Why do corrections occur?
Cintra iQ is a date-driven system. When a change is made to data that falls in a past pay period, the software doesn't just adjust the current payslip. It rolls back to the relevant pay period, reopens it, recalculates tax, NI and pension as if the change had happened at the correct time, then feeds the difference onto the current payslip as a correction.
This applies whether the change comes from a salary or post update, a backdated sickness event, a tax code change, or a pension adjustment. Regardless of the type, the underlying process is the same: Cintra iQ is correcting the past and showing you the difference in the present.
Corrections are an automatic consequence of how the system handles any backdated change. Understanding this one principle explains almost everything you'll see when a correction appears on a payslip.
Examples of corrections
Any payment that goes through payroll can also appear as backdated correction. Here are some typical examples you may encounter:
Monthly payment: These can often occur when an employee’s salary or contract type changes.
Sickness: For example, when sickness absence is entered retrospectively, such as through Self-Service.
Post-related: These can occur when an existing post is edited instead of adding a new one.
Pension: Changes can affect pensionable pay. While pension and salary sacrifice values are adjusted, these changes don’t create a gross pay correction.
Tax code: Such as tax code or NI category changes.
Parental leave: For example, with backdated start dates for paternal leave or a change to average weekly earnings that calculate SPP.
Regardless of the correction type, the procedure for identifying, and if necessary, fixing it, is the same.
The tax year backstop
Corrections don't reach back indefinitely. Cintra iQ applies different rules depending on whether the correction affects a payment or a deduction:
Payments (salary, overtime, bonuses) can be corrected across the current and previous tax year.
Deductions are never restated from an earlier tax year. If a deduction should have been different in a prior tax year, the difference is applied in the current period instead of resubmitted retrospectively.
This backstop exists because of how HMRC reporting works: once a tax year has closed, submissions for it can't simply be resubmitted with revised figures the same way that an in-year correction can.
Seeing an unexpected correction on a payslip?
Start with the troubleshooting guide. It covers how to spot a correction, trace its cause using the Correction Reports and Audit Log, and fix it safely.
Not every correction can be traced and fixed on your own. If you've worked through the Correction Reports and Audit Log and still can't identify the cause, or a fix makes the correction worse rather than better, stop and log a support ticket rather than continuing to make changes. Corrections can overlap and compound, so this isn't a step to skip past.
Want to see a full worked example?
If you’d like to see an example of a typical correction, including how it is identified and fixed, see this Corrections example.
Need to create a correction deliberately?
Most corrections happen automatically, as a consequence of a backdated change elsewhere in the system. The articles below cover the situations where you need to create a correction directly, rather than waiting for one to appear on its own.