Auto Enrolment Webinar with BrightPay, NEST & The Pensions Regulator
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NEST & The Pensions Regulator recently joined BrightPay for a free auto enrolment webinar - don't miss out. Watch the webinar on demand here anytime: https://www.brightpay.co.uk/tutorials/auto-enrolment-webinar-with-nest-the-pensions-regulator/
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Auto Enrolment Webinar with BrightPay, NEST & The Pensions Regulator
- 1. The webinar will begin shortly... Auto Enrolment Webinar Guest Speakers: NEST & The Pensions Regulator
- 2. Paul Byrne Managing Director at BrightPay Stephen Rowntree Industry Liaison Officer at The Pensions Regulator John Hale Senior Account Executive at NEST Corporation Webinar Panelists
- 3. Q&A Session Questions Tab or #BPWebinars On Demand This session is being recorded Q&A REC
- 5. • What is auto enrolment? • Cost of auto enrolment for the employer • Who is responsible for what? • Consequences of missing your staging date • Benefits of API’s tools between payroll and pension provider • Processing auto enrolment in BrightPay Agenda
- 6. What is Auto Enrolment? A brief overview
- 7. What is Auto Enrolment? • Employers have a legal requirement to enrol their employees into a pension scheme • Staging date - the date that an employer must enrol employees
- 8. Entitled Workers Non Eligible Jobholders Eligible Jobholders Worker Categories
- 9. Pre Staging Checklist Provide contact details to The Pensions Regulator Check if you will need to enrol staff Choose and register with a pension scheme Check your records and payroll processes Educate your employees Have suitable software in place
- 10. Cost of Auto Enrolment for the Employer
- 14. Who is responsible for what?
- 15. Who is responsible for what? • The responsibility for auto enrolment lies with the employer • Responsibility for tasks can get complicated if the employer outsources their payroll • Pension scheme selection – employer’s responsibility to choose a pension scheme, but may turn to the bureau for advice • Investment advice to an employer is not regulated, but to an individual is regulated
- 16. Who is responsible for what? • Communications – pension provider vs. employer • Communications – payroll bureau vs. employer • Pension contributions – authorising payment with pension provider • Record keeping – employers may authorise the bureau to keep, preserve or provide the records on their behalf • Declaration of compliance – often forgotten about
- 17. Consequences of Missing Your Staging Date
- 18. Get in touch with the Pensions Regulator Register with a pension provider Assess your employees Communicate with employees Backdate any missed contributions Complete your declaration of compliance Missed Staging Date – What to do
- 19. Non-Compliance Penalties • TPR sources of intelligence; 1) Receipt of a declaration of compliance 2) Notification by a pension scheme of non-payment of monthly pension contributions 3) Employee whistleblowing
- 20. Benefits of Payroll / Pension Integration
- 21. Payroll / Pension Integration • API allows direct integration between two systems, enabling the systems to talk to each other • Works similar to RTI – send submissions with one click
- 22. Benefits of API’s Reduced errors Time savings Reduced administration Faster processing times Increased productivity Simple processing Data accuracy
- 23. More Automation and APIs • NEST − To check details set up with NEST − To approve payment • TPR − Declaration of Compliance
- 24. Processing Auto Enrolment in BrightPay
- 79. NEST public NEST works August 2016
