We are Auto Enrolment Accountants

Do I need an Auto Enrolment Accountant?

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. All employers (from 2018) must comply with the Auto Enrolment pension regulations. So you may need an Auto Enrolment Accountant now.

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 8% of an employee’s qualifying earnings. Of the 8% minimum pension contribution, at least 3% must be paid by the employer. The employee will need to pay the remaining percentage (e.g. 5%) to take the total up to 8%. Qualifying earnings is normally the amount of an employees salary that falls between a lower and upper threshold. These thresholds for 2024/25 are £6,240pa and £50,270pa.

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.

The staging date for new employers (since 2018) is the date they started employing anyone other than directors (without a contract).

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 £11pcm plus VAT and is based on the number of employees and the pension provider used. See our Pricing page for details.