UK Payroll - Add pay reference period calendar for Nest pension
Not sure about other pensions, but when using NEST, Xero doesn't currently link up how you would like it to.
Whether you pay staff monthly or weekly, you are bound to have a cut off date for calculating hours which is before the date you send payment to employees.
The info that gets shared when filing the pension records is the "payment date". This physical date falls under the following pay period meaning when the info is transferred to NEST it comes up as the wrong period.
For example:
(monthly pay) 24th Aug - 23rd Sep, with pay on 30th Sep. shows up on NEST as the period 24th Sep - 23rd Oct
(weekly pay) M-F1st-5th with pay day on 12th (following Friday) will show up on NEST as the period M-F 8th-12th
My proposal is simple, in "payroll settings"->"Calendars" tab... Xero should create a separate Calendar here to link with Pensions, lets say its called "pension date" and allows you to choose the "end date of pay period" so that this can be the date used when the pension data is filed,
in the examples above the date would be set as (monthly)- 23rd Sep (weekly)- 5th
then the "payment date" can then carry on be used as its named purpose, for the HMRC and staff to know when they are paid.
Tim Whiteway
shared this idea
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Sarah Land
commented
I have exactly the same issue and it's driving me to distraction. I am now having to enter NEST contributions manually to comply with Pension Regulator rules.