If a company has a pension set up, and the pension submissions are automatically sent to the provider each time you run payroll, this is classed as an automated pension on Paycircle. Occasionally, these automated submissions may fail to submit to the pension provider. When this happens, you will need to find out the reason or reasons the pension has failed, and correct the issues before re-submitting the pension submission to the provider.
Additionally, it is important to note that the error messages labeled "Pension Submission Failed" are usually generated by the pension provider's systems, indicating an issue on their end rather than within Paycircle itself.
If you are having Pension Pending issues, follow the steps here.
Understand pension submission failure emails
When a pension submission fails, a failure email will be sent to bureau admins, outlining the error. You may need to interpret some information within the email, in order to understand what’s caused the failure.
Each pension provider will have their own format for providing errors. For guidance on interpreting a specific pension provider’s email, read more in the following articles:
How to troubleshoot a Smart pension submission failure
How to troubleshoot a NEST pension submission failure
How to troubleshoot a Pensionsync submission failure
Frequent issues causing failures
Most of the time, failures occur when the information at the pension provider doesn’t match the information provided in Paycircle. This can either be information relating to team members, or to the pension scheme itself. To check what data the pension provider holds, you can normally login to the provider’s portal, and view and/or download the information.
Team member information that can cause failures includes:
Full name
National Insurance number
Payroll ID
Address
Pension information that could prevent a successful submission includes:
Misaligned pension period dates
Pension group differences (e.g. team members in different groups in Paycircle and at the provider, or a group exists in Paycircle but not at the provider)
Mismatched pension statuses (e.g. team member is opted out in Paycircle but enrolled at the provider)
Contribution basis differences
Resubmit a failed pension
Once you have found the issue and made the necessary changes, you will be able to re-submit the pension. Go to the Pensions area, select the pension scheme in question, and click the Re-submit button. Paycircle will then re-submit the pension information to the provider.
If there are still issues to be resolved, the submission will fail again, and you will received a new failure email. You will then need to go through the troubleshooting process again, or contact the pension provider directly for assistance.
If problems persist after multiple attempts at resubmission, consider contacting the pension provider directly to identify and resolve any overlooked issues.
Fix the issue and submitting the pension manually
If a company has a failed pension, but you need the submission to be sent right away, before you have found the error, you may want to upload the pension contributions manually. If this is the case, you will need to click the Dismiss button in the Pensions area, instead of Re-submit. This will mark the pension submission as having been submitted manually.