I am still waiting for a response from Sage about whether they can produce a report which outputs a CSV file with data which can then be uploaded to our pension provider so our auto enrolment requirement can be fulfilled when our staging date falls due. We will be using the middleware provided by the pension scheme.
The pension company has provided details of the data required and it looks to be pretty basic information so I am not anticipating a problem-however I get the feeling Sage (unsurprisingly) want me to upgrade to the pension module. The pension company could not offer such a report as "there are too many versions of Sage payroll".
Has anyone managed to create their own CSV file using the Sage report editor with any success and, if so, how difficult was it?
Thank you
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Replies (3)
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Pension Module
We just bit the bullet and upgraded sage with cover, and then purchased the pensions module (at a higher cost than the annual upgrade). I have to say, we are pretty payroll savvy, but this system is nothing short of pathetic at the moment.
We had a sage representative come out a few months ago, and in her training, she constantly refered to three pension providers. After she went, we decided to use Now; pensions based on their site and after talking with someone there. We then install the pension module, and lo and behold, there are only two listed, and Now isnt one of them.
So, after a 40 minute hold to sage, they email us the pre and post update report, but that report doesnt export all information needed for the pension provider, so we will have to make some manual entries to that data before it is usable (at this stage, we still dont know exactly what they are). Trying to speak to Now or Sage is a joke. The Now website is clunky and not very user friendly, you have to lay out your own pay period data first, but when you upload, you cant choose which one you are uploading, and you end up all over the place.
I havent experienced the other two providers yet, being Nest and Peoples pension, but I would not advise anybody to use the Now pensions solution based on my experience with it so far.
The real horror is that if this doesnt become seemless in the coming months, it will be a very bad transition when all the small employers start falling due.
NEST pretty dire imo
I was at a clients last week who had bought the SAGE AE upgrade but couldn't upload the SAGE output to NEST.
NEST were telling the client that it was because the date format needed to be in a yankee format.
The real issue was the pay reference period was not correct on the SAGE output file. But further to that, and something neither NEST or SAGE had noted was that the contributions had not calculated properly. I gave the client a crib sheet of questions to fire back to SAGE.
SAGE's solution was for the client to engage us to get their payroll set up right and for our client to tell NEST that there is no way that SAGE would ever create a file with yankee date formants.
This business had a lot of part time workers as a result only had 5 members.
Next year doesn't look great if this is an example of a non-tech savvy client trying to resolve issues with SAGE and NEST being unhelpful/unknowledgeable.
Yankee date
While I can't answer most of your questions, the date format will almost certainly change if you save the CSV file from Excel. Something to avoid if you want your CSV file to remain functional - use Notepad instead.