Auto Enrolment

AE, it’s payroll’s perfect storm

Let Payroll Professional help you navigate in calmer waters

Make payroll a strategic asset in your business with Payroll Professional’s AE module

The Perfect Storm

Auto Enrolment is a consequence of a number of factors coming together:

A maturing population with longer and increasing life expectancies

Expectations of higher living standards and a tendency for people to spend now rather than save for later

The realisation that the prospect of a ‘comfortable’ retirement on just the state pension alone is out of reach for many

Pension reform was the ‘life-boat’ launched in response. Business, and payroll in particular, has been hit by successive staging ‘waves’ since then as the Auto Enrolment storm has broken. Alongside this, the picture has been further complicated by:

Re-enrolment duties at the 3 year staging date anniversary

Greater choice in the AE pensions market bringing further complexity to already heavily burdened payroll teams

So what has this meant for you and your payroll and are you ready for what’s coming next?

In the ‘eye’ of the storm

As payroll and pension reform are joined at the hip this has brought huge challenges:

With people - in coping with more work than ever before: the so called ‘AE ’capacity crunch’
With process - the introduction of new legislation, procedures and more deadlines, and as ever, additional risks for getting it wrong
With technology - with varying levels of payroll software automation and an increasing number of pension providers each with different rules on how they need information

But it has also brought significant opportunities:

By making AE a natural extension of your payroll processes
In growing the number of services that can be offered by the payroll team to the employer before and after their AE staging date
In changing the perception of the strategic value of payroll to the business

Fit-for-purpose software is no longer an option, its an absolute necessity and since the introduction of AE Payroll Professional has worked with clients to provide comprehensive solutions to manage their AE duties.

See below how Payroll Professional will help you maximise the AE opportunity.

Payroll Professional AE Module

Payroll Professional’s Auto Enrolment module is an integral part of Payroll Professional and allows you to meet AE requirements head-on by automating and simplifying AE processes as part of the payroll cycle. This includes:

Pre-staging evaluation of employer costs and calculating contributions - making sure there are no surprises.

Assessing the workforce and continually monitoring ‘eligibility’

Managing both employer and worker postponement. Communicating AE notices with employees - with a communication design tool to personalise the TPR standard notices

Enrolling employees and deducting contributions

Processing opt-outs and opt-ins

Choice of feeds available for various pension providers from fixed and user-definable manual feeds through to direct integration via API uploads and interfacing with pensionsync

Automatic auto-enrolment

Once you have set a staging date and created an eligible pension payroll Payroll Professional will automatically take care of your AE duties. This means you don't need to manually:

Link employees to a pension

Select those employees to be enrolled

Postpone due to probationary periods and earning spikes

Generate notices as employee eligibility status change

In the driving seat

Payroll Professional's AE dashboard gives you an ‘at a glance’ summary of your payroll’s AE status and guides you logically through the various stages from set-up:

Pre-staging date assessment

After staging date - having visibility on any employee notices that are due

In creating and viewing the required notices

To generate the pension scheme feed either dynamically via API, via manual upload of a CSV file or by using Payroll Professional’s custom feed designer for manual file upload

In maintaining a full audit trail for notices and feeds and to ensure you stay compliant