Pension Submission Stuck or Unresponsive

Occasionally the pension API response from the provider will not complete, gets stuck, or appears undelivered. You will see an outstanding notification and the following message on the Enrolment Summary or Contributions Summary:

'Your enrolment summary has been sent but a response has not yet been received'

You may also see the message 'Waiting for response from NEST', or notice that the expected response time keeps changing and extending. In all of these cases, follow the steps below:

Before taking any action — check whether the pension provider received the file

The correct next step depends on whether the submission reached the pension provider or not. The most reliable way to check this is to log in to your pension provider's portal directly (e.g. your NEST online account) and check whether the submission is showing on the schedule for the relevant period. 

Restarting the submission — always required as a first step

Regardless of whether the submission was received by the pension provider or not, you must first restart the submission to bring it back to a sendable state. The option to mark employees as included will not appear until this step has been completed.

1. Go to the Enrolment Summary or Contributions Summary screen in the Pensions section
2. Hold SHIFT on your keyboard and click the tool (spanner) icon next to the message highlighted in blue
3. Still holding SHIFT, click to restart your submission
4. Still holding SHIFT, select Yes to the question "are you sure you wish to completely restart..."
5. Release SHIFT

Once the submission has been restarted, you will see the following options. Choose the correct path based on whether the provider received the file:

If the submission was NOT received by the pension provider

Click 'Send Submission' to send it now.

If the submission WAS received by the pension provider

Do not send again — the pension provider will have closed that schedule and moved on to the next period, so any resubmission attempt will be rejected with a date error. Instead, click the tool (spanner) icon > Mark employees as included in a submission > select all employees > OK. This will clear the outstanding notification without resubmitting.

If the option to mark employees as included is not available

The option to mark employees as included will only appear once the submission has been restarted using the SHIFT+spanner method above. If it is still not available after restarting, go to the Enrolment Summary or Contributions screen, hold down the SHIFT key > click the spanner icon > select the submission to restart > click Yes > release SHIFT. The option to mark employees as included will then be available.

If the '1' notification remains after the submission has gone through successfully

Try refreshing your browser and clearing your browser's cache and cookies — this should remove the outstanding notification. If there is an outstanding notification on the Browse Employers screen but the pension has been submitted successfully, refreshing your browser should reset the data display and clear it.

If you cannot see the option to submit the contribution summary

Check that the payslips have been finalised for the period you wish to submit and that the submission has not accidentally been marked as included. To verify: click the spanner icon > View Submission Logs. If this is empty or shows failures, the file did not reach the pension provider and you will need to submit it. If entries are present and show as successful, the submission was received and you should mark employees as included rather than resubmitting.

Important notes

• This method applies only when the submission is unresolved or unable to proceed and no error or rejection has been received from the provider. For submissions showing an error or rejection, follow the guidance provided for those specific errors.
• The same SHIFT + restart process applies to both the Enrolment Summary and the Contributions Summary screens.
• If pension enrolment notifications have not worked, are stuck, or need to be removed, always use the restart pension submissions feature to clear and resubmit if required.

If the SHIFT+restart method doesn't appear to be working

If the restart option is not appearing or the submission remains stuck after attempting the SHIFT+restart method, this is most commonly caused by releasing the SHIFT key too early. It is essential that you keep the SHIFT key held down continuously from the point you click the spanner icon until after you have clicked Yes to confirm the restart — releasing SHIFT at any point before clicking Yes will cause the option to disappear and the restart will not complete.

To retry: hold SHIFT, click the spanner icon, keep holding SHIFT, click to restart the submission, keep holding SHIFT, then click Yes to confirm. Once you see the confirmation, you can release SHIFT.

If you have followed these steps correctly and the submission is still stuck, log in to your pension provider portal directly to check whether the submission was received. If it was received, use the spanner icon > Mark employees as included in a submission to clear the notification in BrightPay.