The Pensions Regulator

[lynned55]

I registered us with NEST.

[BroadOaks]

NEST - set up by the government.. i will avoid that one then -

 

We pay employee's a wage.. what they spend that on his their business! If they want to save money it his their choice.

 

I guess the problem comes down to welfare once again and our human nature. We don't want to see people starving or struggling so we need to give them money and shelter, and this requires welfare of course. Simple solution.. and this goes for all welfare, don't give people money!! Give them vouchers instead. The minimum amount required.. food vouchers, clothes vouchers, cardboard box vouchers, joking of course, the accommodation part i have yet to figure out.

 

It is better to give vouchers rather than cash in my opinion, it stops the unnecessary spending.

[Guest]

I'm going to register with 'Nest', my training was through our payroll company 'Devon psla', they said they couldn't tell us who to use but did refer to it quite favourably and a few people there said they already signed up to them and found the process pretty straight forward.

If you don't already use a payroll company Devon psla ( I'm not in Devon, and you don't have to be psla member but it's a bit cheaper) are brilliant and the inclusive package sorts it all out for you, sends out which letters you need to give to which staff when, works out how much and for who you need to give your provider :-)

We signed up with Nest, just because I've heard a lot about it and it seemed reasonably easy to set up.

[lynned55]

Broadoaks Surely an 'old age' pension is not a benefit or welfare but a right? By the time you have (presumably) worked and paid your taxes for fifty years or more you are entitled to a decent pension in your old age?

[BroadOaks]

I don't want to sound harsh but nobody has any more rights than anybody else in my opinion. You work to earn money not to gain rights. If you pay taxes then this money is contributing to governments high wages, paying for public services, military, being a member of the EU, Foreign Aid, New high speed infrastructure, Grants, welfare and many other things. Some of these things we could do without, but more to the point the money is not towards a pension. National Insurance contributes to this and has i mentioned this is set up to fail most people.

 

So i will say it again, and in your scenario, you have worked for 50 years, and presumably would want at some point to stop working. So how would it be difficult for many workers to save money over the 50 years privately?

 

I want a house in Spain and spending money for the next 20 years, but i don't have a right to that. I need to earn it.

 

I feel one of the main problems we face, are people feeling they have rights for reasons that they are in control of themselves throughout their life. If you are given a choice it is freewill. People who can't work for physical, mental reasons and simply can not provide for themselves, have lovely people who can help them and this is right. We wouldn't want to see people suffering, we are human after all.

 

It is right to want to help people.. who can not help themselves. People who work all their life are able to help themselves. I will leave it at that.

Edited February 26, 2016 by BroadOaks

[Mouseketeer]

Sorry to bring this up again, but we have now reached our staging date, can anyone using nest tell me if you had to enroll all staff with them, or just the 'opt in' staff and the auto enrollers will just get added ? I will be glad when this is up and running now ....or won't I? How easy it when you start deductions and paying isn't nest? Thanks for any advice

[BroadOaks]

We went with Nest just because it is free! It is actually quite good. ::1a -

 

You can set it all up online.. and it takes you through the steps. We have all ours up and running now.

 

With regards to auto enroll or opting in/out.. you can send a letter to all staff asking if they want to opt-out (if auto enrolling) or opt-in -

[BroadOaks]

This might help.. I found this tutorial on Youtube and there might be others

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8BkRWgfdW1Y

[FSFRebecca]

WE did NEST and haven't had any problems - we enrolled everyone who 'had' to be enrolled and then if they wrote and told us they wished to 'opt out' we did that the following month and reimbursed the pension from month 1. There are template letters for everything - it was pretty easy

[GFCCCC]

We use Peoples - it's been very simple and they are extremely helpful. I think NOW, Peoples and NEST are very similar. After you've been doing it a while, it becomes a normal part of payday just like paying the HMRC.

[Mouseketeer]

Thank you all, I did the registration with nest a while ago, but not the enrolling, I have given letters to those not auto enrolled, so now need to add everyone to nest, our payroll said I didn't need to do that before our staging date.....something to work on in the holiday :-/

Edited February 10, 2017 by Mouseketeer

[Lyanne]

Sorry to bring this up again, but we have now reached our staging date, can anyone using nest tell me if you had to enroll all staff with them, or just the 'opt in' staff and the auto enrollers will just get added ? I will be glad when this is up and running now ....or won't I? How easy it when you start deductions and paying isn't nest? Thanks for any advice

 

We enrolled everyone except the 1 person who didn't want to opt in. You'll need each person's staff file for their full name, date of birth, National Insurance number, home address, personal email address - I can't remember if there's something else? Might be if they don't have an NI no, but all our staff do.

 

I then set up about a million different categories for each different 'group' of staff as some chose to pay higher percentage rates. Took a while to get it set up, but it wasn't too tricky once I worked out how to do it.

 

What we didn't realise when we first set up our details with NEST was that they need the bank details separately and they can take up to a week to set them up - so when we went to make the first payment, they couldn't take it as they didn't have they didn't have the bank details. I had to phone them up to get it sorted out, and despite the scary emails about not having paid on time, we didn't get into trouble...

 

I can't actually remember how I had to put in the bank details, but think I had to print something off and get it signed by the signatories with the bank, then send it off to NEST and wait for them to process it (which would make sense with the time it took to get it set up).

[Mouseketeer]

Thanks Lyanne, I think the only thing I've actually set up with nest is the bank details, though not had anything from nest to sort any signatures lol ( and that was months ago) so when did you add everyone, was it after your staging date ? (Ours was 1st Feb, I was told I couldn't enroll anyone before that) I just seem to be going around in circles with conflicting info....it best go to top of the TDL I think,

Edited February 14, 2017 by Mouseketeer