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Its incredibly frustrating when we have just completed our 3 year auto-enrolment with an external large UK pension provider with staff that have opted out before we run our payroll to then be included in the payrun with pension documents because Xero has decided to do their own checks. All our checks are done with our pension provider. This happens when someone becomes eligible for pension also. Please can this be sorted, it looks like we are imcompetent when staff look at their payslips and say they had opted out, why have you deducted this? We cant be the only ones this happens to.

We always send draft to client to check before posting the pay run. They tend to pay the staff and then tell us it's OK to post. Embarassing to then have to go back to them to say they've overpaid because someone has been auto enrolled.....

I agree.

Sending payslips with take home pay to a user for approval before submission, only to then find out an enrolment should have happened. If the approver has set up payments based on the draft, this results in an overpayment due to the pension deductions.

The auto-enrolment prompts at the beginning would make much more sense.

The current method means that payslips have to be posted before the payslips can be reviewed by another in order to have accurate information.

Agree that it would be great to have a reminder about employees who have been postponed needing to be automatically enrolled before you go to post the payroll and indeed calculation of the pension contributions for all newly enrolled employees before you go to post the payroll - so many times, I think I have finalised the payroll, obtained approval from my client, only to go to post with HMRC and find that I need to enrol employees which changes all the reports I've reviewed and sent to the client and I have to go back to the client with updated reports and explain why they need to make different payments to their employees and in effect duplicate work. Is there any way a reminder could be made before hitting 'post'? Could there be a specific pension step before getting to final report stage? Any help would be appreciated. Thank you.

When an employee has a postponed autoenrollment the pension doesn't prompt or show up until just before the payment run has been posted. Making any prior payroll reports and payslips incorrect as the pension then tags on at the end. So reports then need to be reprinted and balanced again.

Can the prompt no show up at the start of the pay run? This will then save any duplicated reports and potential incorrect payments.

Also the pension filing report viewable before the RTI posting.

Alternatively, enter the postponement date when posting the pay run in which the employee becomes eligible for auto enrolment. This will sync to the employee's record once the pay run is posted.

critical

Please sort this out as it is difficult to explain to clients what their monthly payroll is until you have submitted the RTI - it doesn't work to tell them once it has been submitted!

I see the comments here about the requirement for auto-enrolment. Our pension provider covers all auto-enrolment duties, and so there is no need to duplicate this work in xero. The problem for us arises as the pension provider assesses in one month and then commences contributions the following month, allowing the employee ample time to opt out before contributions are taken and therefore never having to process refunds. As they are one of the largest UK providers I assume their system is compliant for all UK payroll and tax legislation.
Xero will then try to assess and deduct in the same month, leading to a discrepancy with the pension system. It should be possible to tick a declaration box stating that auto-enrolment is being completed outside of xero and send that to HMRC if necessary, and then opt out of auto-enrolment in xero altogether, and set up contributions via the payslip items as usual when needed.

We need update on this issue. Please advise when a fix is expected. Kind regards.

credibility - how can the net pay summary the client uses to process bank payments not agree to the payslips
the pension on the payslips does not agree to the total either

Both employer and employee pension contributions are shown on the paysliip after pension assessment adopting the "confirm and cancel" arrangement. These are not however reflected in the pay run summary produced after this procedure, neither shown in the total of employer pension contributions nor reflected in the net pay. This is an issue for larger employers who use this schedule to make the net payments to employees rather than go through each individual payslip as it results in an overpayment to the newly enrolled worker. This has been raised with Xero Support who say that the arrangements are working as they should. It is not working for our clients.

Its easy to forget when a new employee that has been postponed will be due to join. If you've had payroll signed off by the client, having to then provide a whole new set of reports AFTER the RTI has been submitted is a big pain the back end.

Xero Payroll should have a way to assess employees for pension enrollment without having to first post a payroll.

I also noticed that the assessment is based on the monthly salary for the initial payroll rather than the employee's annual salary. So, eligible employees who start partway through a month and earned less than the monntly pension threshold in their month are assessed as not eligible. The system then has to reasses them the following month when they earn a full month's salary and reach or exceed the monthly earnings threshold.

Xero really need to come up with a better way to do the pension assessments.

it's a good idea but legally not possible unfortunately! I just spend ages trying to refund the money but found it hard to set it up so HMRC accepted it. Ended up having a phonecall with XERO to talk me through it

Hi Alison, just a comment here as I see your question.
Unfortunately the legislation states that an employee has to be enrolled and registered with the pension provider before they can then opt out. That is not something that Xero are only insisting on.

Please can we have the option to opt an employee out before running a pay run? It is a bit annoying to have to then refund deductions the following month and employees question it as they think they have opted out!