A compliance calendar is a dated list of every statutory obligation each employing entity owes, with the rule that produces the date, a named owner, and evidence that it was done. Keep one per legal entity and merge them for the view. Obligations attach to the entity that employs the people, which is rarely the same shape as the business on the org chart.
Most of the pain in multi-entity people operations comes from a calendar that was built once for the first entity and then copied. The second entity inherits a deadline it does not owe and misses one it does.
Why the entity is the unit
Two companies in the same country file separately even when the same person runs payroll for both. An entity in a second country brings a different filing party, a different authority and a different set of date rules. A holding structure that looks like one employer to the staff canteen looks like three employers to three regulators.
We switch compliance packs on per legal entity for that reason: UK and EU statutory duties, US federal obligations, Gulf workforce quota bands. Registering a new entity is the trigger to open a new column, and it is the moment the calendar is cheapest to get right. The pack puts the dates and the affected people in front of you. The filing stays yours.
The UK rows that do not move
Start with the ones an authority publishes, because those are the rows you can check rather than argue about.
| Obligation | When | Applies to |
|---|---|---|
| Final Full Payment Submission of the tax year | On or before your employees' payday | Every employer running payroll |
| P60 to each employee employed at the end of the tax year | By 31 May | Every employer running payroll |
| Report expenses and benefits | By 6 July | Employers providing taxable expenses or benefits |
| Gender pay gap snapshot | 5 April, or 31 March for most public authorities | 250 or more employees on the snapshot date |
| Publish gender pay gap data | 4 April, or 30 March for most public authorities | The same employers, within a year of the snapshot |
| Pension re-enrolment and re-declaration of compliance | Every three years | Every employer with automatic enrolment duties |
The re-enrolment row catches people because it fires once every three years. The Pensions Regulator requires certain staff who have left the scheme to be put back into it every three years, and a re-declaration of compliance whether or not anyone had to be re-enrolled. Three years is long enough for the person who did it last time to have left.
The gender pay gap rows have a threshold in them, which makes headcount a calendar input. An entity that grows past 250 employees by the snapshot date acquires a duty it did not have the year before.
What a row needs to be useful
Seven columns, and the last two are the ones usually missing.
The obligation in plain words. The entity. The jurisdiction. The date rule rather than a date, because a fixed date such as 6 July behaves differently from a relative one such as within two months of the start of employment. A named owner. A link to the authority's own page. Evidence that it was met.
Evidence is what turns the calendar from a reminder into a defence. Here, changes to the employee record write to an append-only audit log carrying the actor, who they acted on behalf of, and the values before and after, so a row about right to work or policy acknowledgement can point at the log instead of at somebody's memory. For a filing row, the evidence is the submission receipt, and the calendar should hold the place it lives.
The monthly rows that decide the statutory ones
A filing is only as good as the inputs that fed it, and those have dates of their own: the payroll cut-off, attendance reconciled before the run, approvals collected, the movement file signed off by a named approver. None of those is a legal deadline. Miss them and the legal deadline is the one that fails. The handoff from HR to payroll, step by step sets out that monthly sequence, and it belongs on the same calendar as the annual rows.
Record-keeping obligations sit in the same place. US employment tax records must be kept for at least four years after the fourth quarter return is filed, and six years for the records behind sick leave, family leave and retention credits. Under Article 30 of the GDPR, a record of processing activities is required once you employ 250 or more persons, and below that wherever the processing is not occasional or involves special category data. Both are standing obligations that need an annual review date rather than a deadline. Employee records: what to keep, where, and for how long covers the periods themselves.
Building it in a week
List the entities, including the dormant ones, and the country each employs in. Take each entity's obligations from the authority's own guidance rather than from a summary, and paste the link into the row as you go. Write the date rule, not the date. Put a person's name in the owner column and tell them. Decide what evidence looks like for each row before the first one falls due.
Then set the review triggers: a new entity, a headcount threshold crossed, a change of payroll provider, an authority moving a date. Those four are when a correct calendar goes quietly wrong.
The finished thing is shorter than people expect. An entity has a handful of standing rows, and the work is in keeping the owner column honest. HR software for 50 to 500 people: what changes at each size covers the point at which the calendar stops fitting in a spreadsheet, which is usually the second entity rather than the two hundredth employee.
Answered here.
- What is an HR compliance calendar?
- A dated list of every statutory obligation each employing entity owes, with the date rule that produces the deadline, a named owner, a link to the authority's own guidance, and evidence that the obligation was met. It is kept per legal entity and merged for a single view, because obligations attach to the entity that employs people rather than to the group.
- What are the fixed UK payroll and reporting deadlines?
- The final Full Payment Submission of the tax year goes on or before your employees' payday. P60s are due to employees by 31 May. Expenses and benefits are reported by 6 July. Employers with 250 or more employees take a gender pay gap snapshot on 5 April, or 31 March for most public authorities, and publish within the year that follows.
- How do you handle a calendar for several countries?
- One calendar per entity, one merged view, and no copying. An entity in a second country brings its own obligations, its own date rules and often a different filing party, so a duplicated row from the first country produces a deadline nobody owes and hides one they do. Filter the merged list by entity when you work it, and by month when you report it.
- Who should own the compliance calendar?
- A named person per row, not a department. HR usually owns records, right to work and policy acknowledgement rows; payroll owns the filing rows; finance owns the payment dates. The calendar's own upkeep needs one owner who reviews it when an entity is added, a headcount threshold is crossed, or an authority changes a date.