- 80. © NEST Corporation 2016 Legal information © NEST Corporation 2016. All rights reserved. This information doesn’t constitute financial, investment or professional advice and shouldn’t be relied on. We don’t make any personal recommendation or give advice to employers and their workers on how to make investment decisions. If you’re considering using NEST you might want to talk with an appropriately qualified financial adviser. We don’t give any undertaking or make any representation or warranty that this document is complete or error free. We don’t accept responsibility for any loss caused as a result of any error, inaccuracy or incompleteness. Any form of reproduction of all or any part of these slides is not allowed. 80
- 81. © NEST Corporation 2016 NEST works… for auto enrolment Purpose-built Well run Online and easy to use Established by government No Shareholders It’s all we do 81
- 82. © NEST Corporation 2016 NEST works… for employers Free to use Low cost for members Same for everyone Opt outs made easy Others can help run NEST NEST 2031 Retirement Date Fund NEST 2032 Retirement Date Fund NEST 2033 Retirement Date Fund NEST 2034 Retirement Date Fund NEST 2035 Retirement Date Fund Award-winning default fund 82
- 83. © NEST Corporation 2016 How to make auto enrolment work 83 Know your staging date Choose your pension provider Check your payroll provides auto enrolment support Make sure your payroll provider can produce compatible files for your pension provider
- 84. © NEST Corporation 2016 How to make auto enrolment work 84 …Or even better, send payroll data via web services Ensure your scheme set up aligns with payroll payment frequency Issue statutory communications in good time Build workable processes to send data and make payments each pay period
- 85. © NEST Corporation 2016 Employers NEST works for… Members 150,000+ 3.4m+ £1 billion funds under management 11,600+ 85 NEST Connectors
- 86. © NEST Corporation 2016 Connect with us at linkedin.com/company/nestpensions Follow us @nestpensions Visit nestpensions.org.uk/professionalshelpingemployers and sign up for our monthly newsletter Visit nestpensions.org.uk/events for our webinars
- 109. Questions & Answers For more information visit www.brightpay.co.uk, email sales@brightpay.co.uk or phone 0845 3004 304
Editor's Notes
- Hi Everyone, and thank you for joining us today.
- So, here is the agenda for my slot today. I am going to keep it as short as possible to give more time to the Q & A part of today’s webinar. With the wealth of knowledge and experience from NEST and TPR joining us today, the Q & A should be really good. Plus these guys will be able to correct anything I get wrong in my presentation Just to note that when talking I will often refer to Auto Enrolment or Automatic Enrolment simply as AE.
- So we will start off today with a brief overview of “what is auto enrolment?”. A more detailed step by step guide is available on the Pensions Regulator's website for both employers and payroll bureaus. In a few minutes we will show you how the automatic enrolment duties are processed in BrightPay including entering in your staging date, assessing each employee, creating and sending employee letters, setting up a pension scheme, deducting pension contributions and more.
- Auto Enrolment is about the legal requirement of employers to enrol their employees into a pension scheme. The date that an employer must enrol its employees is called the “staging date”. The Pensions Regulator writes to employers at least 12 months before they are due to stage. This date can also be found on the Pensions Regulators website armed with the employer PAYE number.
- All employees aged from 22 to state pension age and who earn more than the earnings trigger (currently £192 per week) must be enrolled. These employees are all referred to as “eligible jobholders” or “employees who must be enrolled”. Other employees (aged from 16 to 74), who earn over the £112 per week, can ask to be enrolled. These are called “non-eligible jobholders”. The remainder of employees (aged between 16 and 74) can ask to join a pension scheme but the employer has no obligation to contribute. This final group of workers is referred to as “entitled workers”. The employer has no AE duties in relation to employees under 16 or over 74.
