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Do I need an Auto Enrolment Accountant? What is it anyway?

Auto Enrolment is all about pensions – compulsory workplace pensions. An Auto Enrolment Accountant can help you comply with the new workplace pension requirements. All employers must enrol all eligible staff into a qualifying pension scheme. Eligible staff and/or their employer must contribute to the pension scheme. Employers are being gradually phased into Auto Enrolment between 2012 and 2017, until every employer must comply by 2018. So you may need an Auto Enrolment Accountant very soon.

All employers will need to:

  • have a pension scheme that meets the new regulations
  • auto enrol employees who meet the age and earnings criteria onto the pension scheme
  • pay and deduct contributions for eligible employees
  • enrol or de-enrol employees who opt-in or opt-out

The new laws were introduced in 2012 and are being phased in over 7 years by staggering the ‘staging dates’ and gradually increasing the ‘minimum contributions’. An Auto Enrolment Accountant will help you work out the correct contributions.

Who does Auto Enrolment apply to?

 The Auto Enrolment regulations apply to all employers except some director-only companies. Eligible employees are automatically enrolled into a qualifying workplace pension scheme, if they aren’t already in one, and if they don’t opt out. An Auto Enrolment Accountant will help you work out which employees are eligible.

Non-eligible employees and Entitled workers also have the right to opt in i.e. ask their employer to enrol them into an Auto Enrolment pension scheme. Depending on the employee age and income, employers also make contributions to this pension scheme, adding to the contributions made by the employee. An Auto Enrolment Accountant will help you handle the opt-ins.

 

How much will Auto Enrolment cost?

The minimum contributions are calculated using the percentages shown in the table below which are applied to an employee’s qualifying earnings. Qualifying earnings for the year ending 5th April 2017 are earnings between £5,824 and £43,000.

As long as the minimum employer’s contribution and the minimum total contribution are both met, the mix and rates of contributions can be different to those stated below. For example, an employer may want to pay the full total minimum contribution (or more) so that the employee isn’t required to pay any. Or the employee may want to pay more than the minimum. An Auto Enrolment Accountant will help you comply with the minimum contributions.

 

When do I have to start Auto Enrolment?

 The date when your auto enrolment duties come into force is called your staging date. Your staging date is the deadline for having a qualifying pension scheme for your employees. Within 6 weeks after your staging date you must have enrolled the eligible and opted-in employees, and started contributing to the pension. Within 5 months you must declare to The Pension Regulator that you have been complying with the new requirements. An Auto Enrolment Accountant will ensure you comply and declare this for you.

Employers will need to prepare themselves for Auto Enrolment prior to their staging date, including communicating with staff. This can take anything between six months and a year. The staging date is based on the total number of employees in your PAYE scheme at April 2012. An Auto Enrolment Accountant will help you work out what your staging date is and therefore when you need to do everything.

For more details please see our post Auto Enrolment – What is it?

We Are Auto Enrolment Accountants

As you may have guessed! we are Auto Enrolment Accountants. We offer a fixed fee Auto Enrolment Accountants Service as an add-on to our fixed fee Payroll Services. Our Auto Enrolment Accountants Service can also take care of most of the setting up as well as the ongoing administrative burden, ensuring that you comply with the new requirements. See the What’s Included section on our services page to find out what is included in our service.

Our Auto Enrolment Accountants fixed fees start from just £10pcm plus VAT and is based on the number of employees and the pension provider used. See the Fixed fees section on the page linked below for details.

For more details on our Auto Enrolment Accountants service see here: Auto Enrolment Accountants Service.