Creative Pension Trust

Use this guide to setup Payroll Manager to work with Creative Pension Trust.

• 1. Your Staging date
• 2. Adding the details of your Pension Scheme
• 3. Adding Employees to the pension scheme
• 4. Pension Contributions
• 5. Producing CSV upload files to send to Creative Pension Trust

1- Duties Start Date

Every employer has a date from when the automatic enrolment duties come into force for their business. This is called the ‘Duties Start Date’. The duties start date is the date that an employer takes on their first employee(s).

Click ‘Employer’ from the main menu, then ‘Employer Details’, then click on the ‘Auto-Enrolment pensions’ tab.

• Duties Start Date  – enter the Duties Start Date in the first field on this screen (previously referred to as the ‘staging date’).
• Re-enrolment date  – this box should be left blank at this stage. (Re-enrolment takes place 3 years after the Duties Start date).
• Defer/postpone until – By default, Creative Pension Trust postpones all employers for a period of 3 months from the duties start date, so you should enter this date in the ‘Defer/postpone until’ box (e.g. if your staging date was 1st April 2018 the date to be entered would be 1st July 2018). Please contact Creative Pension Trust help desk if you are unsure about this.
• Click ‘OK’ to exit this screen.

Note: The bottom of this screen has a section headed ‘NEST’. Please ignore these fields completely, as they are only to be used with the NEST Pension Scheme.

 2- Pension Scheme details

Click ‘Pensions’ from the main menu, then click ‘Pension Scheme Details’

Click on the first available tab along the top of this screen.

• Name -This will appear on the Pay Details screen and on all reports. Enter Creative Pension Trust in this field.
• Reference – An optional field where you can add your own reference to appear on reports. You can leave this field blank if you wish.
• Provider type – Select ‘Creative Pension Trust’ from the drop-down list.

Tax Relief

There are 4 available options:

• No tax relief – do NOT select this option
• Basic rate tax relief at source – do NOT select this option
• Net pay arrangement – Select this option, as ALL Creative Pension Trust schemes operate under the Net Pay Arrangement scheme.
• Salary sacrifice/exchange – do NOT select this option

Additional Voluntary Contributions (AVCs):

• This pension has AVCs –This box should be ticked for Creative Pension Trust.

Earnings basis – there are 2 options:

• % apply to all pensionable pay – leave this un-checked for Creative Pension Trust.
• % apply to banded qualifying earnings only – you should select this option for all Creative Pension Trust schemes.

At the bottom-left of this screen is a box marked ‘Include all employees in contribution files (even if they have not joined or opted in’). This box should be ticked.

The fields on the right hand side of the screen (Address, Postcode, Telephone etc.) are not used for auto-enrolment purposes and so can be left blank. If you wish to, you could record your pension scheme details here for reference.

Default contribution rates:

These are pre-set to whatever the current legal minimum contributions are, which for 2023-24 and for 2024-25 are 5% (employee) and 3% (employer). If you wish to set different default rates then click the button marked ‘Change default pension rates’, otherwise click ‘OK’ to save the Pension Scheme Details information.

Note: Setting the default contribution rates on this screen does not automatically set the contribution percentages for each employee. You still need to enter the actual percentages individually on the ‘Employee Details’ screen (see section 4 below). Setting the ‘default’ percentage on this screen simply makes the process slightly quicker.

3- Adding Employee information

From the main menu click ‘Employees’ then ‘Employee Details’ then click on the ‘Auto-Enrolment pensions’ tab.

The following details need to be set for all existing employees and for new joiners as they commence employment.

• Exclude from assessment – This box is un-ticked by default. If you have individuals on the payroll that are not deemed to be subject to Automatic Enrolment legislation (e.g. they are not ordinarily working in the UK) then you can exclude them from the assessment process by ticking this box. Creative Pension Trust have requested that you contact their help desk for clarification before selecting this option.
• Auto-enrolment pension – Choose ‘Creative Pension Trust’ from the drop-down list.

You should now proceed to section 5 of this guide (‘Producing csv upload files’) and send your employee data to Creative Pension Trust for them to carry out the employee assessment. Creative Pension Trust will then advise you of how and when to complete the following fields:

• Defer/postpone until – Leave this field blank initially. Creative Pension Trust will advise you of this date if and when it is required.
• Date joined – Leave this field blank initially. Creative Pension Trust will advise you of this date if and when it is required.
• Date left – If the employee leaves the pension scheme then enter the leaving date here, otherwise leave this field blank.
• Date opted out – Leave this field blank initially. Creative Pension Trust will advise you of this date if and when it is required.
• Date opted in – Leave this field blank initially. Creative Pension Trust will advise you of this date if and when it is required.
• Do not re-assess on the re-enrolment date – Leave this field blank initially. Creative Pension Trust will advise you if and when they require you to tick this box.
• Continue to assess –  Leave this field blank initially. Creative Pension Trust will advise you if and when they require you to tick this box.
• Set contributions % – This button allows you to enter the pension contributions for an employee. You could also enter these contributions on the ‘Pay Details’ screen. Section 4 ‘Pension Contributions’ covers this in more detail.
• Date letters sent (top-right hand side) – This section allows you to record the date that communications were sent to the employee. Creative Pension Trust will handle this for you, so the use of these boxes is entirely optional.

4- Pension Contributions

The amount that the employee and employer must contribute to the pension scheme is determined by the scheme’s rules and you should contact Creative Pension Trust if you are unsure. You can enter pension contributions on both the ‘Employee Details’ screen and on the ‘Pay Details’ screen.

IMPORTANT: You should only enter pension contributions for those employees that have actually joined the pension scheme! i.e. DO NOT enter contributions for an employee until Creative Pension Trust have advised that you add them to the pension scheme.

• Set contributions % –  Click on this button to set the relevant pension contribution percentages for that employee. (Note: in some circumstances you may wish to specify a fixed amount, rather than a percentage. In such cases you should ignore this button, and instead manually enter the amounts in the ‘Pensions’ section of the ‘Pay Details’ screen).

• Ensure the correct pension scheme has been selected, enter the date that you wish to set the contributions from (which is the first pay date on which contributions will be taken), make sure that the contribution percentages are set correctly, and click ‘OK‘. Payroll Manager will then automatically add these deductions to the ‘Pay Details’ screen.

5- Producing CSV upload files to send to Creative Pension Trust

• Make sure that you have the correct pay period selected on the ‘Pay Details’ screen, then from the main menu click ‘Pensions’ then ‘Generate upload files’ and then select ‘Creative Pension Trust’