Take the hassle out of Automatic Enrolment

Whether you have one or 10,000 employees, automatic enrolment is a legal requirement for all UK employers. Automatic enrolment was brought in to make it easier for people to save for their retirement, by bringing pension schemes into the workplace.

Although this is great for employees, it has added to employers’ workloads, as they’re required to handle auto enrolment duties on top of everything else already on their to-do list.

Does automatic enrolment affect payroll?

Automatic enrolment does affect payroll, and has become an extension of the payroll process. The Pensions Regulator encourages businesses to use payroll software that can handle auto- enrolment duties. Such duties include:

• Setting up a pension scheme
• Enrolling eligible employees into the pension scheme
• Deducting pension contributions from employees’ pay
• Auto enrolment letters
• Declaration of compliance
• Re-enrolment every 3 years

What features do I need in my payroll software?

The payroll software you choose can either make or break the auto-enrolment part of your payroll process. Whichever software you pick, it should at least complete employee assessments for you for each pay period.

BrightPay includes full auto-enrolment functionality at no extra cost in all of our licences. This includes an array of features that simplify the automatic enrolment process, including:

• Automatic employee eligibility assessment and notifications to let you know when an employee should be enrolled
• Enrolment functionality (including the ability to enrol multiple employees at once)
• Personalised automatic enrolment letters are automatically generated
• Postponement and opt out options
• Integration with leading pension providers
• Notifications to let you know when an employee should be re-enrolled

How does re-enrolment work?

Re-enrolment is required for certain staff members every three years. It is simply enrolling employees back into an auto-enrolment pension scheme, if they’ve opted out. To apply for re-enrolment, you must complete a re-declaration of compliance with The Pensions Regulator. This is to make sure you’ve completed your mandatory re-enrolment duties.

To do this, you must first choose a re-enrolment date. Next, you must assess your staff to find out which employees need to be re-enrolled. After that, you are then required to put those employees back into a pension scheme within 6 weeks of the re-enrolment date.

Once this is setup, your employees must be sent a letter, letting them know that they are re-enrolled into an auto enrolment pension scheme. You are then required to submit a re-declaration of compliance, which applies even if you don’t have any staff. Further details of re-enrolment requirements and processes can be found here.

BrightPay simplifies the re-enrolment process for you by notifying you of when an employee should be re-enrolled, allowing you to re-enrol them within the software and automatically generating a re-enrolment letter for each employee.

Which pension providers is BrightPay integrated with?

BrightPay is integrated with a number of pension providers, allowing you to submit pension data directly within BrightPay. These include:

• Aviva
• NEST
• The People’s Pension
• Smart Pension

We are also compatible with a number of other pension schemes for upload via CSV files. Click here to view a full list of pension providers.

How BrightPay can make auto enrolment easy

As mentioned above, BrightPay provides full auto-enrolment functionality at no extra cost. Once your duties start date has been entered into BrightPay, you will receive notifications on-screen from that point onwards of any auto- enrolment duties you need to take care of.

Once the duties start date is reached and you’ve set up your pension scheme provider, BrightPay assesses all of your employees automatically, and will keep an eye on any changes to their work status for each pay period.

BrightPay also automatically generates and prepares enrolment letters that can be emailed or exported as PDFs and are personalised for each employee. If you need to enrol any new employees, this is easily done in BrightPay too.

We have a range of online resources to support you around auto- enrolment, including video tutorials and support documents, covering a whole range of automatic enrolment topics.

"BrightPay is an excellent payroll program. What stands out for me is how it takes care of Auto Enrolment automatically, which is even more of a godsend now re-enrolment dates are coming up. Slick modern interface too makes it a dream to use."

- Craig Thornton , CST Accountancy Services Ltd

Take the hassle out of automatic enrolment today – learn how BrightPay can help streamline your entire payroll process, so you can tend to more important matters of your business. Book a free 15-minute demo today.

Posted byEleanor Mc GuinnessinAuto Enrolment