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All new starters must be manually enrolled into the pension scheme once they have been added to Pento. To do this, you will need to follow the steps below:
- Navigate to Employees from the left sidebar
- Search for the relevant employee
- Select the Pensions tab
- Select Set pension status
- Once selected, the following modal with specific options will appear:
- Select the option that applies:
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- Enrol new employee
This option will enrol the employee into the pension scheme in the current month. Only select this option if the employee has not already been added to your pension provider's portal. - Already Enrolled
This option is for employees already enrolled in your pension scheme. - Postpone Pension
This option will enrol new employees with a postponement period, you can define the postponement length by selecting an end date within the modal. - Opted-Out
This option is for existing employees who have opted out of the pension scheme.
- Enrol new employee
Please note - All new eligible employees must be enrolled before they can opt-out of the pension scheme. You can refer to our help article Pension Duties for further guidance on opt-outs
Once selected, you will need to choose the Pension provider and Pension type. The dropdown menu for both will be populated with the schemes you set up at the company level. For guidance on setting up pension schemes in Pento, you can refer to our help article How to Add a Pension Scheme to Pento.
Once you have entered the relevant information, select Set enrolment status.
Once enrolled, you will see a screen similar to the below:
If the employee's contribution rates differ from the company standard, you can amend them here.
If an employee contributes a fixed amount rather than a percentage, you can use the dropdown menu to the right of the contributions to select a monetary value instead.
Once you have amended the contribution rates, select Save changes.
Group settings for Nest and The People's pension
Once you have set the pension status, if you use Nest or The People's pension as your provider, you will not need to enter the contribution rate in Pento. Instead, you will need to select the relevant Group for the employee from the dropdown list:
Please note - Groups are defined in your pension provider's portal and determine the employee and employer contribution rates. Pento receives the Group settings via the integration API and only groups pre-defined with your pension provider will be available to select from the dropdown list
When we can't enrol an employee
If you have attempted to auto-enrol an employee using one of our automated pension integrations and receive an enrolment failure message, then you will need to check the following:
- No special characters are used in names or addresses.
- Employee ID is complete.
- The email address is complete.
- City, Country, and Post Code are all complete.
- Address lines 1 and 2 don’t exceed 35 characters.
- The employee isn't already enrolled with your pension provider
Please note - If you have just transferred to Pento and your previous payroll provider has already added postponed employees to your pension provider portal, then you will need to select Already enrolled, otherwise you will receive an enrolment failure message
If you have confirmed all of the above are correct and are still running into a problem, please reach out to our customer support team.
Non-eligible employees
For further guidance on Employees who have been assessed as non-eligible, please refer to our help article Pension Duties