Guide to downloading a Direct Debit reconciliation report April 2016

Transcription

1 Guide to downloading a Direct Debit reconciliation report April EM /2

2 Content page Document purpose Page 3 Report purpose Page 3 Important points to note about the report Page 3 Process flow Page 4 How to access the report Page 4 File Format Page 5 How to use the report Page 6 Status and Reason Codes Page 7 Report is unavailable Page 10 2

3 Document purpose This document provides guidance on how to use the Direct Debit contribution reconciliation report that is available on your NOW: Pensions portal 1. The document will be subject to periodic review to incorporate any changes implemented to the Direct Debit Reconciliation report. Report purpose The report has been developed to enable you to reconcile the Direct Debit collections that are made once payroll data has been successfully uploaded, and processed, through the portal. There can often be a mismatch between the contributions that have been deducted from payroll for a specific pay period and the amount that is collected by Direct Debit. These discrepancies can occur for a number of reasons however predominately they are due to either: The employee being in their opt out period NOW: Pensions do not collect contributions for employees who are in their opt out period and will collect backdated contributions for these employees, if they stay in the scheme, once their opt out period has elapsed. There is a conflict in the data that has been uploaded which has prevented the contributions from being collected for the employee. The report will enable you to reconcile the contribution figures that are quoted on the Direct Debit collection s that are issued, and also establish why contributions may not have been collected for some employees. Important points to note about the report The contribution collection data will be available on the report within 24 hours of receipt of the Direct Debit collection , which is issued as an advance notice to confirm a collection is being made. The report will only contain contribution data for records successfully uploaded to the NOW: Pensions portal. Any employee records that have been rejected while uploading your payroll data to the NOW: Pensions portal, which are left unresolved, will not be displayed on the report. It is therefore imperative that you resolve all data rejections when uploading your payroll data. The report will display the Direct Debit collection information for all collections made since 30/11/2015. Any contributions collected prior to this date will not include the Direct Debit collection information but will still confirm when the data was sent to the administration platform for the collections to be made. The purpose of the report is to allow you to reconcile the amounts collected by Direct Debit over a specified period of time. To this end the report will show up to a maximum of 18 months worth of contribution data at any one time. 1 The NOW: Pensions portal refers to either the employer portal or the payroll bureaux microsite, depending on which platform you are using 3

4 All contribution discrepancies should initially be investigated within payroll and cross referenced against the data successfully imported to NOW: Pensions to establish where the discrepancy has occurred. Process flow The flow chart below illustrates the steps the data will need to go through before the Direct Debit collection details will be available on the report after each payroll upload. Step 1 Payroll data uploaded to the NOW: Pensions portal Step 2 Processing date for the specific pay period is reached Step 3 Pay period is locked and data is processed Step 4 Contribution data is transmitted to the administration platform Step 5 Advance notice Direct Debit collection issued to main contacts for the scheme Plus 24 Hours Step 6 Direct Debit collection information available on the report How to access the report Once you have logged into the NOW: Pensions portal, navigate to the Reports option at the top of the screen. Once you have selected the Reports option the following menu will appear. From the Report menu select Run for the Direct Debit Contribution Reconciliation report. Note for Payroll Bureaux if you have multiple clients held within your payroll bureaux microsite, the above screen will include a dropdown box above the run button that will allow you to run the report for all clients held within the site, or specify a particular Company Code for the company you would like to run the report for. 4

