Pension re-enrolment

Every three years, you must put certain staff who have left your automatic enrolment pension scheme back into it.
Re-enrolment and re-declaration are legal requirement put in place by The Pension Regulator (TPR).
Employers with an auto enrolment pension scheme must comply with these rules, or they may be fined.

Re-enrolment for Smart Pension schemes

Before sending re-enrolment pension data to Smart you must:

  • Set your re-enrolment date in Sage Payroll.

  • Communicate your choice of re-enrolment date to The Pension Regulator.

  • Set your re-enrolment date on the Smart pensions portal.

    The re-enrolment date will appear on the Smart portal as soon as the re-enrolment period becomes available.

Your re-enrolment duties

There are four steps to re-enrolment:

  • Choose your re-enrolment date

  • Assess and re-enrol eligible employees

  • Write to employees who are re-enrolled

  • Complete your re-declaration of compliance

Whether or not you have employees to put back into your pension scheme, you must complete a re-declaration of compliance.
The re-declaration tells TPR how you have met your duties.

For more information about this process, access the TPR Re-enrolment and re-declaration website (opens in a new window)

What happens when you process re-enrolment:

On your re-enrolment date, Sage Payroll assesses any employees who have previously been assessed for automatic enrolment.
The employees are enrolled if they meet the following criteria:

  • Have been eligible jobholders at some point since you staged for automatic enrolment.
    Eligible jobholders are aged between 22 to state pension age, work in the UK and earn more than £10,000.
  • Have opted out of your pension scheme.
    Opting out means an employee decides to leave a pension scheme within a month of being enrolled.
  • Have stopped paying into a pension scheme.
  • Have stayed in your pension scheme but chose to reduce the level of pension contributions to below the minimum level required for automatic enrolment.
  • Are eligible jobholders who have left your automatic enrolment pension scheme more than 12 months before your re-enrolment.

For detailed steps you must take outside of Sage Payroll to fulfil your duties to your employees and to TPR access the TPR Re-enrolment and re-declaration website (opens in a new window).

Your employees may want to opt out of the pension scheme again. For help processing opt out requests read our Processing an opt out request article.

How to process re-enrolment in Sage Payroll

Choose your re-enrolment date

Choose a date that falls within your six-month window:

  • You must inform The Pensions Regulator and your pension provider of the date you will use.
    It is important that the same re-enrollment date is set in Sage Payroll, with your pension provider and The Pensions Regulator. This will help avoid any issues when re-enrolling your employees.
  • Your six-month window starts three months before the third anniversary of your original staging date and ends three months after it.
    To find your dates for re-enrolment, access the TPR re-enrolment tool (opens in a new window)
  • Any subsequent re-enrolment dates and six-month windows are then based on your last re-enrolment date.

You may want to align the re-enrolment date with other key dates in your business or avoid any seasonal peaks which may result in an influx of new members.

If you only have one pay frequency, you may also want to consider choosing a re-enrolment date that is the first day of a pay period. This avoids contributions being made for a full pay period and part of the previous pay period.

Once you have chosen your re-enrolment date, enter it into Sage Payroll;

  1. Select Summary.
  2. Under Cyclical Re-enrolment, enter your re-enrolment date.
  3. To confirm the date, select Set Re-enrolment Date.

You cannot amend your re-enrolment date after you process your next pay run.

Assess and re-enrol eligible employees

When you reach your re-enrolment date, process your next pay run as normal. Sage Payroll automatically assesses and re-enrols relevant employees.

  1. Select Process Pay Run.

    The following message appears:

    You have reached your cyclical re-enrolment date. Employees who have opted out or left your pension schemes will be reassessed from this pay run.

    If your employees are assessed as eligible jobholders, they will be automatically enrolled into the a pension scheme and you must supply them with the appropriate correspondence to reflect this.

    Cyclical re-enrolment message text: You have reached your cyclical re-enrolment date. Employees who have opted out or left your pension schemes will be reassessed from this pay run.

  1. Continue the pay run up until to the Edit Pay stage.

    The following message is shown for any employees who meet the re-enrolment criteria:

    [Employee name] is an eligible employee and has been cyclically re-enrolled. A partial contribution has been calculated and will be included in the next pay reference period.

  1. Complete your pay run.

    Any qualifying employees are re-enrolled into the pension scheme, even if they previously opted out.

Write to employees you re-enrol

You must write to any employees that you re-enrol within six weeks of your re-enrolment date.

To download templates for these letters, access the TPR website (opens in a new window).

Complete your re-declaration of compliance

You must tell TPR how you’ve met your legal duties for re-enrolment by completing your re-declaration of compliance.

This must be done within five months of the third anniversary of your staging date.

To complete the re-declaration of compliance, access the TPR website (opens in a new window).

Next steps

When you have completed these steps, you can continue to process as normal.

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