Stay compliant with your workplace pension duties, without the admin headache or Pensions Regulator fines.
Every UK employer must automatically enrol eligible staff into a workplace pension, deduct the right contributions, and prove it all to The Pensions Regulator. Get it wrong and you face escalating penalties and backdated contributions. Your ACCA-qualified, named accountant sets up, runs, and re-declares your auto-enrolment scheme alongside payroll, so the deductions are right every pay run and the paperwork looks after itself.
We assess your workforce, help you choose a qualifying scheme (such as NEST, Smart Pension or The People's Pension), set your staging or duties-start date, and configure everything so your first assessment is correct from day one.
We categorise every member of staff each period as an eligible jobholder, non-eligible jobholder or entitled worker against the £10,000 earnings trigger, so the right people are enrolled at the right time, including new starters and those whose pay crosses the threshold.
We calculate deductions on the 2026/27 qualifying earnings band of £6,240 to £50,270, applying the 8% minimum total contribution (at least 3% from you as employer, the balance from the employee including tax relief), and reconcile them to your payroll each cycle.
We process opt-out notices within the one-month window, action prompt refunds, handle opt-in and join requests from entitled workers, and keep an audit trail so nothing is missed or actioned late.
We complete your initial Declaration of Compliance with The Pensions Regulator and file your re-declaration every three years, plus the triennial re-enrolment of staff who previously opted out, keeping you on the right side of your legal duties.
We maintain the six years of records the law requires, respond to Pensions Regulator letters and information requests on your behalf, and keep your contributions paid across to the provider by the statutory deadline.
You deal with one qualified person who knows your payroll and your pension scheme, not a call-centre queue or a different adviser every time you email.
Auto-enrolment and payroll are run together, so assessments, deductions and the National Living Wage of £12.71 an hour from April 2026 all reconcile rather than being patched together by two different providers.
Clear plans at £99, £199 or £499 a month on a rolling monthly basis, with no long tie-in and a 30-day money-back guarantee, so you know your cost up front.
Questions about an opt-out, a re-declaration deadline or a Regulator letter get a response within 72 hours, so compliance issues never drift.
We work with Xero, QuickBooks, FreeAgent and Sage, integrating auto-enrolment with the systems you already use rather than forcing a switch.
By keeping assessments, payments and declarations on time, we help you avoid the fixed and escalating penalty notices The Pensions Regulator issues for non-compliance.
You must automatically enrol any member of staff who is aged between 22 and State Pension age and earns at least 10,000 a year, according to gov.uk. These workers are called eligible jobholders, and the duty to enrol them applies from the day they meet both tests, not from the start of the next tax year.
Staff who fall outside those limits still have rights. A worker aged 16 to 74 who earns above the lower earnings level but under 10,000 is a non-eligible jobholder: you do not have to enrol them, but they can ask to opt in and you must then contribute. Someone earning below the lower earnings level is an entitled worker, who can ask to join a scheme, though you are not obliged to contribute for them. We reassess every member of staff each pay run, because a pay rise, a bonus or extra overtime can push a non-eligible jobholder over the 10,000 trigger and create a new enrolment duty overnight.
This matters most for businesses with variable-hours or seasonal staff. A worker on the margin can move between categories several times a year, and each move has to be actioned in the right pay period. We run that assessment for you so nobody is enrolled late and nobody is missed.
| Worker category | Age and earnings (2026/27) | Your duty |
|---|---|---|
| Eligible jobholder | 22 to State Pension age, earns 10,000 or more a year | Must enrol and contribute |
| Non-eligible jobholder | 16 to 74, earns above the lower limit but under 10,000 | Must enrol if they opt in, then contribute |
| Entitled worker | 16 to 74, earns at or below the lower limit | Must give access to a scheme if they ask; no employer contribution required |
See also: Auto-enrolment pensions for small businessJoining a workplace pension (gov.uk)
The legal minimum is a total contribution of 8% of an employee's qualifying earnings, of which you as the employer must pay at least 3% and the employee makes up the rest, normally 5% including their tax relief, according to gov.uk. Crucially, those percentages do not apply to the whole salary. They apply only to the slice of pay that falls inside the qualifying earnings band, which runs from 6,240 to 50,270 a year for 2026/27.
That band is why a quick mental estimate of 3% of gross salary almost always overstates your cost. Take an employee on 30,000 a year. Their qualifying earnings are 30,000 minus 6,240, which is 23,760. Your 3% employer contribution is 712.80 a year, or about 59 a month, not the 900 you would get from 3% of the full 30,000. Getting the band right is the single most common payroll error we correct when a new client comes across.