5 File Format Once you have selected Run for the Direct Debit Contribution Reconcilation report, a CSV file with the following column headers will be downloaded. The data populated in the column headers highlighted in yellow (Employer Code to AVC Contributions) is taken from the payroll data file that you uploaded to the portal. These columns will enable you to check what contributions are being processed for each employee in a specific pay period. The data populated in the column headers highlighted in green (Status to Collection Reference) will provide you with information on the current collection status for each contribution. These columns will contain the following information: Status confirms the status of the contribution, i.e. what stage the contribution is at within the collection process. For further information on the statuses that will be displayed please refer to the Status and Reason Codes section of this guide. Reason confirms the reason why the contribution has its current status. For further information on the reasons that will be displayed, under each specific status, please refer to the Status and Reason Codes section of this guide. Date Transmitted to Admin Platform the date the contributions were sent to the administration platform so they can be processed through the Direct Debit collection system. Collection Date this is the date the Direct Debit collection was initiated and it is also the date the Direct Debit collection was issued to the main contacts for this specific contribution. Collection Reference this reference is included in the subject header of the Direct Debit collection and it helps to identify which payroll the collection has been made for if you run multiple payrolls. The reference is a combination of the employer and payroll codes for the relevant payroll. 5

6 How to use the report After a Direct Debit collection has been initiated we will issue an advance notice to confirm a collection is to be made. On receipt of the Direct Debit collection (which will be issued from employersupport@nowpensionssupport.com) you will need to wait 24 hours. Once the 24 hours has elapsed you will be able to log into the site and view the report, with all of the recent Direct Debit collection details included. The file is produced in a CSV format so you can apply filters to any of the columns to locate the relevant information, however we have included below a few suggestions on possible filters to be applied: 1. Collection Date column to view the contributions that have been collected as part of the Direct Debit collection you have just received please filter this column to the date that you received the Pay Period Start Date column the Direct Debit collection also contains a date in the subject header (e.g ). This date refers to either: The start date of the pay period for which contributions are being collected. The enrolment date of the employee for whom contributions are being collected. If an employee s enrolment date does not match the pay period start date of the payroll file in which contributions are first deducted, their first contribution will be collected using their enrolment date as the reference. All subsequent contributions for the employee will be collected using the pay period start date as the reference. In both scenarios, if you filter the Pay Period Start Date column in the report to only show the date confirmed in the subject header of the Direct Debit collection you will be able to view all of the contributions that have been collected as a result of the notification. Please note if the date in the is , this would be displayed as 01/04/2015 in the report. 3. Pay Period or Pay Period Start Date columns by filtering on either of these columns it will enable you to check the status of all contributions that have been processed within the NOW: Pensions Portal for a specific pay period. 4. Status column this will enable you to view all of the different contribution statuses in isolation, i.e. to view all Pending or Collected contributions. For further information on the statuses please refer to the Status and Reason Codes section of this guide. 6

7 Status and Reason Codes The information in this section provides confirmation of the codes that will be applied in the Status or Reason columns on the report, and what action is required, if any. Status Column - confirms the status of the contribution, i.e. what stage the contribution is at within the collection process Reason Column - the reason why the contribution has its current status The following table confirms the Status and Reason codes that will be applied to contributions where no errors with the data have been identified. Status Reason Description of Status Actions required Collected *Blank This indicates that the contribution has been collected by Direct Debit. None If a contribution has a status of collected the Collection Date and Collection Reference columns will also be completed on the report. Sent to admin Transmitted Confirmation that contributions have been sent to the administration platform None platform for collection. All contributions collected by Direct Debit prior to 30/11/2015 will have this status. The status will also be applied to contributions that have been transmitted to the administration platform after 30/11/2015 but are yet to be collected by Direct Debit. Once the Direct Debit collection has been made the status will change to Collected. Pending Opt out period Confirmation that the employee is still in their opt out period and contributions None have not been sent to the administration platform. *Blank Confirmation that contributions have not been sent to the administration None platform yet. Contributions with this status will be batched and sent in due course. Opted out Opted out The employee has opted out of the scheme so the contributions have not been sent to the administration platform. None 7

