Skip to main content Auto-enrolment, covered
Roan Lavery
CEO, Co-founder
If you have employees you should be aware of auto-enrolment. You might even be worried about what you need to do. Well worry not - we’ve got your back.
If you’re a complete auto-enrolment newbie then start by reading this guide to automatic enrolment, which explains what it is, who it applies to and what you need to do.
Once you’re up to speed, we’ve made your auto-enrolment duties a lot easier thanks to a few new features in FreeAgent.
Enter your staging date and scheme details
If auto-enrolment applies to you (if you’ve got any employees it probably will) you should have already been issued with a staging date. This is the date after which you need to enrol all eligible employees in a pension scheme.
You can enter this date in the Settings > Payroll screen, and as soon as this date comes around the auto-enrolment features in FreeAgent will kick in. If you’re using a pension scheme from NOW: Pensions you can also enter the details here.
2. Assess who is eligible
FreeAgent will flag employees who we think are eligible for auto-enrolment based on their age and earnings, and will highlight these employees on the Payroll Dashboard.
You should confirm this yourself and update the payroll profile for each employee, indicating whether they are eligible or not, and if they’ve decided to either make pension contributions or opt-out of auto-enrolment.
3. Download your contribution file
On a monthly basis you’ll need to inform your pension provider about who is enrolled and what contributions are being made.
On the Payroll Dashboard you’ll see an option to “Export auto-enrolment CSV” for each month. This exports a file which can be imported into your pension provider’s system. If you’re using NOW: Pensions you can upload the file straight away. If you’re using another pension provider, however, you may need to edit the file format before uploading.
We’ve got more details on this and everything else auto-enrolment in the appropriately titled 'How FreeAgent handles automatic enrolment for pensions' Knowledge Base article.