- With auto enrolment, employers have a number of new duties that they are responsible for. We will start off first with what needs to be done before staging 1. Provide contact details to The Pensions Regulator - The employer is responsible for complying with the changes to workplace pensions law. When TPR write to you, they will ask you to confirm the most senior person or business owner as the ‘primary contact’. Information will be sent to the primary contact once this person is confirmed. If someone else (e.g. a member of staff, accountant, financial adviser or payroll provider) will be carrying out the day-to-day tasks of managing automatic enrolment, they can be nominated as a ‘secondary contact’. This task can be performed on The Pensions Regulator’s website. 2 Check if you will need to enrol staff – If you are a single director company, then you should let TPR know that you are not an employer so as to prevent further communications. This task can also be performed on the pension regulators website. You can also use BrightPay’s pre assessment report to find out if you need to enrol staff, which we will come to later. 3. Choose and register with a pension scheme - If you have eligible jobholders then you should have chosen and registered with a scheme prior to staging. If you have no eligible jobholders, you are not required to set up a pension scheme before the staging date. 4. Check your records and payroll processes - It is important to ensure that your staff records – including their dates of birth, salaries, NI numbers and contact details – are correct and up to date. 5. Educate your staff - It is a good idea to let staff know about auto enrolment well in advance of staging. If the first notice they have is the official AE communication or the new deduction on their payslip, this could lead to queries and suspicion! 6. Have suitable software in place - There are a number of tasks that payroll software should perform. Our own software, BrightPay, will carry out all of the necessary tasks. If you are not a BrightPay user, then you should ensure that your software, or other payroll processes you use, can perform and automate the various auto enrolment tasks. If not, you should consider updating or changing it.
- As discussed earlier, employers must make pension contributions for all enrolled employees, including eligible jobholders and non-eligible jobholders who opt in. One of the main concerns for employers is how much this will actually cost them. It is important for employers to be able to estimate how much auto enrolment is going to cost to allow them to plan accordingly.
- A useful feature that employers can use is the pre-assessment tool in BrightPay. If you are an accountant or bureau offering payroll services, this tool can also be used to pass on to clients. The assessment report is found in BrightPay within the pensions tab and will give you an estimated snapshot of what auto enrolment might look like when the staging date is reached.
- The pre-assessment tool uses pay amounts from the current pay period to give the employer an idea of how much auto enrolment will cost each pay period. The report will give you a breakdown of each employees worker category, along with their pensionable earnings, their qualifying earnings in the pay period, and the employee and employer contribution amounts. If there are no eligible jobholders you don’t need to register with a pension provider and set up a scheme.
- After staging, this tool allows you to perform a post-assessment report, which gives you a snapshot of what auto enrolment looked like at the time of staging. This includes details of the worker category for each employee, assessment dates, and postponed employees. This will come in handy when completing the declaration of compliance.
- An important factor to consider is who is responsible for what auto enrolment tasks.
- Ultimately, the responsibility for auto enrolment lies with the employer, however if agreed with an employer, an accountant, bookkeeper or payroll bureau may be responsible for carrying out certain duties on the employers behalf. Assessing & enrolling employees and deducting pension contributions should be completed by the person processing the payroll, be it the employer or the bureau. However, responsibility for certain tasks can get quite complicated when it comes to pension scheme selection, record keeping, declaration of compliance, etc. If you are a bureau offering payroll services to employers, make sure that you clearly outline the services you are offering and the services that the employer is responsible for. It is the employer’s responsibility to choose a pension scheme for their workers. However, the employer may turn to the bureau for advice on this. It is important to note that advising an employer in respect of scheme selection is not a regulated activity, therefore any firm, regardless of any investment business authorisations, may assist clients decide on an appropriate scheme. However, advising individual employee(s) on whether the scheme is appropriate for them is a regulated activity. Therefore advising individual employee(s) may only be carried out by an FCA authorised firm. For bureaus it may not always be easy to tell whether an employer is seeking advice as an employer or as an individual (e.g. where the client might join the pension themselves). Consider the ethical standards set by your professional body and the scope of your professional indemnity insurance.
