When migrating your payroll from Earnie to TELUS Farm Payroll, you may encounter a scenario where employees who were previously under a postponement period are suddenly auto-enrolled during your first pay run.
Why This Happens
The transition between systems can sometimes cause a "priority conflict" in the Auto-Enrolment (AE) settings.
Assessment Overrides: For certain providers (specifically NEST and Smart Pension), the system’s Auto-Enrolment Assessment may trigger an enrolment if it detects an employee meets the criteria, occasionally overlooking pre-migration postponement dates.
Data Recognition: Postponement data from legacy systems like Earnie may not always be automatically recognised during the very first payroll calculation in the new system.
System Priority: In some scenarios, the software is programmed to prioritise the "Assessment Outcome" over the "Postponement Status" to ensure compliance, which can lead to these unexpected enrolments.
How to Fix Incorrect Enrolments
If you notice employees have been incorrectly enrolled in your current pay run, follow these steps to reset their status:
Delete the Pay Run: Navigate to the bottom of your screen and select the Red Bin Icon to delete the current (unfinalised) pay run.
Access Employee Records: Go to the record of each affected employee and click on the Pension tab.
Remove the Scheme: Locate the pension scheme that was incorrectly added and remove it.
Manually Set Postponement:
Re-enter the postponement period.
Important: Ensure the Postponement End Date is calculated based on their original employment start date (from Earnie), not the date you migrated to TELUS Farm Payroll.
Re-run Payroll: Once updated, recalculate your payroll. The system should now correctly recognise the postponement status.
Alternative Approach (Preventative)
If you want to ensure this does not happen to other postponed employees before you run your next payroll, you can manually "pre-enrol" them with their future date:
Navigate to the employee's Pension tab.
Select Join AE Pension.
Choose Enrol and enter their actual intended enrolment date (the date their postponement was originally set to end).
Crucial Step: Tick the box labelled "Do not report joiner action to the pension provider." This prevents the system from sending a duplicate notification to your pension provider for an action that has not happened yet.