Three top tips to keep your Smart Pension scheme running smoothly

We’re often asked by companies and advisers who manage a workplace pension for a checklist, so that they can keep on top of their pension admin tasks each month. 

Our technology automates almost all pension admin, especially when linked to a payroll API integration , making it simple and hassle-free for companies to run their workplace pension scheme. However, there are still some important checks that you must regularly carry out, just to make sure that you meet your legal duties as an employer and your employees’ contributions are submitted correctly.

Here are my top three tips to make sure that your company's workplace pension scheme stays compliant.

1.  Keep on top of compliance – the ‘must-do’ tasks

‍Statutory communications – As one of the main duties of auto enrolment, you need to establish whether your payroll software provider or Smart Pension will be creating and sending the required statutory communications. It is the employer’s duty to make sure that their employees are aware of where they are in their workplace pension journey, for example from postponements to assessments.

Postponements – If you are using postponements for your employees, establish which type of postponement you are using (duty start date, new starter or newly eligible). It is really important to ensure that postponement communications are sent out within six-weeks from the assessment date to ensure that you meet the statutory deadline and they are valid.

‍Contributions invested on time – Legislation requires that contributions from the previous month are invested by the 22nd of the month. You can either use our ‘PayNow’ facility or alternatively, Smart Pension will automatically request to collect payment using Direct Debit for contributions successfully submitted before the 5th of the month.

2. Make sure your contributions are up to date

‍Pay period end dates – In line with legislation, Smart Pension requires consecutive data for scheme members. You should submit leaver dates as soon as possible to ensure that the member’s account does not appear overdue. If you do not do this, we may be required to report you to The Pensions Regulator.

‍PayNow – If you need to make late submissions, don’t forget to use the PayNow function.

3. Don’t forget to reconcile the account every month

Within the Smart Pension employer account, we offer two areas to help assist with reconciling your account.

1. Contributions page – Data that has been submitted to Smart Pension can be reviewed here. This data can be filtered by specific periods, individual employees or the status of the contributions.
2. ‍Billing page – If you need to reconcile payments made from your bank account, you can do so in the billing area.

Learn more:

• Access our employer help articles
• Payroll integrations and APIs