Surplus earnings

Needhelpsos

Hi. I made a post a month or so ago about my fear of potentially going into surplus earnings this month with my universal credit. Essentially my assessment period covered two of my monthly pays plus my annual bonus from my employer. 

My statement was made available to today and as expected I am not getting any UC this month which is ok because my bonus will cover my childcare fees. 

I can’t see anything on the statement about surplus earnings though, does anybody know how I find out if I’ll have a penalty for this next month? 

I have also raised a grievance for my assessment periods to change so it always take into account 1 payment from my employer. 

calcotti

Any earnings not taken into account this time are carried forward. However there is a £2,500 disregard before the carry forward is taken into account in the next month so unless the carry forward is more than £2,500 there will be no impact. Your previous thread contains advice on how to calculate this if you need to.

From your previous thread your issue seemed to be a bonus payment and two earnings payments being paid within the one monthly assessment period.

Note that where you are paid monthly if you end up with two payments in one month due to weekends or bank holidays you can put a note in your journal (payments section) asking UC to reallocate one of the payments to the correct month. Whether or not you are better off by doing this depends on your particular circumstances.

Needhelpsos

calcotti said:

Any earnings not taken into account this time are carried forward. However there is a £2,500 disregard before the carry forward is taken into account in the next month so unless the carry forward is more than £2,500 there will be no impact. Your previous thread contains advice on how to calculate this if you need to.

From your previous thread your issue seemed to be a bonus payment and two earnings payments being paid within the one monthly assessment period.

Note that where you are paid monthly if you end up with two payments in one month due to weekends or bank holidays you can put a note in your journal (payments section) asking UC to reallocate one of the payments to the correct month. Whether or not you are better off by doing this depends on your particular circumstances.

Thank you so much. The amount that my statement says is taken into account is the actual amount I received from my employer so hopefully that means I am ok. There is a bit underneath that says deductions and that is lower than my earnings which is what confused me. But even then the difference between the deductions and my earnings are lower than 2.5k so I think I am in the clear! 

I did try to work it out last time but I got myself so confused I kept coming up with different answers! I have also requested the days of my assessment periods are changed, because I think next month they won’t take into account any earnings again, I got a reply on my journal saying she couldn’t change the assessment periods but will raise a dispute. Hopefully that will resolve any issues. 

calcotti

Needhelpsos said: The amount that my statement says is taken into account is the actual amount I received from my employer so hopefully that means I am ok. There is a bit underneath that says deductions and that is lower than my earnings which is what confused me. 

The deduction is 63% of the earnings (after disregarding the amount of the Work Allowance if you have one).

NedS

Needhelpsos said:

I can’t see anything on the statement about surplus earnings though, does anybody know how I find out if I’ll have a penalty for this next month? 

If surplus earnings are applied, there will be a link / entry in your journal about your payments being reduced next month. The journal entry would go in on the same date your statement is generated, normally on the first day of your assessment period. If there is no link / entry in your journal about surplus earnings, then there are no surplus earnings to consider. It all happens automatically by the system.