Auto-enrolment and workplace pensions

UK law requires you to automatically enrol eligible workers into a workplace pension. Flow Payroll handles the assessment, enrolment, and contribution calculation automatically as part of every pay run, and produces the export files your pension provider needs.

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How assessment works

Every time you run a pay run, Flow Payroll assesses each worker in the pay period. The assessment categorises each worker as one of: Assessment is based on age and earnings. Flow Payroll calculates this automatically from each worker’s pay data for that period — you do not need to run a separate assessment step.

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Enrolment modes

You control how Flow Payroll acts on the assessment result. The mode is set in Pension defaults.

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Postponement

You can delay enrolment from a worker’s start date or from their eligibility date. Postponement is configured in days, weeks, or months. Two independent postponement windows are available:

• Postpone from worker start date — delays enrolment for new starters.
• Postpone from eligibility date — delays enrolment from the point a worker first qualifies.

You can enable either or both. Per-employee postponement is also configurable during onboarding, which overrides the organisation default for that person.

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Exempting an employee

Some workers are outside the automatic enrolment duties altogether. A director without a contract of employment and an office holder are not workers in law, and the regulations let you choose not to enrol an LLP member, someone with HMRC tax protection for their pension savings, someone who left a qualifying scheme or took a winding-up lump sum in the last 12 months, or someone under notice of termination. Mark the exemption on the employee’s record, on the Benefits & loans tab: click Mark exempt, pick the reason, and add a note if there is evidence worth recording — which HMRC protection certificate you saw, for example. While the exemption is in place the employee is not assessed, is never automatically enrolled, and does not appear in the pay run’s enrolment alerts. Removing the exemption resumes assessment on the next pay run.

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Contributions

Contribution rates are set on the pension group the employee belongs to. The Pension defaults settings define the default pension group for new employees. Contributions are calculated from qualifying earnings and included in the pay run automatically once an employee is enrolled. Each contribution appears as its own payslip line, so you can see what an amount is and how it was worked out. Additional voluntary contributions on top, one-run overrides, and refunds after an opt-out are covered in pension contributions and refunds.

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Pension export files

After a pay run is completed, the Reporting documents step produces pension export files grouped by provider. Each file can be previewed and downloaded directly from that step. These files are formatted for submission to your pension provider (for example, NEST contribution schedules). For a NEST scheme you can skip the upload: link the scheme to the employer’s NEST account and send each pay run’s enrolments and contribution schedule from the same step, a step at a time, then approve the payment separately. See sending pension data to NEST.

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Schemes you file yourself

If your provider is not one Flow Payroll produces a file for, or you move contributions to the provider through an integration of your own, choose the Manual provider when you create the scheme. The scheme is assessed, enrolled and calculated like any other, and the contributions appear on each payslip. No file is produced for it: you send the contributions to your provider in whatever form they take. The Reporting documents step lists the scheme as Handled manually, so nobody waits for a download that is not coming. On Settings, under the Pension tab, the scheme carries the same badge. An integration reads the contributions from the Pensions API once the pay run completes, per provider or for the whole month, and can use the payroll_run.completed webhook as its cue. See pension calculations and exports.

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Opting out

An employee can opt out of the pension scheme after being enrolled. Record it from the employee’s record, on the Benefits & loans tab: say why the membership is ending, give the date, and decide whether the refund goes through payroll. Flow Payroll shows you what would be paid back before you confirm. A worker who was automatically enrolled and opts out within one month is entitled to a refund of the contributions deducted from their pay. A worker enrolled through their contract rather than by assessment has no statutory opt-out right, and their refund depends on the scheme’s rules and on leaving within 30 days of joining. Ending a membership records the date it ended, and an assessed worker is not automatically re-enrolled again until your next cyclical re-enrolment date; if their membership ended within 12 months of that date they are left out of that cycle by default, which is the discretion the regulations give you. The reason you record does not change that timing, but it is what the employee’s record shows and what you evidence in an audit. See ending a membership and refunding contributions.

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Pay run flow

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Where to go next