Takes the pain and guesswork out of workplace pension obligations for small businesses 

Intuit QuickBooks, the global leader of online accounting software, has announced that QuickBooks Online is now Auto-enrolment ready. Now small business owners are able to manage Auto-enrolment within the payroll feature of QuickBooks Online, making it simple to stay compliant with the regulation that requires businesses in the UK to automatically enrol employees into a workplace pension.

The product, which is compliant with Auto-enrolment legal requirement, gives small businesses the information needed to set up and manage contributions to workplace pensions, all controlled in the same place as the rest of their organisation’s finances. And because QuickBooks Online sits in the cloud, users can log in on the move and use the product’s features and benefits in real-time, enabling instant understanding of how Auto-enrolment is affecting a business’s bottom line.

As part of payroll within QuickBooks Online, users can automatically assess which employees are eligible for Auto-enrolment and can process those that have chosen to opt out of the scheme. The software can calculate the required contribution to a workplace pension scheme based on an employee’s earnings, ensure all communications to employees are compliant and keep an audit on all assessments and actions taken.

Rich Preece, Vice President and Country Manager at Intuit UK commented “Auto-enrolment has the potential to significantly disrupt small businesses across the UK. As organisations overhaul their payroll to comply with staging dates, many will face a heavy administration task. The resulting man hours and costs involved could distract from the serious task of making a business a success. This update to QuickBooks Online makes workplace pensions as simple as possible, allowing the employers to focus on running and growing their business.”

Nicky McDonald, Finance Manager at The Counselling Foundation said “At first it looked as if complying with Auto-enrolment legislation would be an extremely daunting task. We weren’t sure about our staging dates, we were worried about fines, and we were unsure about how to effectively and efficiently integrate workplace pensions into our payroll. The new Auto-enrolment support within QuickBooks has totally changed this. Now it will be simple to complete our workplace pension obligations since the feature removes much of the administration involved in the process.”

To start getting support for Auto-enrolment, small businesses simply need to turn on payroll within QuickBooks Online. Payroll is currently free* to run for an unlimited number of employees and there is no additional cost for taking advantage of the Auto-enrolment features. Both payroll and Auto-enrolment are seamlessly integrated within QuickBooks Online, allowing small businesses to run payroll and manage workplace pensions all in one place, helping them save time and stay fully compliant.