The National Employment Savings Trust (Nest) today unveiled a series of updates to its payroll system that aims to improve information sharing between payroll providers and Nest.

The new system incorporates a file transfer facility that will allow employers to share data on opt-outs, enrolments and contributions with the trust. An analysis report will then be sent back to the employer with details of which workers successfully enrolled along with names of those that were unsuccessful and why. Daily reports will be sent for the purpose of managing opt-outs.

The information will be delivered in generic comma-separated values (CSV) template in order to help employers code it into their own systems and integrate the information.

The Chartered Institute of Payroll Professionals associate director of policy, research, and strategic visibility Karen Thomson said communication with the payroll team is key to successful automatic enrolment and suggests that the Nest’s updates will forge better communication: “What this means is that when an age band or earnings threshold is reached the payroll system will alert the payroll team that an action is needed. This includes communicating to the employee about their entitlement and entry into a pension scheme. So communication with the pension provider will be needed.

“Don’t forget the employer needs to decide which pension scheme it’s using and when the employee will be automatically enrolled. To do this the employer will need to work with a number of parties. These are likely to include payroll for the data, HR for communications, pension professionals for scheme information, finance for the budget and IT for technical updates. There’s potentially also a need for a third party to carry out some or all of the actions to ensure obligations are met.

“My key message to employers is to involve the payroll manager or your outsource provider if you have one and ensure a project team is set up at least one year ahead of their staging date. The team must consist of all the relevant parties to ensure a smooth and successful implementation.”

Nest head of product design Gavin Perera-Betts added: “In order to use the new secure file transfer users will have to ensure they have the right data in the right format. But once done, this preparation should streamline the meeting of automatic enrolment duties, saving time and effort and making the whole process a lot simpler.”

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