8 Reclaim *Blank This indicates that the Direct Debit payment was cancelled by the employer within 5 working days of the collection being initiated. Indemnity *Blank This indicates that the Direct Debit payment was cancelled by the employer outside of 5 working days of the collection being initiated. DC Migration DC Migration This confirms that contributions were transmitted to the administration platform as part of the transition from our previous pension administration system Contributions do not match up *Blank This indicates a potential discrepancy in the contributions collected for the employee in the relevant pay period 8 Please contact NOW: Pensions to discuss the reasons for cancelling the Direct Debit as you may need to re-submit the data for this pay period Please contact NOW: Pensions to discuss the reasons for cancelling the Direct Debit as you may need to re-submit the data for this pay period None Please contact NOW: Pensions to discuss Status unknown *Blank Contributions have not been processed Please contact NOW: Pensions to discuss *Blank indicates that the field on the report will not contain any data. There will be occasions when errors in the data have been identified and these will be given a status of Error or Admin Error to determine whether the error has occurred on the NOW: Pensions portal or the administration platform respectively. The following table provides confirmation of the Status and Reason codes that would be applied if there is a conflict in the data. Status Reason Description of Status Actions required Error Conts after opt out The employee has opted out after their opt out period has elapsed, and contributions have been submitted after NOW: Pensions received the opt out instruction. The contributions will not be collected as the employee has instructed NOW: Pensions they no longer want to be part of the scheme. Please refund the contributions to the employee. Conts opted out The employee has opted out within their opt out period, and contributions have been submitted after NOW: Pensions received the opt out instruction. The contributions will not be collected as the employee has instructed NOW: Pensions they no longer want to be part of the scheme. Please refund the contributions to the employee.

9 Admin Error Conts after leaver Or Contribution made after employee s leaving date Conts before Start Or Contribution made before employee s Active Membership Achievement Date Contributions from disabled site NPL requested delete Batch XX Conts sent in error The effective of contribution is before date joined scheme Or The effective of contribution is before date first employed Date first employed should be before date joined scheme An EXIT DATE has been provided for an employee and contributions have been submitted after this leaving date. Contributions should not be made for employees who have left active service. These instructions confirm that either: Contributions have been submitted for an employee before we have received an instruction that they have joined the scheme Contributions have been submitted for an employee in a pay period before their START DATE of employment Your portal has been disabled to prevent contributions being sent to the administration platform NOW: Pensions have deleted the contributions to prevent them from being processed. This status would be applied to contributions that have been submitted incorrectly and instructions received to delete them. This instruction confirms that contributions had been processed incorrectly and therefore they have been recalled from the administration platform so no collection is made. These instructions confirm that either: Contributions have been submitted for an employee before we have received an instruction that they have joined the scheme Contributions have been submitted for an employee in a pay period before their START DATE of employment An instruction has been received to confirm that the employee has joined the scheme, however this date is before their START DATE of employment. Please either refund the contributions to the employee or contact NOW: Pensions to arrange for the contributions to be collected. Please contact NOW: Pensions to discuss Please contact NOW: Pensions to discuss Please contact NOW: Pensions to discuss if you have any queries about why the contributions have been deleted. None Please contact NOW: Pensions to discuss Please contact NOW: Pensions to discuss 9

10 Date of leaving must be later than date joined scheme All other reason codes with a status of Admin Error An instruction has been received to confirm that the employee has left the pension scheme, however this date is before the date they joined the scheme. Any additional reason codes, not mentioned above, will mean that there is a conflict in the data that has been processed and sent to the administration platform. Please contact NOW: Pensions to discuss NOW: Pensions will resolve the data conflict and re-process the data for these contributions. The contributions will then be collected in a subsequent Direct Debit collection. If any Status or Reason codes are displayed on the report that are not confirmed in the tables above, or you require clarification on the status of the contributions please contact NOW: Pensions to discuss. Report is unavailable There may be occasions when NOW: Pensions need to carry out reconciliation or maintenance work on the report. If this is the case the following message will be displayed on the Reports menu: If this message is displayed, please try to access the report at a later date or contact the Client Support Team to discuss your query. 10

11 Note for Payroll Bureaux NOW: Pensions may be carrying out reconciliation work on a particular client and therefore we may have suppressed access to the report for the client, if that is the case the relevant Company code will not be available in the dropdown list however you will still have access to the report for all of your other clients. Once the reconciliation work has been completed access will be reinstated for the client. 11