February.
- Are your school’s term dates correct for the new school year?
- Have you restarted all fixed-term teachers and term-time-only non-teachers?
- Do you need to change existing employees’ pay details? (Eg, hours, employment status, allowances, funding source, leave or annualisation.)
- Do you need to onboard any new staff or jobs for the new school year?
- Do you need to terminate any jobs?
SOY reminders
Start dates cannot be on a holiday
Your school's start date for 2026 cannot be a weekend or a regional or public holiday. For example, if your school is in Auckland, your start date cannot be Monday 26 January 2026 which is Auckland Anniversary Day.
Restarting employees - your restart job counter should be zero
Please check that you have restarted all your term-time-only employees and fixed-term teachers for the 2026 school year. In the Start of Year Restart job tab, click the Add employee to be restarted box to see the employees with jobs that still need to be restarted. The job counter at the bottom of your screen needs to be at zero.
Reminder: Please do not restart a term-time-only employee in the Start of Year screen if they are going to be annualised.
Start dates - Term-time-only (TTO) employees
TTO employees don’t always start on the same day the school opens. To avoid people being overpaid for days they didn’t work, please make sure you enter their start dates correctly.
Start dates - Returning fixed-term teachers
A returning fixed-term teacher’s start date will always be 28 January, no matter what date the school opens for instruction.
If a fixed-term teacher is starting after your school's start date, please see pages 6 and 7 of the Start of Year Guide to see whether leave should be booked.
Annualisation
Annualisation doesn’t roll over each year. You need to submit a new annualisation agreement for all term-time only support staff who want their pay annualised (ie, equal fortnightly payments spread over 52 weeks).
EdPay annualisation screen or Annualisation agreement (EP23nt) form?
This flowchart shows which method to use to annualise employees.
Annualisation amount in pay period 23 (PP23)
The annualisation period is always 31 January to 30 January the following year, and the transition to the new annualisation period usually falls in PP23.
For annualised employees, this year’s PP23 payment will be made up of:
- a portion (21 January to 30 January – 10 days) based on their 2025 payments, and
- a portion (31 January to 3 February – 4 days) based on their 2026 payments.
If an employee’s annualised amount is different year to year, the PP23 payment may be slightly different from both their 2025 fortnightly amount and their 2026 fortnightly amount, but it is correct.
From PP24 they will be paid their 2026 annualisation agreement amount. The annualisation top-up for returning employees is paid in PP24.
Specialist residential schools non-teaching staff collective agreement – more information
As we told you last year, non-teaching staff at Specialist Residential Schools who are covered by the new collective and individual agreements (CA / IEA) will receive an increase in pay rates.
Effective dates
The changes are effective from 8 October 2025. Employees will see new rates and steps (and back pay if applicable) in payslips from 3 February 2026. SUE reports will show the new allowance code.
Individual employment agreement (IEA)
The agreement drop-down has been added to the IEA change screen in EdPay.
If any employees at your school have signed this IEA, please go to the IEA change screen (My School > Administration > IEA change tab), enter the date the employee signed the agreement and click SUBMIT.
New allowance
The agreement includes a new residential personal care allowance.
Key information
- Paycode: RESPC
- Eligibility: Only employees on a designation of S52 are eligible for the allowance.
- Funding: The allowance is funded by bulk grant and is charged hourly.
- Effective from: 8 October 2025.
- SUE report: This allowance code will show in SUE reports from PP23 (pay day 3 February 2026).
Reminders from the previous newsletter
Some quick reminders from our final payroll update last year.
Kāhui Ako – removal of allowances
You will no longer be able to add Kāhui Ako allowances to jobs in 2026.
Resource Teachers: Literacy (RT Lit) and Resource Teachers: Māori (RT Māori)
From 28 January 2026, you cannot set up RT Māori and RT Lit roles.
PPCBU Collective Agreement: Leadership allowance – literacy and numeracy
The increase to base rates for this allowance is effective from 28 January 2026.
For more detailed information about these changes, please see the last payroll update.
Tiaki allowance for support staff
All employees covered by the School Support Staff Collective Agreement (SSSCA) 2022 are entitled to receive the Tiaki allowance, if applicable. We identified an issue in EdPay where the Tiaki allowance didn’t show in the allowance entitlements section for some support staff. We have fixed this and you can now load the allowance to any employee covered by the SSSCA 2022.
There are two ways to do this in EdPay:
- In the allowance entitlements section, with a start/end date, if an employee's ongoing responsibilities include cleaning up a child at least once per day or five times in any week.
- As a timesheet entry for one-off instances.
How tax is calculated if you have more than one payment in a pay period
We run three pays each pay period – termination pay, out of cycle pay and the main pay. If an employee receives pay in more than one pay run in a pay period, the tax calculation for the second and third payments will be based on the total earnings in the pay period.
Tax calculation example
In one pay period, an employee on tax code M is paid $3,668.94 in an out of cycle pay and $2,145.95 in the main pay.
For the out of cycle pay, the PAYE is $882.68.
In the main pay, the PAYE is calculated based on the pay period’s total earnings:
You can also use Inland Revenue’s PAYE calculator.
Note: Some payments may be considered lump sum payments and are taxed differently from ordinary earnings.
Provisional salary for principals, MITA and PBITA
In September each year the Ministry of Education notifies schools of their provisional roll, staffing and funding entitlements for the following year. Education Payroll uses this provisional information to update:
- pay for principals, and
- the Māori Immersion Teacher Allowance (MITA) and Pacific Bilingual Immersion Teaching Allowance (MITA) for eligible schools.
In March the Ministry uses your school’s actual roll on 1 March to confirm your roll for the year. Once your roll data is confirmed Education Payroll updates the payroll data. We will remind you again later in the year when the roll data is confirmed.
School based allowances
The Ministry of Education provides a range of allowances for schools that need additional support for recruitment and retention. For example, isolated or high priority schools. If your school is eligible for allowances on the Ministry approved list, please check the job details page in EdPay to make sure that all eligible employees are receiving their entitlement.
If there are teachers who are not receiving your school’s allowance/s, you will need to check their collective agreement to find out if they are eligible.
Not all employees will be eligible for all school-based allowances. Teachers may need to meet specific conditions to be eligible, eg, full time employment, full registration, and/or more than two terms’ employment.
When you have confirmed eligibility, you can add allowances in the job details page in EdPay.
Education Sector Login (ESL) and multifactor authentication
We are refining our ESL settings to make sure we have the right balance of security for EdPay and ease of use for schools. When you log in, some users may be asked more frequently for multifactor authentication, but most users will not notice any change.
Forms refresh
You may notice some changes to forms over the next few weeks in preparation for our new ticketing system. (We’ll send you more information about that soon.) We’re taking the opportunity to refresh our forms so that form names, codes, branding, wording and links all reflect Education Payroll colours, style guide and language. The form numbers will remain the same.
New hires - employee details form
A few years ago we created a form to help you with your new hire / onboarding process. It’s a pdf you can complete onscreen or print out, with blank fields for the information you’ll need when you enter a new employee’s details into EdPay.
Thanks to your feedback, we have made a few improvements to make it even easier to use.
You can download the updated employee details form from our website.
Ngā mihi
Education Payroll