How to Add a New Starter to Pento – Pento UK

Manually Adding an employee to Pento

Navigate to the Employees list on the left hand side of the screen
Click Add employee in the top right
The following pop-up will appear:
Fill in the employee's basic information, and select Continue

Please note – If the employee has previously been employed by you, you will need to update the email address on their terminated record to a fake address first. This is because personal employee documents are sent directly to the employee's email address defined in Pento. We do not allow duplicate email addresses in order to comply with GDPR regulations.

Once you have selected Continue, you will need to Set the tax code for the employee by selecting one of the options shown in the drop down menu.

New employee with P45

If the employee has provided their P45, you should select the option New employee with P45.

You will need to select the employee's Starter Declaration from the drop down menu.

P45 Starter Declaration – You will need to select either Currently only job, or Got another job or pension. If you are unsure, you will need to ask your employee to provide the correct declaration.

Once you have applied the Starter Declaration, the following additional inputs will appear. You will need to fill out the Tax code, Previous taxable pay, and Previous tax paid values with the details provided on the P45.

Note – Please ensure the P45 provided is from the current tax year. If the employee was previously on a W1/M1 tax code, then the Previous pay, and Previous tax fields on the P45 will be blank; and you will need to toggle on the W1/M1 indicator on Pento.

Once you have filled out all the information, you will need to select Add New Employee.

New employee without P45

If the employee does not have their P45, you should select the option New employee without P45. You will then need to select the employee's Starter Declaration from the drop down menu.

Select the option in the Starter declaration dropdown menu that matches the marked option (A, B, or C) under the Employee statement on the Starter Checklist:

A – This is the employee's first job since April 6th of the current tax year. This option will generate the standard tax code defined by HMRC, giving them the full personal allowance for the tax year.
B – The employee had a previous job in the current tax year, but this is now their only job. This option will generate the standard emergency tax code, which activates the W1/M1 indicator.
C – The employee has another job, or pension. This option will generate the BR (Basic Rate) Tax code, which means they will pay tax at the basic rate without adjusting for a personal allowance.

Once you have filled out all the information, you will need to select Add New Employee.

Existing employee

This option is for users who have transferred to Pento part way through a tax year and an existing employee was not imported for any reason.

Employees providing their P45 after their first payroll run

If an Employee doesn't provide their P45 for their first Payroll, you should use a New Starter Checklist. If the employee does not select an employee statement then you should use declaration code C and set their tax code to 0T W1/M1.

HMRC: Work out your new employee's tax code

Please note – If an employee provides their P45 at a later stage, please refer to How to handle a late P45. Please ensure the P45 provided is valid for the current tax year.

Completing your employee's record

Once you have added the new employee to Pento, you will see them as Pending in the Employee list.

You will need to complete the details on the General tab, and Salary tab in order for them to appear in the payroll as Ready.

Please note – If your employee is still showing as Pending, please refer to our help article How to ready your employees for payroll

Enrolling your new employee into the Pension Scheme

Once you have added the employee's salary details, Pento will assess their eligibility for Automatic-enrollment, you will need to manually enroll all new starters into the Pension Scheme to remain compliant with The Pension Regulator. Please refer to our help article How to enroll staff into a Pension Scheme.

Adding Student Loans to your new employee

The P45 and/or New starter checklist should indicate if the employee is repaying a Student Loan, and/or Postgraduate Loan, please refer to our help article Student Loans for guidance on how to add this to your employee's record.

New Starters: HR Integrations

If you are integrated with your HR software i.e. Bamboo/HiBob on Pento, Pento will update in real time once the employee has been added to your HR system.

Once added to your HR system, as long as the Employee ID is not present in Pento, Pento will create a new employee; this is why it is essential to ensure you allocate a unique ID to every new employee, and ensure the ID is the same on Pento.

Please note – Employee IDs previously used by terminated employees should not be reused. This would result in Pento overriding their terminated record with the new employee's details and could result in issues with HMRC.

Pento does not currently sync employee tax codes for new starters. Therefore, you will need to manually update their tax code once their record has been created in Pento.

You can do this on the Taxes tab on their employee record:

Please select the correct Starter type i.e. New employee with P45, or New employee without P45. You can follow the guidance in this article above for starter declarations; P45s; Pensions; and Student/Postgraduate Loans.

If the employee's record is still showing as Pending, please refer to our help article How to ready your employees for payroll. You will need to ensure the information is correct in your HR software, and make any amendments there, as this is the "source of truth" for Pento.