Workplace Pensions

[radar]

How are people progressing with this? Our staging date is 3 months away, and am going down the NEST route, but getting a headache with the complexity.
Is it me or is it easier than it appears?

 

[Kidds]

Simple. Just made all employees redundant.

 

[GTB]

Our accountant sorted it for us. Pretty straight forward for someone in the know I think.

 

[Lincs Lass]

Simple. Just made all employees redundant.

Or everybody goes SE,,sort their own pensions out

 

[Daddy Pig]

I went down the nest route, like you I'm finding it very complicated and stressful, they have a help line that you can never get through to or you can request a call back that will come about a week later probably when you've got you arm down an blocked drain or similar, they seem to think that all employers work 9 to5 and spend all that time sat in an office working on a computer, they just can't comprehend that there are a lot of people like us out here in the real world, yes you can get an accountant to sort it all for you but that comes at a not insubstantial cost.

 

[Selectamatic]

My boss has enrolled us on to the NEST scheme, and I signed the form without really understanding what it was all about, my fault for not putting the effort in, but it seemed very complicated.

Can someone shed some light on it, is it any good, what are the good and bad bits of it?

 

[Suffolk Serf]

I've really struggled. Enrolled on a scheme set up via my buying group. All okay so far. But I have struggled with the scheme website, compounded by never being in my office during office hours in order to phone them to sort it all out.

 

[radar]

Our accountant sorted it for us. Pretty straight forward for someone in the know I think.

Oh yes, ours volunteered to do it, but with only a max of 3 eligible and prob only 1 interested (guessing that bit), it did seem easier and cheaper to do myself.

 

[Boysground]

I had to start the pensions a year ago for my employees. I did spend some time researching the different schemes before I started. I had a serious look at NEST and almost went with it but didnt because I found it quite a faff to use. I eventually settled with a company called Creative. They use Scottish Widows pensions. This was recommended by my accountant as they had other clients using it. On paper it looked an easy system to use, in practice it was a pain to get going with. I think this was mainly because the government and pension industry have not put in the sufficient resources to cope with the number of businesses staging at any one time, it is thousands a month. At the time it was almost impossible to speak to anybody on the phone and I did have a number of questions that needed answers before I could progress. Now things are much better.

Day to day once everything is set up its easy. I use Farmplan EARNIE for my payrole. I know its expensive and it is now the last farmplan product I am using. One of the faults with EARNIE is that it does nor produce the correct format of report for Creative. I think it is better this way, I have a simple excel spread sheet from Creative which I have put all my staff details on. Each month I just put in their gross earnings and pension contributions and upload to the website. It then tells me if I need to change any employees status (ie. their earnings have increased and a pension needs to be paid) if so there are pro forma letters I can print off. The employees also get emails of all this information directly, there is also an employee helpline. Only one of my staff has used it. He says they were very good once he got through.

Pension contributions are taken monthly by DD.

My main recommendation is whatever company you use take up any training or advice you are offered, in principle it is a simple system but the industry seems to be making it as complicated as possible. Also make the decisions early so you can get everything organised.

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[Happy]

Our accountant sorted it for us. Pretty straight forward for someone in the know I think.

Same here.

 

[Daddy Pig]

I also had to give each employee a letter explaining the scheme and telling them to ask me about anything they don't understand, a bit difficult seeing as I don't understand it myself.

 

[bobk]

Another pyramid selling scheme .....

 

[RAW24]

We went with NEST and do it through our accountant. Felt it easier to let our accountant do it as they are familiar and for the time it would take me to research and keep on top of updates I might as well pay someone else to do it and let me get on with the day to day work.

 

[upnortheast]

Went with Nest. Not to complicated. There is a draft etter on their website to send to employees. That was the bit that takes the most thinking about. What isn`t clear is you cannot enrole employees until on or after your staging date.
Now running and working OK.

 

[radar]

Went with Nest. Not to complicated. There is a draft etter on their website to send to employees. That was the bit that takes the most thinking about. What isn`t clear is you cannot enrole employees until on or after your staging date.
Now running and working OK.

Yes thats what I've worked out today. Would have been easier to enrole when a quiet time, not when flat out drilling, spraying, ferting etc!" Everything else all done I think though.

 

[multi power]

How much gets paid into these schemes? What might be got out in the end ?

 

[MickMoor]

At least I am not alone. Thought I'd do it myself through the NEST scheme, because my one employee says he has never seen a pension provider in anything other than a fancy car that the investors must be paying for, so wants to opt out. I have to get a scheme up and running with both of us paying in, for him to opt out of. It is so comlicated I ended up getting my acountant to do it. I bet there's a few hundred well paid jobs for people to check up that we are all complying with this over complicated scheme properly.

Don't forget, to draw an income of £5,000 a year, you need to have amassed a sum of about £150,000 now!

 

[multi power]

At least I am not alone. Thought I'd do it myself through the NEST scheme, because my one employee says he has never seen a pension provider in anything other than a fancy car that the investors must be paying for, so wants to opt out. I have to get a scheme up and running with both of us paying in, for him to opt out of. It is so comlicated I ended up getting my acountant to do it. I bet there's a few hundred well paid jobs for people to check up that we are all complying with this over complicated scheme properly.

Don't forget, to draw an income of £5,000 a year, you need to have amassed a sum of about £150,000 now!

So to get 150k in the pot would be like paying 500 a month for 25 years for a mortgage

 

[Fergieman]

Went with Nest and started on the 1st Nov. Simple with a Payroll program on the PC.

 

[radar]

Went with Nest and started on the 1st Nov. Simple with a Payroll program on the PC.

Someone already using NEST and getting on Ok gives some reassurrance! It strikes me that a lot of "small" employers are probably using the HMRC paye tools programme for tax and NI, and all the info for amount of wage, NI no., addresses and a setup DD is already there. Why couldn't it be bolted on to that?