To comply with Workplace Pensions legislation, you must assess your employees every time you process a pay run. If you subscribe to the Pensions Module, the Pensions Assessment makes this easy for you. Let's learn more.

 NOTE: If you don't subscribe to the Pensions Module, you must assess employees for automatic enrolment without the Pensions Module.

When to assess

Run the Pension Assessment after you've set the process date and entered your employees' pay for a pay run, but before you update records.

This way, your software uses the correct payments in the assessment. This ensures that the Pensions Assessment assigns the correct worker categories.

How to assess

With the Pensions Module, you can assess all of your employees in a few easy clicks.

 NOTE: If you see an ODBC error during the steps below, follow our ODBC Microsoft Access Driver Login Failed guide.  

1. On your employee list, select the employees to assess.
   TIP: To select all employees listed, click Clear, then Swap.
2. Select Payroll, then Pension Assessment.
   NOTE: A message can appear asking if you want to deselect employees you can't assess, for example leavers. Click Yes to deselect these employees and continue.
3. A prompt appears asking you to take a backup. Select Yes to take a backup.
4. If you already have an up-to-date backup, select No to continue.
5. The Pension Assessment opens with a list of your employees and their worker type for this period.

If any employees are eligible for automatic enrolment in the period you assess, the Pension Assessment automatically assigns their pension scheme.

The pension assessment makes managing your employees' automatic enrolment easy. Find out more about common tasks:

• Process opt-in/join requests in the Pensions Module
• Process opt-out/leave requests in the Pensions Module
• Postpone employee enrolment

Worker types

Each employee you assess falls into one of three worker types based on their payments, UK worker status and age. These are:

• Eligible jobholder
• Non-eligible jobholder
• Entitled worker

To learn more about the different types of worker, go to thepensionsregulator.gov.uk

How do I check which employees' status has changed?

When an employee's worker type changes or the assessment enrols them, a flag icon appears to the left of their name.

To show those whose status has changed in this period, .  To do this, click the View dropdown box, and select Changed this period. 

If you hover your cursor over the flag, you can then see more information about what has changed. See examples below.

You can now close the Pension Assessment and continue to process your payroll.