We assess every worker each pay reference period, calculate contributions on the right earnings and upload them to your scheme. Notices, opt-outs, postponement and re-enrolment are handled to the statutory dates.
Everyone you pay falls into one of three categories, set by age and by earnings in that particular pay period. The category decides what you owe them, and it can change from one period to the next. Contributions are calculated on qualifying earnings, which includes overtime, commission and bonuses.
What we run each cycle:
Workers categorised at hire and left alone. Variable hours push people over the trigger silently, and the arrears build quietly for years.
Contributions calculated on salary while overtime, bonuses, commission and statutory payments are left out of qualifying earnings.
Opting out has to be initiated by the worker through the scheme. Employer involvement looks like inducement, which is itself a breach.
The three-year cycle passes unnoticed and the re-declaration is missed, which is one of the most common triggers for a compliance notice.
A stable salaried payroll rarely causes auto-enrolment problems. These do.
Hospitality, care, security, cleaning and retail workforces where earnings swing above and below the trigger from one period to the next, and each crossing creates or ends a duty.
Warehousing, logistics and agriculture, where hundreds of short-term staff arrive for a peak. Postponement is the right tool here, and it has to be applied and evidenced correctly.
Businesses paying employees, agency workers, CIS subcontractors and off-payroll contractors together, where deciding who is in scope is the hard part rather than the arithmetic.
Workplace pension duties, answered plainly.
Every worker, every pay reference period. Automatic enrolment is not a one-off exercise at the point of hire. Somebody who was too young or earning too little last month can cross a threshold this month through overtime, a pay rise or a birthday, and the duty to enrol them arises at that moment. For variable-hours workforces this is where most non-compliance comes from, and it is the reason assessment has to sit inside the pay run rather than beside it.
You can postpone for up to three months, from a staging or duties start date, from the date a worker joins, or from the date a worker first meets the criteria. Postponement does not remove the duty, it moves it: you still have to issue the postponement notice within the statutory window, and you still have to assess the worker at the end of the period. It is useful for short-term and seasonal staff who will have left before the postponement expires.
A worker who opts out within one month of being enrolled is entitled to a full refund of their contributions, and has to be treated as though they were never a member. Outside that window it becomes a cessation of membership rather than an opt-out, and the contributions stay in the scheme. The opt-out has to come from the worker through the scheme, never from you, and we handle the refund through the next available pay run.
Roughly every three years you have to put eligible workers who previously opted out back into the scheme, and then complete a re-declaration of compliance with The Pensions Regulator. There is a six-month window around the third anniversary of your original date in which you can choose your re-enrolment date. We track the date, run the assessment, issue the notices and complete the re-declaration.
It depends on what they are, not what the contract calls them. Automatic enrolment applies to workers, which is wider than employees but narrower than everyone you pay. Genuinely self-employed CIS subcontractors and off-payroll workers taxed under Chapter 10 are outside the duty. Agency workers and casual staff usually are not. We work through your population rather than assuming, because getting this wrong in either direction is expensive.
We prepare and submit the declaration of compliance and the three-yearly re-declaration, keep the records TPR expects you to hold, and put together the evidence if you are selected for a compliance check or receive a notice. The legal duty stays with you as the employer, so anything requiring an employer decision comes to you with our recommendation rather than being answered on your behalf.
Most employers who ask us to look at their pension duties find at least one worker who should have been enrolled and was not. Better to find it yourself than have it found for you.