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Making changes

As time goes on you may want to make changes to the way you use NEST. For example, you may want to introduce a new payment source or different contribution levels for your workers. You’ll also need to change as your workers’ circumstances change in a way that affects their contributions.

You’ll also need to keep your account information up to date.

Bear in mind that to make any of these changes, you’ll need to have the right delegate permissions to edit contribution schedules or company settings.

Changes affecting your workers

You’ll find that your workers’ circumstances change from time to time and this can affect their contributions. You need to let us know when this happens, so it’s important to keep track of these changes.

Changes to workers’ circumstances

Each pay period, you may find that a number of your workers aren’t due a contribution, or will only receive a partial contribution. This could be because:

  • you’re using qualifying earnings to calculate contributions, and this worker’s earnings were too low for them to have any qualifying earnings in this pay period
  • they left employment during the pay period
  • they’ve gone on a career break or maternity leave
  • they’ve asked you to stop making contributions

In all these cases, you need to include the worker in the relevant contribution schedule and provide a reason code telling us why they haven’t had the full amount.

Some reason codes tell us that there’s a permanent change, for example if someone’s stopped working for you. In these cases we’ll assume they’re not going to appear on any future contribution schedules unless you re-enrol them in the future.

For a full list of the reason codes you can use, see the Employer payroll guide (PDF).

Moving workers between groups

You may need to move one or more workers between groups because:

  • they’ve asked to move to a new contribution rate, such as increasing their member contributions to get matched employer contributions
  • they’ve changed job and are entitled to a different contribution level
  • you want to change the payment frequency for them

Once again, you do this through the contribution schedule. You need to enter the relevant code for a change of group or payment source. There are also fields you’ll need to fill out telling us which group or payment source they’re moving to and the date when the move happened.

For more on making changes through a contribution schedule see Making changes (PDF)​.

Adding or editing groups of workers

You may want to change the settings for all workers in a group, for instance if you decide to change the contribution rate or frequency for the whole category of workers. This would mean changing their group settings.

You can make some simple changes to group setups, such as changing the name of the group using the ‘Manage groups’ icon in your secure online account. But there are some important group settings you can’t change:

  • payment frequency
  • payment due date
  • maximum contribution rates

If you want to change these settings for the workers you’ve put into this group, you’ll need to create a new group with the settings you want. You can then move all the workers into this new group using the next contribution schedule.

Their settings will have changed from the date you specify in this contribution schedule. There are full instructions on how to do this in the ‘Manage groups’ section within your secure online account.

Keeping your account information up to date

As part of keeping your account up to date you can change:

  • your company name
  • your address and other contact details
  • your PAYE references

You can also make changes to delegates including:

  • setting up new delegates
  • removing delegates
  • changing access permissions

Using certification

Remember that if you create a group with an earnings basis using certification, you’ll need to complete a certificate, in just the same way as when you first set up NEST. This is something you’ll need to manage yourself with The Pensions Regulator.

For more on completing a certificate, see Once you’re using NEST.