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emma96
March 25, 2025
Question

In Core Payroll - Can anyone advise how I re-activate an employee who has rejoined the business? I cannot set up new as the NI number conflicts and wont allow me to add?

  • March 25, 2025
  • 1 reply
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1 reply

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CarlSJ
March 25, 2025

I'd be glad to provide advise on the proper way to handle an employee who needs to be reactivated so that you can accurately enter their NI information, @emma96.

 

An employee should be terminated in the employee's profile and classified as a new hire when re-employed. They should not be reactivated, as this can cause issues, including those experienced with their NI information.

 

To begin with, here's how to properly terminate an employee:

 

  1. Sign in to your QBO account.
  2. Go to the Payroll tab and select Employees.
  3. Select the specific employee on the list. You can click All employees to see inactive employees.
  4. Select the Actions dropdown, then click on Edit leaver's status.
  5. Be sure to select Dismissed.


     
  6. Click on Save.

 

Once finished, let's create a new employee profile for that same individual:

 

  1. Click on Add an Employee.
  2. Enter your employee's complete legal name, then select Add my employee.


     
  3. Complete the necessary info for your employee including their NI info in the Tax details.

 

To learn more about entering tax and NI details for an employee, you can refer to Step 4 in this article: Managing employees in QuickBooks Online Advanced Payroll and Bureau Payroll.

 

Once you have correctly set up your employee, you can proceed with running payroll for that employee in the future.

 

Proper employee management ensures that all data is recorded precisely, leading to reliable financial reporting and smoother operational processes. If you have further questions, feel free to return. I'll be right here to assist you.

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emma96Author
March 25, 2025

Thank you for your reply. I have the employee marked as terminated as they resigned and I cannot amend the inactive employee status to change this to Dismissed - When I enter the NI number into the new employee a error flags that the NI number is conflicting - do you know how I navigate these? 

 

Thanks Emma

EduardA
EduardA
March 25, 2025

You're doing great, emma96. You might have an updated version of QuickBooks Online (QBO) Payroll compared to the one used by my colleague in the previous post. This is because, in the updated version of QBO Payroll, there are only two options available for an employee's status: Active or Terminated.

 

 

Since we want to ensure that you can successfully reinstate your employee, we'd like to inform you that the system is designed to flag duplicate employee details when they are entered. As a potential solution, you might consider making a minor adjustment to the National Insurance number in the original profile (for instance, by altering the last digit) before creating a new employee profile with the correct NI number.

 

If you're able to resolve the issue and reactivate your employee through our suggested solution, you can now run your payroll. We'd like to share this following article with you for guidance, especially when you're using QBO Core Payroll: How to run payroll in QuickBooks Online Core Payroll.

 

Should you have further questions about QBO Payroll or just wish to follow up on your current concern for additional context, please do not hesitate to reach out to the Community. Remember, we're happy to assist you anytime.

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