Auto enrolment payroll software

We wanted to let our customers know about the work we’re doing to ensure Clear Books payroll software will comply with the upcoming changes for workplace pensions. This will mean you can auto-enrol your employees straight from our Payroll application.

What is auto enrolment?

If you’re a business owner you may be aware of the UK government’s ‘automatic enrolment’ initiative, designed to help people save more money for later life through a compulsory workplace pension scheme.

All employers in the UK will be legally required to enrol employees into a qualifying pension scheme and make contributions from your specific staging date. As an employer, you should have received communications from HMRC and the Pensions Regulator already, but more information can be found on The Pensions Regulator’s website and on Clear Books’ guide to auto enrolment.

Who is affected?

Any employer who has at least one employee needs to follow the auto enrolment process.

You must enrol workers who:

• Are aged between 22 and the state pension age
• Earn at least £10,000 a year
• Work in the UK

To learn more about the minimum contribution amounts visit the Contributions and Funding page of The Pensions Regulator’s website.

Some workers who do not meet the above requirements still have the option to opt in to a pension scheme, and as an employer you may be required to contribute to their scheme too.

How Clear Books payroll software can help you

In January we’ll be releasing stage 1 of our auto enrolment capabilities. Clear Books will initially help you comply with these changes by allowing you to:

• add a pension scheme
• assign a pension scheme to each employee
• calculate deductions and show these on the payslip
• support net pay, relief at source and zero tax relief
• support calculations based on all pensionable pay and banded earnings
• run a report calculating whether employees are eligible jobholders, non-eligible jobholders or entitled workers

In the future we’ll also be adding support for exporting .csv files to pension providers, the ability to send communications to employees and also a change log to help you when declaring that you’ve met your responsibilities.

Stage 1 (Updated on 7th January)

We have released stage 1 of our auto enrolment plan, which highlights the new auto enrolment features that are available to our Payroll users.

Features include a new Payroll navigation structure, the ability to add a pension scheme suitable for auto enrolment, and the ability to set auto enrolment and pension details for all your employees.

Please check back for more updates as we release them.

In the meantime, do you want to know more about auto enrolment? 

Here are some resources you may find helpful:

The Pensions Regulator’s essential guide to automatic enrolment
The Pensions Regulator’s automatic enrolment detailed guidance
The Pensions Regulator’s duties checker tool
Clear Books guide to auto enrolment
Workplace pensions website
Gov.uk workplace pensions website
The Pensions Advisory Service website
The money advice service website