DECIDING THE LENGTH OF YOUR FURLOUGH CLAIM PERIOD

Published 8 July 2020

Your claim period is made up of the days that you are claiming a grant for. You can backdate your claim to 1 March 2020 where employees have already been furloughed from that date.

Claims for any periods starting before 1 July 2020 must end on or before 30 June 2020. This means that separate claims will need to be submitted to cover the days in June and July that you want to claim for, even if employees are furloughed continuously. This may result in your claim periods being different from the pay periods that you use.
Claims for periods ending on or before 30 June 2020 must be made by 31 July 2020.

Claim periods starting on or after 1 July 2020 must start and end in the same calendar month and must be for at least 7 days. You can only claim for a period that is less than 7 days if the period you are claiming for includes either the first or last day of the calendar month and you have already claimed for the period ending immediately before it.

If possible, you should match your claim period to the dates you process your payroll. 

You can only make one claim for any period so you must include all of your furloughed or flexibly furloughed employees in one claim even if you pay them at different times. If you make more than one claim then your subsequent claim can't overlap with any other claim that you make. 

Claim periods for employees that have been furloughed or flexibly furloughed continuously must follow on from each other with no gaps in between the dates.

You can claim before, during or after you process your payroll. You can usually make your claim up to 14 days before your claim period end date meaning that you do not have to wait until the end of a claim period to make your claim.

Claiming for employees who are flexibly furloughed - You should not claim until you are sure of the exact number of hours they will have worked during the claim period. You will have to pay some of the grant back to HMRC if you claim in advance and your employee works more hours than you have stated.

Payments will be made 6 working days after you make your claim.