Auto-enrolment guide for pensions in Pento

At Pento, we're dedicated to compliance and helping our customers stay compliant with as little manual work as possible. Pension legislation can be tedious and difficult to understand, so we've removed as much of the manual work as we can! We have outlined a step by step guide on how our pension module works below.

For further guidance on pension duties for employers, please refer to our help article Pension Duties.

Pensions in Pento

Duties start date

You will need to add your original Duties start date (or your Staging date if you employed staff for the first time before 1st October 2017) to Pento. To do this, you will need to follow the steps below:

1. Navigate to Settings from the left sidebar
2. Under the Company heading, select Pensions
3. Select Add start date under the Duties start date section
   

For guidance on adding re-enrolment dates, you will need to refer to the Re-enrolment section below.

Assessments

Once you have added your duties start date, to ensure you remain compliant with your ongoing pension duties, Pento assesses your employees on:

• The first day of an employee's employment, for workers who commence employment after your duties start date
• The deferral date, if you have chosen to use a postponement period i.e. on the last day of the postponement period, Pento will assess the employee for you
• Each pay period, where the first assessment identified the worker as a non-eligible jobholder
  E.g. If a new employee was assessed as non-eligible or entitled in their first pay period, Pento will assess them in each pay period going forward until they are eligible or choose to join a scheme

Once an employee has been assessed, you will be able to see the employees' Worker Type from the Employees list in Pento:

Not Enrolled

This worker type refers to an Eligible job holder and requires a pension status to be set i.e. enrol or postpone the employee

Not Opted-In

This worker type refers to a Non-eligible job holder and does not require a pension status to be set unless the employee has asked to opt-in to the pension scheme.

Not Joined

This worker type refers to an Entitled worker and does not require a pension status to be set unless the employee has asked to join the pension scheme.

No provider set

This indicates that the employee has not been assessed yet and will require a provider to be set on their employee profile. Once set, Pento will assess them accordingly.

Opted-out

This indicates that an employee is no longer included in your pension scheme and left during their opt-out window. 

Left scheme

This indicates that an employee is no longer included in your pension scheme and left after their opt-out window. 

Setting a Pension Status 

For example, if an employee is assessed as Eligible on the first day of the pay period, but you later add a pensionable gross deduction that takes their pay below the threshold for auto-enrolment, they would be re-assessed as Non-eligible / Entitled.

Likewise, if you add a pensionable gross addition to an employee who was previously assessed as Non-eligible / Entitled, they could be re-assessed as Eligible.

To set a Pension Status, you will need to follow the steps below:

1. Navigate to Employees from the left sidebar
2. Select the relevant employee
3. Select the Pension tab
4. Select Set pension status

The options available will differ depending on the worker type:

Eligible Employees

You will see the following options:

For guidance on choosing the correct status, please refer to our help article How to enrol staff into an integrated Pension Scheme or How to enrol staff into a non-integrated/CSV pension scheme.

Non-eligible Employees

You will see the following options:

Entitled Employees

Postponements in Pento

Postponement periods are used to postpone an employee's assessment, however, in Pento, as our assessment service is automatic, you will notice that new employees will be assessed once you have set the pay schedule, salary & pension provider.

If you operate a postponement period, you should postpone new employees, even if they have been assessed as non-eligible / entitled. They will then be re-assessed on the deferral date (the last day of the postponement period) where you will be able to set their pension status accordingly.

If an employee is assessed as non-eligible or entitled and becomes eligible in a later pay period, you are permitted to use a further postponement period. 

Employee's with variable pay

You may have some employee's whose earnings are usually below the threshold for auto-enrolment, however, due to one-off payments such as a bonus, may become eligible, you can use postponement to delay the assessment until their pay has returned to normal.

If you choose to use a postponement period, employees still have the right to join the scheme before the end of the postponement period. For further guidance on employee's wishing to opt-in/join, please refer to The Pensions Regulator's guidance.

Further guidance on Postponements can be found here.

Writing to staff

Once an employee has been assessed, it is a legal requirement to write to them individually to explain how automatic enrolment applies to them. You must write to them within 6 weeks of their assessment.

At the moment, Pento only provides letters for eligible employees being enrolled, and eligible employees being enrolled with a postponement.

If your pension provider does not do this on your behalf, you can use the letter templates from The Pensions Regulator's website:

To send letters to your staff in Pento, you will need to follow the steps below:

1. Navigate to Employees from the left sidebar
2. Select the Pension tab
3. Select Set pension status
4. Select the status you require
   E.g. Enrol new employee or postpone employee
5. Follow the steps in the modal
6. For enrolling a new employee you will have the option to send an enrolment letter. If enabled, Pento will automatically send the enrolment letter for you
7. For postponements, Pento will automatically send a postponement letter for you
8. Once the pension status has been set, you will be able to download a copy of the letter for your records.
   

Managing Auto-enrolment in Pento

To reduce the risk of non-compliance, Pento will notify you of any employees without a pension provider on the Overview page. For guidance on the Overview page, please refer to our help article How to ready your employees for payroll.

Further to this, Pento will also notify you of any eligible employees without a pension status on the Summary page of the payroll.

Once you have selected view eligible employees, you will see a screen similar to the one below:

You can set employee statuses directly from this screen, alternatively, you can select Download auto-enrolment report and use the information to populate a spreadsheet to import the data. For guidance on importing pension data, please refer to our help article Bulk update pensions.

Non-eligible and Entitled workers

To help you remain compliant with your ongoing duties, including writing to non-eligible and entitled staff, Pento has a pension report you can download that shows all employees, their worker type and their pension status. To access the report, you will need to follow the steps below: 

1. Navigate to Employees from the left sidebar
2. In the top right of the page, select Import/Export
3. Select Download pension report

You can see an example report attached to this article. 

New starters with pro-rated pay below the pension threshold

As new starters can commence employment at any point in a pay period, their first pay may be pro-rated and therefore not meet the criteria for auto-enrolment. If you operate a postponement period, you should set their pension status to postponed (even if they have been assessed as non-eligible or entitled, please see the Postponement section for further details) and enter the deferral date accordingly. If you do not operate a postponement period, the employee will be re-assessed in all following pay periods until they become eligible or choose to join a scheme. 

Enrolling Eligible employees

When an employee has been assessed as eligible on their start date or deferral date, you must enrol them into the pension scheme by setting their pension status in Pento. You will see a screen similar to the below:

Eligiblity date & Enrolment date

The eligibility date refers to the date an employee first becomes eligible. This can be on their start date, the date they turn 22, their deferral date, or the date their earnings exceed the threshold for auto-enrolment (for example, if they receive a salary increase). The eligibility date is usually the same as the enrolment date, therefore, Pento defaults the enrolment date to the eligibility date.

You can choose to change the enrolment date if you wish. For further guidance on enrolment dates, please refer to The Pensions Regulator's guidance:

Re-enrolment in Pento

Please refer to our help article Re-enrolment in Pento.