COM92001 - Payments: tracing a payment: introduction

Cases may arise where:

  • you need to trace a payment
  • a company or agent claims to have made a payment that does not appear on the record. These are known as missing/alleged payment cases

You must give missing/alleged payment cases priority at all stages to avoid complaints and possible claims for compensation.

The different types of payment processed by HMRC Payments or a Debt Management Office are described at COM90000 onwards.

All payment types from 2022 onwards are processed through ETMP. ETMP has a payment store that holds details of each payment received. It also allows users to search for payments made by customers across all Heads of Duty using a trace payment function.

The payment store in Receipts Historical Viewer only contains payments processed since the system started on 23 September 2002. Payments after this date should be traced using function TPYT (Trace Payment) in COTAX or ETMP.