How many worker groups do I need to have?

You’ll need to have at least one group before you can enrol your workers into NEST.

If the following are the same for all your workers you’ll only need one group, unless you want to add more:

• pay periods
• contribution rates
• the part of your workers’ earnings contributions will be based on

You can always add more groups if you want to, either while you’re setting up with NEST or afterwards. Please see How do I add a new group once I’ve set up with NEST? for more information.

If the pay period or payment deadline changes or if you want to use another earnings basis for one or more workers, then you’ll need to move them to another group with the right settings. If you don’t have a suitable group set up you’ll need to add a new group.

In task 4 of setting up with NEST, you’ll create a payment source. When you enrol a worker you’ll assign them to both a payment source and a group. This tells us what contributions you’ll make for this worker, when you’ll pay and how you’ll pay.

The number of payment sources and groups you have can make a difference to how much administration you need to do when managing your scheme. The fewer you have, the easier it’ll be to manage. The easiest way to set up with NEST is to have just one group and one payment source.