- It is also important to consider who is responsible for issuing the communications, which differs depending on the chosen pension scheme. NEST generally prefers the employer to issue the statutory communications but NEST will also double up on enrolment sending their own communications. The Peoples Pension prefers to handle the communications for enrolled employees and for the employer to handle everything else. NOW Pensions prefers to handle all communications. If you are in a bureau/employer situation, it is important to decide who is responsible for distributing the communications to employees. The bureau may send communications directly to clients employees via email, or all communications could be sent directly to the employer, who is then responsible for distributing the communications among employees. With some pension providers, such as NEST, although the contributions files are sent each pay period directly from the software, it is also necessary to log on to NEST to authorise payment. It is important to decide whether this responsibility lies with the employer or the bureau. If the payment is not authorised on time the employer may face penalties and fines. With regards to record keeping, employers may authorise the bureau to keep, preserve or provide the records on their behalf. However, it remains an employer’s legal responsibility to ensure these records are kept and, if requested, produce them. Finally, the most critical AE responsibility to consider that is often forgotten about is completion of the declaration of compliance. It must be very clear whether or not this task will be included in the bureau’s service offering. If you are a payroll bureau, don’t allow your client to forget to complete the declaration of compliance and receive a fine – This is the area where TPR has issued the largest number of fines to date. That penalty is £400 for something that should take just 10 or 15 minutes.
- If you realise that you missed your staging date and you are within 6 weeks of that date, you can postpone auto enrolment. All employees must receive communications within 6 weeks of the staging date relating to the postponement and explaining when they will be re-assessed. If this communication is not issued then the postponement effectively never happened and enrolment must be completed retrospectively back to the staging date which will in itself be a nightmare.
- If you missed your staging date and are outside of this 6 week period, then postponement is not an option and you must backdate auto enrolment and make contributions from the staging date. If this is the case, make sure to complete the following steps: 1. Get in touch with the Pensions Regulator. The Pensions Regulator issues fixed penalty fines to businesses who do not meet their auto enrolment duties and missing your staging date is one of these duties. However, they treat each case differently, the quicker you get in touch (and depending on your situation) the better positioned you will be to avoid a fine. 2. Register with a pension provider. You must choose and register with a pension provider that is suitable for your employees. Be aware that not all pension providers allow you to set up a pension scheme if your staging date has already passed. 3. Assess your employees. Before you can bring your scheme up-to-date you need to assess your staff to establish if they are eligible for automatic enrolment. Any eligible employees need to be enrolled. 4. Communicate with employees. Another employer duty is to inform your staff. You must communicate with all workers, including non-eligible jobholders and entitled workers. Your payroll software should be able to prepare these letters for you. 5. Backdate any missed contributions. In order to become compliant you will need to pay contributions for all employees who are eligible or who have opted in. Importantly, you will need to pay these contributions as of your staging date. You will need to use the previous payrolls for any missed periods to calculate any missed pension contributions. 6. Complete your declaration of compliance. Before you can become officially compliant you need to complete your declaration of compliance.
- I’ll not cover all the various types of penalties that can issue for non compliance. There are 3 main sources of intelligence that TPR rely on when deciding if they should take further action. Receipt of a declaration of compliance. If the declaration is not received within 5 months of the staging date, then it is usually a good indicator of non-compliance. Notification by a pension scheme of non-payment of monthly pension contributions. In such cases either pension files have not been submitted by the employer or the employer has not discharged the amounts deducted as per these files. Employee whistleblowing. E.g. if an employee is being advised by the employer to opt out of auto enrolment, this represents a serious breach of the regulations.
- Both NEST and Smart Pension have an API to send enrolment and contribution files to the pension provider with certain other providers due to add this facility in the coming months.
- API stands for Application Program Interface, which allows direct integration between two systems, enabling the systems to talk to each other, without having to manually log into both systems. In BrightPay, the API tool works in a similar concept to RTI whereby users can communicate directly with HMRC and send submissions at the click of a button. When using the NEST or Smart Pension API tool, users no longer have to save the data to their PC and then log into the pension provider web portal to upload the data. Instead, data can be sent directly to nest at the click of a button from within the payroll software.
- By eliminating the need to log into two systems and reducing data processing errors, this will save time and administration effort for employers and bureaus alike. The ability to submit data in one click will also result in faster processing times. This method of sending information between two systems will be of particular interest to bureaus who could have hundreds of payroll clients. The API will allow users to avoid having to manually create enrolment and contribution files, thus saving bureaus a lot of time and reducing data processing errors.
