My email last week about auto-enrolment caused a lot of interest and some questions from businesses asking how they can find out their staging date (this the date when your obligation under auto-enrolment will start).
As
I mentioned the tidal wave – which will become a tsunami - of small businesses going through auto-enrolment has now started with the peak being next year, so every business should know when their staging date is. To find out your staging date the Pension Regulator calculator is a good place to start.
So what do you need to do before you stage?
- Nominate a person to be the Pension Regulator’s key contact and register their name with the Regulator
- Draw up a Project Plan and consider whether you need help (60% of companies currently staging have decided they do need help!). We will be using Barnes Cooper Limited, our payroll provider for this.
- Choose a Pension Provider – NEST, Now Pensions and The Peoples Pension are the 3 largest – we have chosen to go with NEST.
- Make sure your payroll software can provide the analysis needed – we can help you with this as well. If you currently use our payroll service then our software is fully compliant.
- In addition you will need to work on elements of the Project Plan such as assessing the workforce, letters to employees, considering postponement
etc.
We strongly recommend that, if you haven't already, you get your auto-enrolment sorted out sooner rather than later.
Noel Guilford
Noel Guilford is the principal of Guilford Accounting a small business accountancy practice
specialising in advising owner-managed businesses on current accounting, finance, and tax matters. You can reach him via email at noel@guilfordaccounting.co.uk or by phone at 01244 660866. He is the author of the best selling book 'Figure it out - an entrepreneurs guide to understanding your business numbers' which you can
obtain by visiting http://guilfordaccounting.co.uk/figureit out.