Once your Direct Debit account is active and you have uploaded your first contributions, we will automatically bill you for these amounts in order to invest them in the workplace pension scheme. Below outlines how and when we take payment.
Automated Direct Debit on the 7th of the month
Contributions must be created on or before the 5th to be included in the direct debit on the 7th. Employees who are still in their one month opt out period on this date will not have contributions paid on this trigger.
Making changes before you are billed
We will email you three working days before the 7th prior to taking payment to let you know how much you will be billed for. This allows you to check and amend the amounts before we take payment should there have been any errors or changes to the data uploaded. Please note, you have until the 5th to make adjustments before contributions are locked.
The pay now Feature
You can make payment at any time using the pay now feature.
You can find and use the new feature by following these three steps:
sign in to your Smart Pension account
visit the contributions page
select pay now
Pressing pay now will lock your contributions from any further adjustments.
If you do not use pay now, we’ll try and collect the contributions on the 7th of the next month. Please remember, we need to receive the payment of your contributions by the 22nd of the following month after you made deductions from your employees’ salaries. If your payments are late, we may have to report you to The Pensions Regulator. This could result in The Pensions Regulator taking regulatory action against you.
Employees within their opt-out period
We will not take payment for contributions associated with employees who are still within their opt out window, instead we will delay this and if they are still in the scheme after their one month opt out period has ended, we will take payment on the next suitable direct debit trigger. This is to reduce the need for you to request a refund from us.
New companies
If you have just set up your pension scheme with us and begun assessing your employees on the account, your first payment will be on the 7th, one calendar month after your employees became active members (after the one month opt out period has ended).
For example, if your staging date was July 1st and you assessed your staff and uploaded their contributions on the 28 July, their opt out window would end on 27 August and we would take payment on 7 September.
If you do not wish to wait for the payment date of the 7th, you may also manually make this payment using the pay now feature once the opt out window has ended.
Please note, this will mean in some cases that the second month contributions (in this example, August) would also be collected at the same time.
New employees
If you have an existing account with us but have recently hired a new member of staff, the delay in taking payment will only be applied to new members.
We will collect contributions as per normal for all your existing members on the 7th or when pay now is selected but the contributions for the new member will be taken on the next available payment date after the opt out period has ended (7th or via Pay Now once the opt out window has ended).