- There is further automation and APIs that will also be added to BrightPay. NEST have further API’s to check details set up with NEST and to approve a payment, while The Pensions Regulator are considering an API for completing the declaration of compliance.
- So now we are going to have a look at how BrightPay handles auto enrolment tasks. BrightPay is an integrated payroll and auto enrolment solution that works to automate and simplify the AE process. We try to make it as easy as possible for you to help your clients achieve compliance, while saving you both time and money. We have helped thousands of employers with their AE duties over the last few years. We have learnt a thing or two about what is important to bureaus who have payroll clients and how we as payroll software providers can make it easy for you to complete the various employer tasks. So I would now like to hand you over to Vicky who will show you just how easy auto enrolment can be with BrightPay. Thank You Vicky.
- Details of your Pension Scheme can be entered in BrightPay in advance of your staging date. Within the Pensions utility, click ‘Add New Scheme’ followed by the applicable pension scheme option from the listing.
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- enter your employer reference in the field provided and enter your submission details for using NEST web services.
- Then enter your group details in the following screen to match exactly as you have them set up with NEST. Select which contribution rates apply and the earnings basis and also you can add further Groups if required - for example if you have employees on different pay frequencies or sets of employees with different contribution rates. When ready, click ‘Save’ to complete the setup.
- As soon as you reach your staging date in the payroll, BrightPay will automatically assess your employees for you and determine whether your employees are eligible jobholders, non eligible jobholders or entitled workers and you will see on-screen flags and alerts appear to notify that you have auto enrolment duties to perform.
- These alerts will bring you through to the various actions available based on the selected employee’s work category. So here we can see that this employee is being assessed as an eligible jobholder and we can view the different options available for the employee.
- Click enrol to enrol the employee
- Select the scheme you wish to enrol the employee into, enter the applicable tax relief and click Continue.
- At this stage, you will also be given the option to batch process multiple employees at the same time. Simply click ‘enrol multiple employees with the same settings’.
- Select the employees who you wish to enrol and click ‘Ok’ to complete their enrolment.
- Once an employee is enrolled, BrightPay will then automatically prepare the employee’s enrolment letter and this can be printed, exported to PDF or emailed to the employee.
- Enrolment letters can also be batch processed for multiple employees by clicking ‘Create/send letter for multiple employees’.
- Then once the employees have been provided with their letter, simply ‘Mark this as done’.
- For an employee who is being assessed as non-eligible jobholder and if we click on ‘View Options’....
- ... we are given the following options based on this worker category. Here, BrightPay will automatically prepare the right to opt in letter to print or email to multiple non eligible/entitled employees at the same time.
- Once employees have been enrolled, have joined or opted-in, returning to payroll you will now see their pension deductions being applied to their payslips
- When we finalise the payslips, the relevant AE deductions and contributions will show on the payslips of all enrolled employees.
- Pension files can now be prepared for submission to NEST. To prepare the enrolment file for NEST, go to the Pensions Tab, select NEST on the menu bar
- Click enrolment summary at the top of the screen and then click send enrolment submission
- Select the employees to be included in the enrolment file....
- In Step 2, enter your Payment Source details – these again must match exactly to how you set this information up with NEST.
- And at Step 3, simply click send now. You will receive confirmation back that NEST have received your enrolment file. If you are using a pension scheme that is not supported by one of the API’s, at this step you will need to save the file to a location of your choice and log on to the pension providers web portal to upload the file.
- At each subsequent pay period after staging you must also send a contributions file to the pension provider. Staying within the NEST settings, select the contributions summary option at the top of the screen. Choose the period you wish to submit the contributions file for and click send submission.
- Enter your payment due date which you will have set up with NEST.
- And at step 2, select all the employees who are to be included in the contributions file.
