Now we have moved in to the storm of auto-enrolment I'm trying to understand what % of client bases accountancy firms have are expected to miss the allocated staging date? E.g. 100 clients, 10% will miss the date.
Recent questions posed to practices have uncovered an expectation of around 10-15% of clients would miss their date but these were asked of practices that are pro-active in this space, have a wall plan showing all of the clients and when they stage and they are offering AE services. Be interesting to get some views from the community to understand experiences so far, especially what works well to curtail this and late stager expectations.
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Postponement
The staging date is the staging date. However, the law allows employers to postpone auto-enrolment for up to 3 months after the staging date. Notification of compliance remains due by 5 months after the staging date, not 5 months after a postponed auto-enrolment date.
Postponement
From a number of those involved in the industry missing your staging date and not postponing causes issues.
If you have missed your staging date, why would you not postpone auto-enrolment for up to 3 months? TPR does not have to be notified of postponements.
2. Employers will have to backdate payments to employees to original staging date
What payments to employees? Do you mean deductions from pay for the employees' pension contributions? If you postpone, there is no requirement to backdate contributions to the staging date.
Staging
If you have missed your staging date, why would you not postpone auto-enrolment for up to 3 months? TPR does not have to be notified of postponements.
For a postponement to be valid you must have written to the employees within 6 weeks of staging to notify them of the postponement date. If you don't do this then the postponement hasn't happened and AE must be backdated to the staging date. You aren't allowed to announce today that the employees were postponed 3 months ago.
I forget the exact timing, but if you are more than about 3 months late in staging (e.g. stage 1st Jan, don't do anything until 1st July) then the employer is liable for the backdated pension. You always need to retroactively assess each month and work out the pension that would've been due when you're late, but in these cases the employer is also liable for all the employee contributions in that period. Future contributions will be split between employee and employer as normal.
There's no requirement to have a scheme until the point when it would be used. The AE rules don't say "you must have a scheme in place", they say "you must put appropriate employees in a scheme". If nobody is going into the scheme, you don't need the scheme. There are some practical reasons to want one at staging, even if no employees are joining immediately, but it's not a requirement. You are making life harder if you postpone without a pension in place and an employee opts in during the postponement.
AE Staging and Postponement
Don't forget that postponement does not negate your responsibility to have a Pension scheme in place. Should you have eligible employees on Staging Date you MUST have your pension set up.
Ah! I didn't know that!
Don't forget that postponement does not negate your responsibility to have a Pension scheme in place. Should you have eligible employees on Staging Date you MUST have your pension set up.
If that is the case, I now understand the thrust of the OP's question and why the pension providers might play up a bit.
So far all of our clients have understood that a/e isnt optional and have all been ready on time. We sent out information at 1 year, 6 months and 3 months before staging. We offer to set up pension schemes with NEST or NOW if employers chose them to make the process easier.
If we haven't had indication of a scheme in place by 3 months away then a slightly more pushing email gets sent and usually they are scared enough to get it sorted.
We've managed to stage two of our more troublesome clients without much hassle so I am hoping the rest will be fairly straightforward!
We are telling our clients the providers that are compatable with our payroll software, they then chose the one they want to use. If they go with someone that we have an agent log in with we will set up the pension scheme.
All assessment, comms and file uploads are done as part of the payroll, and we have upped our payroll fees slightly to allow for this!
Seminars etc. We started a year ago and held two seminars. We had linked with a firm called AE Ready as we didn't want the hassle of actually setting up the pension scheme. Our take up was fantastic and a year on many have signed up well in advance, Directors know the situation as do those who have non eligible employees, They know their responsibilities and that the payroll will lead them by the hand. We only have ONE client who has not responded out of about 80. He is an odd one though and I feel that he will go bust. He stages 1st March and I am about to shove the payroll back at him, tell him I am no longer responsible.