Payroll - Employee Assessment for Auto-Enrolment and Set Password by Employee for Emailed Payslips

Employee Assessment for Auto-Enrolment

A new option has been added to perform the pension auto-enrolment assessment within the Payroll. This option ties in with the Company Pension Scheme(s) that can be defined within Payroll.

Employee Maintenance / Add an Employee – as part of adding the employee the system will set when the New Worker postponement period ends (based on employee date started and postponement settings).

Employee Maintenance can also include options to specify if employees are working outstide the UK or are already in applicable scheme so not covered by the scope of auto-enrolment.

Existing Employees

For existing employees you will want to update the Worker Postponement Date to the date the employer becomes eligible for auto-enrolment plus any postponent period.  

If any employees working outside the UK or are already in an applicable pension scheme then these flags should be set manually for applicable employees.

As part of auto-enrolment selected employees who are not automatically enrolled can choose to Opt In – for these employees you need to be able to record an Opt In Date and set the contribution rates.

Similary employees who are enrolled can choose to Opt Out or Stop Contributions.  Opt Out availability is restricted to a number of days since auto-enrolment and allows the employee and employer to be refunded with their contributions, stopping contributions is available at any time but the employee/employer is not refunded.

You are likely to use a Payroll Extra Maintenance Screen for these options.

Payroll Input - When saving the employee details if the employee is not already auto-enrolled then on saving the employee record the system will perform the auto-enrolment checks.

If the employee should be auto-enrolled then, if any jobholder postponement period is set, the postponement period end date is set and the pension contributions are not calculated.

If the employee should be auto-enrolled and no postponement is set (or has expired) the system will apply the default employee/employer contribution rates and prompt to recalculate the payroll values (reconfirming the entered details)

Payroll Check / Payroll Run - As part of the Payroll Check / Run report the system will also apply the autoenrolment checks for employees not already auto-enrolled – applying postponent period and setting default contribution rates as appropriate.  Note that employees ‘auto-enrolled’ as part of the check/run report will be highlighted accordingly.

Note

Employees aren’t ‘fixed’ as auto-enrolled until the payroll is run.  Up to this point amendments to the employee’s pay may mean that they are not eligible to be enrolled.

Installation

Database Changes

Changes are required to the Employee database to record the auto-enrolment details.  To add these items select Installation from the main menu followed by Application Manager and then Restructure A Database. Select the Payroll application. Elect to update the Live Files and then select the Employee file. 

To insert a new item press <Enter> against a blank entry, enter the title as required and press <Enter>, select the item type (using the drop-down list if required), and depending on item type select the size required.

Once the required items have been recorded press the <ESC> key and select the UPDATE button to save the database changes. When prompted respond ‘Y’ to the prompts to ‘Extract Existing Data to New Database Structure’ and, if appropriate, ‘Copy Table Entries from Old Database to New Database’. Final prompts ask to ‘Remove (.OLD) Database’ and to ‘Carry Out the Same Restructure on the BASE File as well’ – respond as required. If you select to update the base file you need to manually insert the new items at the same data item positions as on the live file.

You may want to create items of equivalent name/type on the P11 database for reporting purposes.

System Profiles

New options have been added to the Payroll System Profiles to reference these new data items and to enable the auto-enrolment assessment.  

Screen 4 of the Payroll Profile allows, in addition to referencing the above data items,  additional parameters for auto-enrolment.

Threshold – updated automatically this is the annual earnings threshold at which an employee would be auto-enrolled.

Minimum Employee% - set the minimum / default employee contribution% applied when an employee is auto-enrolled.

Minimum Employer% - set the minimum / default employer contribution% applied when an employee is auto-enrolled.

Worker Postpone – set number of payroll periods (weeks for 1/2/4 weely payroll, months for monthly payroll) before new starters would become eligibile for auto-enrolment.

Jobholder Postpone– set number of payroll periods (weeks for 1/2/4 weely payroll, months for monthly payroll) to delay auto-enrolment when an employee becomes eligible for auto-enrolment.  This allows postponement for when an employee is generally under the enrolment threshold but temporarily exceeds due to excess overtime / bonus, the employee is re-assessed at the end of the postponement period and only auto-enrolled if still applicable.

Earnings Period Adjust – for monthly payrolls set the start day of the current month for the earnings period – typically this would be ‘1’ for first of the month.

For weekly based payrolls set the value to offset the current payroll tax date by to get to the start of the earnings period being paid and then set whether it’s a +/- adjust from the payroll tax point date.  For example if paying weekly on Friday for week in arrears then the tax point is 8^th April but the start date of the earnings period would be 26^th March – an offset of 12 days and negative.

Application Screen Layouts

The options to nominate that an employee is based outside the UK or is already in a pension scheme will likely need to be added to the standard Employee New/Amend screens, the options to opt in/out we’d suggest adding to and extra maintenance screen.  

To update the screen layout users can select the Installation option from the main menu followed by Application Manager and then Application User Facilities.  Select the Payroll application before selecting the Maintain Employee File and then Add New Employee screen.

Screen Design is in the usual manner - To insert text labels such as ‘Outside UK’ use the mouse to position the cursor where required and then type the required text.  To insert the data items position the cursor where required and press the <F4-Select> key and choose the data item required.  Set whether items are view-only, mandatory or require uppercase input as required. Once the layout is complete choose File and then Save & Exit.

To update the Extra Maintenance screen select Special Amend Screens, choose a blank entry, specify the menu prompt and title id and then design screen as above.

Set Password by Employee for Emailed Payslips

Payslip documents, as with other application documents, can be sent via email as a pdf attachment. This new facility allows you to reference an item on the employee file to be used as a password for opening of the pdf.

Installation

Document Design Manager

Additional options have been added to the email parameters within the payslip definition to allow the emailed PDF to require a password before it can be opened.  

To update select Installationfrom the main menu followed by Application Manager and then Document

Design Manager (Professional users will have the Document Design Manager option on the main

Installation menu).  

Select the Payroll application and then the Payslip document type before selecting the document number to be amended and the document mask will be displayed.  

V7 users can select Format from the toolbar and then Email Parameters, V2017 users can select Email Parameters from the ribbon.

Data Item Containing PDF Password – reference the data item on the employee file to be used for the password required to view the pdf attachment.

Note

The password is only applied to the pdf attachment on emailed payslips from the Payroll Payslip print options.  

If sent directly to PDF or other print device, or reprinted from the saved documents tools no password is applied.