- At step 3, for applicable employees, select the reason for any partial or non-payment of contributions
- And at step 4,click send now.
- If an opt-out notice is received for an employee, simply access the employee’s auto enrolment utility and select their opt-out option.
- Enter their opt-out date and their opt-out reference and click Continue.
- The employee is now opted out.
- On returning to the payroll utility, if the employee has already made contributions, these will then be refunded as follows in the next pay period processed for them.
- We have also just released BrightPay Cloud. BrightPay Cloud is an online self-service portal enabling automated backups and online accessibility. This is an optional add-on to the current software. Although the payroll information is stored online, the payroll software itself is still desktop based. I know this is not part of today’s agenda but it is a really exciting new feature and we are dying to show it off. This will only take a couple of minutes.
- You will find a new cloud icon at the top of your screen. Once you have set up BrightPay cloud and connected the employer to the cloud this cloud will turn green.
- BrightPay cloud automatically and securely backs up your payroll data to the cloud every 15 minutes and again when you close the employer file, ensuring that you never lose your payroll data again. BrightPay cloud keeps a chronological history of backups that can be restored at any time. If we open the self service portal…
- …BrightPay will open the online employer dashboard. Employers can log on to their employer dashboard any time using their PC, Mac, Tablet or Smartphone. For bureaus who offer payroll services to a number of clients, you can add your client as a user so that they can also log in to the employer dashboard. This employer dashboard can be branded with the bureaus details, and enables the employer to view payroll reports, P30’s, employee calendars, and all employee information.
- Employers & bureaus can view all employees in the employer data file with the ability to click on an individual employee to view a full history of payslips.
- Reporting is also integrated with BrightPay Cloud. All reports set up in BrightPay can be viewed from within the employer self-service portal, allowing employers to access reports on the go anytime. If we click into a report…
- … you will see that the report can be exported or modified. This is useful for bureaus, whereby the employer can view reports without the need to send them to the employer.
- The self-service portal also includes an employee calendar, allowing the employer to view all past and scheduled leave, such as annual leave, sick leave, and statutory leave for all employees.
- P30 details are also included with a record of HMRC payments and amounts due to HMRC.
- BrightPay Cloud also allows users to upload BrightPay 2015/16 data to immediately have a full year of historical data to power the self-service features.
- Along with all the employer functionality, BrightPay cloud provides bureaus with a multi company platform.
- Multiple users can also be added to access these companies. Here, employers can grant access to other users, such as co-workers, accountants or departmental heads.
- Now to show you what the self service portal looks like for employees… the portal looks similar to the employer portal, however employees are limited as to the information that can be accessed. Employees will get notifications when payslips are available…
- And can click in to the documents to view a full history of all their payslip. P60’s, P45s, P11ds can also be viewed in the documents tab, and we are working to include auto enrolment communications here also.
- These payslips can be viewed and exported by employees, without the need for the employer/bureau to print or email payslips each pay period.
- Employees can use the self-service portal to view and update various personal information, such as phone number and postal address
- The calendar tab will allow employees to view their calendar, including past and scheduled leave. Employees can also request annual leave through the portal.
- By choosing the relevant dates and clicking submit, the employer will automatically get a notification that the employee has requested leave.
- If we click back into the employer dashboard… You will now see the employees leave request coming up in the notifications panel with the option to approve or reject the leave.
- Once approved, if we click into the calendar…
- You will now see the leave request added to the calendar on both the employee and employer portal. The leave will also be automatically synced back to the employer data file on your PC.
- You can find more information and video about BrightPay Cloud on our website. We are also running free online demos of BrightPay cloud which will take you through setting up your BrightPay Cloud account, connecting your employer file and using the portal. We will include a link to register for a demo in the follow up email. Paul: Thanks for that Vicky. So that completes part one of today’s webinar. Just before I pass you over to John, I would just like to say if you do have any questions about my part of today’s webinar, make sure to type them into the questions box at the right of your screen so that we can get through as many questions as possible at the end. I am now going to pass you over to John Hale from NEST who will discuss ‘NEST - Helping make auto enrolment work for you’.
