UK Payroll - How to Configure Pension Automatic Enrolment

1

Staging date is the driver for the system to process auto enrolment.  If there is no auto enrolment staging date entered, the auto enrolment stage in the pay batch will not do anything.

2

Default postponement months tells the system the number of months in which a payee will be postponed.  If it is set to zero, postponement will not operate and the payee will automatically be enrolled into a scheme when they become eligible. Although this is defined in months, the system will postpone payees for complete pay periods only and will identify the number of pay periods with the postponement months.  If a payee starts work in the middle of a pay period, it will not end postponement in a middle of a pay period: it will end postponement at the end of the previous pay period.  This is to avoid complex calculation for assessment of earnings.

3

Postponement Commences From can either be based from when a payee starts working with you or from when they first become eligible (they are old enough and have earned enough).  It could be that for the first few weeks of employment, their earnings are not high enough to be considered for auto enrolment. When they eventually do have earnings in a pay period that is high enough and so become eligible for auto enrolment, postponement will start from this point, if this setting is set to First Eligible.  This means that they would not be potentially auto enrolled for quite some time than if postponement was to start from their employment start date.

This setting is mandatory if the default postponement months is greater than zero.

4

Enter The Pension Regulator Letter Code that has been received from The Pension Regulator. This is required for the Declaration of Compliance. This setting is mandatory.

5

The Re-enrolment date is where on each 3^rd anniversary from the staging date, the employer has obligations to re-assess payees who have opted out or withdrawn from a scheme and to re-enrol them if they meet eligibility criteria.  The withdrawn payees have to be withdrawn for more than a year prior to the anniversary date.  If they had withdrawn only a day before the re-enrolment date, they would not be picked up for re-assessment.   Ensure that this date is updated when every 3rd anniversary with the pay period that you wish to process re-enrolment otherwise the system will not re-assess those payees. If an appropriate date is not entered, the system cannot determine if payees should be re-enrolled in the pay period.

6

Check the Use Eligible Jobholder Postponement box if eligible jobholder postponement is required: if a payee is postponed and at the end of the postponement period is non eligible, when they next become eligible, postpone the payee again. If it is required for the payee to be automatically enrolled in this circumstance, uncheck this box.

7

Click Save.

The settings are saved.