What is Real Time Information reporting?

In practice, in the UK

RTI changed payroll reporting from an annual, backward-looking exercise into a continuous one: every pay run, whether weekly, monthly or on any other cycle, generates a submission to HMRC alongside the payment itself, rather than a summary compiled at the end of the year. This matters beyond compliance, because HMRC uses the real-time data to adjust tax codes and calculate entitlement to income-related benefits, so a late or inaccurate submission does not just risk a payroll penalty — it can also feed incorrect information into systems well beyond the employer’s own payroll. A business that changes payroll software or provider mid-year needs the handover between systems to preserve RTI continuity, since a gap or duplication in submissions is difficult to unpick after the fact.

In Odoo

Odoo’s payroll capability, where used, needs to generate RTI submissions in step with each pay run rather than as a separate administrative task tackled afterwards. Many UK businesses instead run payroll through specialist software or a bureau precisely because of how tightly RTI ties reporting to the payment itself, using Odoo mainly to receive the resulting journal entries into the general ledger.

Common mistakes

• Treating RTI submission as something that can be caught up later rather than tied to each pay run.
• Losing submission continuity when switching payroll software or provider partway through a tax year.
• Assuming RTI is purely a compliance formality, when HMRC also uses it to adjust tax codes and benefit calculations.