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Part Three - Automatic Enrolment – Guide for Payroll Bureaus. Pre Staging Checklist

20th Nov 2015
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The payroll solution that provides all you need for Auto Enrolment.

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This blog is part series from BrightPay, read part one here and part two here.

Pre staging checklist


Assuming that you know your staging date, it is recommended that you do the following prior to 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 at https://automation.thepensionsregulator.gov.uk/Nomination

  1. Check if you will need to enrol staff

If you are a single director company or similar as outlined earlier, then you should let TPR know that you are not an employer so as to prevent further communications.

This task can be performed at www.tpr.gov.uk/employers/what-if-i-dont-have-any-staff.aspx

3.  Choose and register with a pension scheme
If you have staff who are earning more than £192 per week and aged from 22 to state pension age, then you should have chosen and registered with a scheme prior to staging.

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.

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 the following tasks each pay cycle:

  • assess your staff, to identify whether you have any that you'll need to automatically enrol

  • hold the information required for automatic enrolment, including staff names, addresses, dates of birth and earnings, so you pay the right amount of pension contributions for the right people at the right time

  • calculate how much you and your staff will need to pay

  • generate and send the correct staff data – including information on pension contributions – to your pension provider and in the format required

  • generate communications (e.g. letters or emails) for your staff at the right time

  • handle staff requests to opt into or join your pension scheme, as well as stop deductions and process refunds for staff who opt out of it

  • keep records for up to six years

If your software can't complete these tasks, you should consider updating or changing it.

If your software can handle the above tasks but there are significant additional software costs involved, again, you may need to consider changing software. 

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!

TPR recommends a range of key messages across a number of channels.

Further information can be found at http://www.thepensionsregulator.gov.uk/employers/raising-awareness-about-automatic-enrolment.aspx

CPD Automatic Enrolment Training Webinar - 2 CPD Hours

On the 24th November BrightPay will present a CPD webinar where you will be awarded two CPD hours. This webinar is approved by the CPD accreditation service UK. You don’t need to be a BrightPay customer to attend. As the training is Continuing Personal or Professional Development (CPD) certified, attendees will benefit from two CPD hours.

Benefits

By attending this online live webinar, you will receive a comprehensive overview of the stages of auto enrolment. The presentation will take you through what you need to know to help you and your clients be auto enrolment compliant and above all avoid penalties and fines. You can send us questions relating to auto enrolment before the webinar that will be addressed in the Q&A section at the end of the webinar.

Full Agenda

Register Today

Part four of this blog series will cover what happens at staging. If you want to learn more about the auto enrolment process and how to increase profits for your firm, register for BrightPay’s webinars.

 
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