- 06 September 2016
- .
- Built for automatic enrolment Set up by the government Doesn’t just meet regulations - goes above and beyond requirements Any UK employer can use NEST if they want to Great governance Independent Trustees make sure the scheme is managed for the benefit of its members Employers’ and Members’ Panels advise and support the Trustees from the perspective of employers and members True e-pension Designed to be managed entirely online by members and employers This includes enrolling members, setting up contributions and making payments No shareholders Established by government. NEST Corporation is a non-departmental public body. But it operates at arms’ length from government and is accountable to Parliament through DWP NEST Corporation doesn’t have shareholders and doesn’t distribute a profit Sole focus is as QWPS Our sole purpose is as a qualifying workplace pension scheme. No other motives or products to sell.
- NEST is designed to minimise the burden on employers. No charges for employers to set up and use NEST Charges low for all members. One price for everyone means more value for money on contributions from employers - and their workers Low cost Tools designed to help you navigate technical complexities - specially prepared templates, decision trees, pre-set contribution levels and enrolment types Pot travels with member, so there’s no ongoing administration when members leave an employer One price for all Whether automatically enrolling five workers or five thousand, our systems scale to match their needs Opt out NEST makes opting out easy for employers and workers Delegated access Employers can assign the all or some of the administration of NEST to someone else Award-winning investment approach Offers the type of sophisticated investment management usually only found in the most expensive schemes - NEST Retirement Date Funds are right for most workers.
- Over 135,000 employers have set up an auto enrolment pension scheme account with NEST. When we talk to these employers, we find there is no single answer as to how to successfully set up a pension scheme. Mostly, it is about making sure the right processes are in place. You need to know your staging date. You will have been sent a letter from the Pensions Regulator telling you when this is. It’s an important date. While you may decide to postpone the date when workers are automatically enrolled - you can postpone for up to 3 months - workers can still ask to opt-in as soon as you reach your staging date. So you need to be ready by then. 2. You need to choose which pension provider to use. NEST is really easy to set up and get going with. You don’t need to apply to join, just go on to our website and follow the instructions. 3. Check your payroll provider supports auto enrolment. Most do, but check before you reach your Staging Date. You need to know if there are any additional costs if you use their auto enrolment software. It is also important to check whether your payroll can produce files for you to send to your pension provider. This means you won’t need to type in the data manually. 4. Most payroll software providers can produce files that work with NEST. And even better, if your payroll software provider can link to NEST electronically, you will be able to send data to us from within your payroll software – almost at the click of a button. Nest calls this web services.
- 5. Check if your provider supports web services. Payroll providers like BrightPay are able to do this. It makes the administration of your auto enrolment pension scheme easier. 6. Make sure your scheme matches the way your payroll works. For example, if you pay your workers monthly, tax monthly or weekly, you will need a pension scheme that can deal with how you pay your staff. This is important as some employers get into difficulty because they don’t set up their pension scheme so that it aligns to their payroll. Your pension provider will need to know how often you pay staff and what periods this covers. It will be important that you record this information correctly on your pension account. This ensures the data flows from payroll into the pension scheme correctly and within the right pay period. 7. Government rules require that your workers get at least one letter to tell them about auto enrolment. If you are postponing workers, you need to send them two letters. Often your payroll software will produce these letters for you. The law requires these letters are issued within timeframes in which they need to be sent out. So it’s key that you understand who is producing them, why and when they are issued. 8. And finally, remember auto enrolment is not just a one-off. Every pay period, you will need to assess whether additional workers need to be added into the scheme and send out communications to those affected. You will also need to send contribution data and payments to your pension provider. We’ve found that employers who have made a success of auto enrolment have built good processes to make sure this happens every pay period.
- [numbers as of 31 July]