If you want the exact monthly figure for your own payroll rather than an estimate, book a free Tax Health Check and we will model it against your real staff list in 30 minutes.
| Annual salary | Qualifying earnings (above 6,240) | Employer 3% per year | Employee 5% per year |
|---|---|---|---|
| 20,000 | 13,760 | 412.80 | 688.00 |
| 30,000 | 23,760 | 712.80 | 1,188.00 |
| 50,270 or more | 44,030 (capped) | 1,320.90 | 2,201.50 |
See also: What you, your employer and the government pay (gov.uk)Book a free Tax Health Check
If you miss a duty, The Pensions Regulator can issue a fixed penalty notice followed by escalating daily fines that grow with the size of your workforce, and it can order you to backdate the contributions you should have paid, including the share the employee would have paid, with no way to recover that money from your staff. The common triggers are enrolling an eligible jobholder late, missing the deadline to complete your Declaration of Compliance, or simply paying contributions across to the provider after the statutory date.
None of these failures are deliberate in practice. They happen because auto-enrolment assessment lives in payroll, the declaration deadline lives in a Regulator letter, and the two are handled by different people or different software. When a worker crosses the 10,000 trigger in month three but nobody reassesses until the year end, the breach has already happened.
We close that gap by running assessment, contribution and declaration as one process attached to payroll. Every pay run reassesses the workforce, contributions reconcile to the deductions, and the declaration and triennial re-declaration sit in our calendar rather than your inbox. That is what penalty protection by design means: the deadlines are met because the work that drives them is never separated from the payroll that creates them.
See also: How to register for PAYE as an employerTalk to us about your pension duties
An enrolled worker can choose to opt out, but only after they have been enrolled, and they have a one-month window from enrolment to do so and get a full refund of anything already deducted. After that window closes, they can still stop paying in, but those contributions stay in their pension rather than being refunded. You cannot encourage or induce anyone to opt out, and doing so is itself a breach the Regulator takes seriously, so the process has to be handled at arm's length and properly recorded.
Opting out is not permanent. Roughly every three years you must carry out re-enrolment, which means putting eligible staff who previously opted out back into the scheme, and then completing a re-declaration of compliance to confirm you have done it. Workers can opt out again, but the duty to re-enrol them resets each cycle. Miss the re-declaration and you are exposed to the same penalty regime as a first-time failure.
We process opt-out notices inside the refund window, action the refunds through payroll, keep the audit trail the law requires for six years, and diarise your re-enrolment and re-declaration dates so the three-yearly cycle never catches you out.
See also: Employer National Insurance for 2026/27Auto-enrolment pensions for small business
Understanding your business needs.
Crafting your custom accounting strategy.
Quick and easy integration.
Consistent monitoring and reporting.
Every UK employer with at least one worker has automatic enrolment duties from the day their first member of staff starts. You must assess workers each pay period, enrol eligible jobholders into a qualifying scheme, contribute at least 3% of qualifying earnings, and submit a Declaration of Compliance to The Pensions Regulator within five months of your duties start date. Miss the declaration and TPR issues a £400 fixed penalty followed by daily fines.
The statutory minimum is 8% of qualifying earnings - 3% from the employer, 5% from the employee (which includes basic-rate tax relief). Qualifying earnings run from £6,240 to £50,270 for the 2026/27 tax year. Schemes can use higher pensionable pay bases, in which case the minimum percentages change - we set the calculation basis correctly when the scheme is established.
It depends on workforce size, contribution levels, and whether you want salary sacrifice. NEST is free for employers and works well for smaller payrolls; The People's Pension and Smart Pension offer better investment ranges and online employer portals for larger schemes. We assess your situation against all four main providers and recommend rather than push a single partner.
Every three years from your staging date you must re-enrol any eligible jobholder who previously opted out or stopped contributing, then submit a fresh Declaration of Compliance within five months. The cyclical re-enrolment date is fixed and cannot be missed. We diary it, run the assessment, issue the statutory communications, and file the declaration on your behalf.
We run worker assessment every pay period, send the statutory enrolment and opt-out letters, upload contribution files to your pension provider, monitor opt-ins and opt-outs, and file the Declaration of Compliance and re-enrolment declarations. You handle the employment relationship and approve contribution rates. The pension scheme itself stays in your company name with the provider.
Thirty minutes with an ACCA-qualified accountant. Most owners uncover £1,000-£3,000 in annual savings on the first call. If we are not the right fit, you walk away with a free tax review on the house.
