The legislation requires employers to enrol employees into schemes when they meet the criteria set out. Explaining the criteria for enrolment is not the purpose of this document and users should refer to literature provided by the Department of Work & Pensions.
However InPay will provide an employee’s pension status based on these rules from information contained within the system. These details can be exported for all employees in a company. A sample exporter named “Pension Default” has been set up on the system (figure 5.1, the output includes the employees pension status). Those employees shown with the status of Eligible Jobholder within the period the export is run are the employees that legislatively should be enrolled. These can be enrolled by using the employee numbers of the employees in the required status and following the process is section “6 – Importer Changes” to apply them to the pension scheme in bulk.
Figure 5.1
Explanation of pension status’ from the HMRC Developer documentation:-
Category of worker Description of worker
Jobholder A worker who:
• is aged between 16 and 74
• is working or ordinarily works in the UK under their contract
• has qualifying earnings.
Eligible jobholder A jobholder who:
• is aged between 22 and state pension age
• has qualifying earnings above the earnings trigger for automatic enrolment.
Non-eligible jobholder A jobholder who:
• is aged between 16 and 21 or state pension age and 74
• has qualifying earnings above the earnings trigger for automatic enrolment
OR
• is aged between 16 and 74
• has qualifying earnings below the earnings trigger for automatic enrolment.
Entitled worker A worker who:
• is aged between 16 and 74
• is working or ordinarily works in the UK under their contract
• does not have qualifying earnings.
NB: ‘Qualifying earnings’ is a reference to earnings of between £5,564 and £42,475 (for the 2012-2013 tax year) made up of any of the following components of pay that are due to be paid to the worker:
• salary
• wages
• commission
• bonuses
• overtime
• statutory sick pay
• statutory maternity pay
• ordinary or additional statutory paternity pay
• statutory adoption pay.
In addition to the ability to create an export of pension statuses, there is also the likelihood of employers requiring more customised exports to submit to their pension provider. The exporter includes the ability to create customised exports of pension payment each period and can include such information as pensionable pay and the percentage used to calculate the pension