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Postponements

Learn how to postpone the assessment date of your employee(s)

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Written by Smart Pension Support
Updated over 4 months ago

If you wish to postpone the assessment date of any number of your employees, you can do so using our bulk postpone page. Please note this does not change your staging date, it just means you don't have to assess your employees until a new deferral date. 

IMPORTANT: If you have outsourced your pension scheme set up to a payroll company or your IFA or accountant please let them complete the postponement details for you so that your payroll application can be updated accordingly. 

Setting a new postponement

Use the instructions below to postpone the assessment date of your employees.

1 - Sign in to your account and go to Scheme Setup

2 - Select Postponements

The next screen will let you select the bulk postpone page within the Actions menu.

Clicking on Bulk create postponements will redirect you to the postponement form show below.

3 - Choose which employees you wish to postpone

You can select one or more employees form the employees dropdown panel or all your employees clicking on the 'Select all' option.

NB - You can postpone one or many employees at a time. If you postpone your employees and later add new ones, they will NOT be automatically postponed in the same way. You need to decide to postpone each employee as you add them.

If you want to add an automatic postponement rule to create a common postponement period for all new employees, you can read this guide about our automatic postponement feature.

4 - Choose how long you wish to postpone your employees for

A deferral date is the last date of a postponement period that you can set using this form. You can postpone an employee for a maximum of 3 months from your staging date. 

Press the blue Create button to create a postponement for each employee selected.

Important! - Creating a postponement will also lock your staging date. Once this is set, you won’t be able to change it again.

Postponement letters

When you postpone an employee we create a letter for you that you need to send to your employee(s). You have to send this letter within 6 weeks of the employee(s) start date. Alternatively, we can send this letter on your behalf but you will need to click the action button on the dashboard. If you don’t, we will not send this letter.

Opt In rules

Should you postpone an employee they have the choice to opt in to the scheme before their deferral date. If they choice to opt in, then the employer is required to pay employee contributions at the next available pay period.

You can create a postponement for an employee using the bulk postpone page, or you can set a deferral date in a payroll file when creating an employee. See the pre-assessed payroll section for more details on how to do this.

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