Pension re-enrolment in QuickBooks Online Standard Payroll

Do you have employees who have opted-out or ended their membership of your pension scheme? You need to run an assessment every 3 years to find out if they should re-enrol. This process is also referred to as cyclical re-enrolment.

QuickBooks Online Standard Payroll can handle this process for you – we just need to know the date to assess your employees.

Selecting the assessment date

The assessment needs to take place 3 years after the ‘Staging date’ or ‘Duty start date’ and you can flex this to either 3 months before or after that date. This 6-month period is known as the re-enrolment window.

For example, if the staging/duty start date is 1 October 2018, the re-enrolment window will run from 1 July 2021 – 31 December 2021.

You can choose any date that falls within the given period to assess employees who have opted-out or ceased membership. To do so:

1. Go to Company Settings (gear icon).
2. Select Payroll then Re-enrolment date.
3. If you want to re-enrol your employees automatically, select Yes.
4. Choose the re-assessment date.
5. Select Save and Done.

We'll remind you 6 months before your duties start/staging date when the next re-enrolment is due, so long as you have the original staging date saved in your Payroll settings.

You can choose the re-enrolment date and include any employees who have opted out of the pension scheme in the last 12 months if you need to.

Assessing your employees

QuickBooks will then keep track of this date so that during the payroll run assessment, eligible employees will be re-enrolled into the pension scheme. Employees who aren’t eligible won’t be assessed again until the next re-enrolment window in 3 years' time (plus or minus 3 months).

More important information

You won't have the option to use postponement during re-enrolment, but you can change employee contributions when you run payroll.

Employees still have the right to opt-out or end their membership of your pension scheme using the usual process, after re-enrolment.

Complete a re-declaration of compliance form

When payroll has run you’ll be reminded to complete your re-declaration of compliance with The Pension Regulator. If you don’t complete it you could face fines and penalties.

For full details about your re-enrolment duties, including writing to your employees and completing your declaration of re-enrolment, visit The Pension Regulator website.