As soon as you reach your duties start date, BrightPay will automatically assess your employees for you and determine whether your employees are eligible jobholders, non eligible jobholders or entitled workers.

Eligible Jobholders
 

Employees who meet the following criteria will be assessed as Eligible Jobholders:
 

• aged between 22 and state pension age 
   
• working or ordinarily work in the UK under their contract 
   
• have qualifying earnings payable by the employer in the relevant pay reference period that are above the earnings trigger for automatic enrolment.
   

As soon as you reach your duties start date in the Payroll utility, on-screen flags and alerts will appear to notify that you have automatic enrolment duties to perform. 

 

• BrightPay will indicate an employee's Eligible Jobholder status on the yellow bar in their payroll screen:

• Click Options  and View Options to bring you through to the various actions available based on this worker category:

 


NOTE: The yellow bar with 'Options' will only appear in the payroll tab if there is action to be taken (ie to enrol, send pension letters, re-enrolment is due). If the employee has already been enrolled or opted in during the period, the yellow bar will not appear & you can check their status in Employees > select employee > Automatic enrolment section.

Enrolling an Employee

• To enrol an eligible employee, simply select Enrol, followed by the pension scheme group into which the employee is being enrolled and the applicable tax relief (if unsure of the tax relief to apply, please check with your pension provider).
   
• Click Continue to proceed

• The employee is now enrolled into the selected group of your pension scheme. 

If you need to amend the 'Enrolment date' after the employee has been added to the pension scheme, click on the underlined date, edit and save.

Pension contributions
 

Once enrolled into a pension scheme, pension contribution deductions start from the current open or subsequent pay period.

Deductions commence without any consultation with the employee, thus meeting the employer's legal requirement to automatically enrol the employee.

The deduction applied to the payslip is made in accordance with the contribution rates and earnings bands selected when setting up your pension scheme in BrightPay.

Please note: if it is tax relief at source, then the employee contribution will be adjusted by 0.2%.

 

Payslip - Notification to employees of pension contribution deductions made

All pension contributions deducted from an employee's pay in each pay period will be itemised on their payslip. Employees should be issued with a payslip for each pay period.

BrightPay facilitates the printing, exporting and emailing of payslips.

 

 
Providing the employee with their enrolment letter

Once an employee has been enrolled, BrightPay will then automatically prepare their Enrolment Letter and this can be printed, exported to PDF or emailed to the employee.

BrightPay uses the simplified Pensions Regulator letter templates. 

An employee's enrolment letter will include information about:
 

• their enrolment status
   
• their date of enrolment
   
• the Scheme into which the employee is enrolled
   
• contributions which are now attached to their earnings
   
• how to opt out should they choose to do so
   
• general information on how automatic enrolment will benefit the employee

Once an employee has been enrolled, BrightPay will automatically prompt you to print/ export/ email their enrolment letter

Click Options and Create Letter / View Options followed by Letter: 

Select Create Letter - Email /  Download as required:

 

 

Enter a date (if applicable) and the signatory to be added to the letter. If printing or exporting the communication letter, further customisation of the letter is available within the 'Show advanceed options' menu.

Select Continue

Once the employee is in receipt of the enrolment letter, simply Mark As Done:

If the incorrect employee's name is appearing on the pension letter, go to create the letter and check the Salutation field is set up correctly, ie there is not any employee's name here and it says 'Dear [name] [surname]' so BrightPay can read it correctly.

Please note: Pension contributions are submitted for the period worked on the BrightPay schedule and not when the employee was paid. Ie if the pay date falls after the pay period. Example: pay period 1st to 31st July but pay date of 1st August; the period worked 1st to 31st July are the dates submitted to the pension provider.