As of 13 August 2026, AI can only partly process a new employee starter in UK payroll.

What to actually do

1. Hand it to a person

   The route this page recommends

   A person who owns the outcome does this end to end, worth it when the failure is dear.

2. Use a tool built for this

   Second choice

3. Do it yourself

   The distant third

   A chat interface, chat-fluent skill, and roughly 1 hour until you can act on the result.

   How to actually do it

   1. Open the starter's P45, starter declaration, contract and payroll records, then gather the pay, start date, hours, National Insurance, loan and pension information that the payroll system requests.
   2. Remove unnecessary personal information from copies, keep the original documents securely, and paste the remaining fields into the prompt under the matching headings.
   3. Ask the model to produce the ready-to-enter fields, missing-information list and source links without allowing it to infer a tax code, pension status or loan deduction.
   4. Open the linked GOV.UK guidance and compare each tax, starter-declaration, pension and loan item with the current official wording.
   5. Compare every drafted field against the original P45, declaration, contract and payroll records, and resolve contradictions with the employee or payroll colleague.
   6. Enter the verified details into the employer's payroll software, check the resulting pay and deductions against the payroll record, and have the responsible payroll colleague approve the entry and any RTI submission.

   Prompt

   Help me process a new employee starter for a UK payroll, but do not make tax, pension or employment-law assumptions. Use only the information I provide and current GOV.UK guidance, and link to the relevant GOV.UK pages. Do not invent or infer missing details.
   
   Employer and payroll context:
   - Payroll software: [name]
   - Pay frequency: [weekly, monthly or other]
   - Pay basis: [salary, hourly or other]
   - Intended pay period and start date: [details]
   
   Starter information:
   - Full name: [details]
   - Address: [details]
   - National Insurance number: [details or missing]
   - Date of birth: [details]
   - P45 provided: [yes or no]
   - P45 details: [paste only the relevant fields, with unnecessary personal data removed]
   - Starter declaration: [the declaration selected by the employee, or missing]
   - Pay, hours and contract details: [details]
   - Pension information: [details]
   - Student or postgraduate loan information: [details or missing]
   - Other payroll-relevant information: [details]
   
   Produce:
   1. A field-by-field list of what is ready to enter into the payroll system.
   2. A separate list of missing, contradictory or unclear information.
   3. The tax-code, starter-declaration, pension and loan information exactly as supplied, without choosing or changing it.
   4. A list of checks I must complete against the original documents and the payroll software.
   5. A concise handover for a payroll colleague, including anything that needs professional advice.
   
   Do not calculate deductions unless I provide the applicable payroll settings and ask for a clearly labelled calculation. Do not submit an RTI return, confirm compliance, or state that the starter is fully processed. Mark any item requiring a payroll professional or accountant. This is not professional advice.

   Open it prefilled in ChatGPT or Claude, or copy it into Gemini, which takes no prefill link.