Employer Guide - Data Collection

Pay period 1 or 2 means there may have been multiple periods of service in the same scheme year for the member or different pay points used. Please provide the information for the separate lines being asked for. If the employee started 1 September and you had a payroll migration after that, the pay periods will indicate 1 and 2 for the same scheme year. Pay period 1 will ask for 1 September to the day before the payroll migration, and pay period 2 will ask for the day of the payroll migration to the end of the scheme year.

Depending on the size of the employer, the deadline is 4 or 8 weeks from the date the employer receives the datasheet. If an employer has less than 1,000 members to collect data for then they are classed as small and so the deadline is 4 weeks. If over 1000 members then the deadline is 8 weeks. For example, if the datasheet is received on 10 Feb and the deadline is 4 weeks, the return date will be 10 March. The deadline does not include the completion of any returned DVFs (Data validation failures) and will aim to return any DVFs to you within 10 days of receiving the file.

All employers (excluding SSCL managed employers), should receive their datasheets by 19 February unless advised otherwise. If you have not received it and have not been contacted by us, please let us know at DCEmployerquery@mycsp.co.uk

No. A yellow field indicates that the cell should have data entered in to it. It will remain yellow once you have completed it and the data has been validated.

You can copy and paste data in small blocks (where the cells are coloured yellow). It is just not possible to copy and paste all data at once into the datasheet. This is due to restricted cells. If you believe you may not be able to complete your datasheet and meet the deadline, please contact us as soon as possible at DCEmployerquery@mycsp.co.uk

If you believe the data being asked for is incorrect, please email DCEmployerquery@mycsp.co.uk and provide the member details.

If you are not cannot provide all of the requested data for those members it will need to be provided by an alternative payroll provide. Please email details of your alternative payroll provider to DCEmployerquery@mycsp.co.uk and we will arrange for the additional data requirements to be sent to them.

It is known that the AltKey will be the most recent employer's AltKey as this is overridden via the interface by the new employer. This means that you may get AltKeys that do not match your records. As long as the member name and NINO matches, that should be enough to locate the employee’s details. Please do not amend the ALTKEY on the datasheet to ensure we can match the data to the member.

Shared Parental Leave should it be treated the same as Maternity Leave.

We will aim to respond to you within your completion deadline. However, due to the number of files that we will be loading, the completion of any corresponding Data Validation Failures (DVFs) may done outside of the original deadline.

The Scheme Administrator has been able to derive a large percentage of the required WPS contributions using the data we hold on the record. These have already been removed from your data collection sheet. In some instances where we were not able to derive the WPS data, and so you may still be asked for WPS contributions for some scheme years for these members.

On the drop-down list of reasons for failures, the one that will change the validation from fail to pass is "I confirm value supplied is correct". The others in the drop-down list will still show as fail as we need to manually check the reasons for the failure and perhaps investigate further or refer back to yourselves.

There are a number of employers supported by CGI who are currently in discussions to arrange for a Change Request to be setup for CGI to collect this data on behalf of those employers who have requested it. The data collection sheets have now all been sent to CGI supported employers, so you should be aware of the scale of data required. If the eight-week deadline has started and commercial coverage is not in place, the timeline will be adjusted accordingly to eight weeks from the date the commercial coverage is in place.

The Scheme Administrator won't check the Remedy data sheet responses against data previously supplied on your interface because they both represent alternative scheme information governed by different scheme rules.

For security purposes we must send the password to a colleague. If you know the colleague will be unavailable then please provide an alternative colleague for us to provide the password.

For some scheme years, YTD pensionable figures from your payroll system will be the same as the pensionable earnings figure required on the Remedy data sheet. However, if the employee has received any pensionable pay that relates to a different scheme year, e.g. a back dated pay award, or late notification of a promotion, then you will need to remove the pensionable pay arrears from the YTD figure and allocate the same amount to the scheme year it was earned (due in). For this scenario, you couldn't use the YTD pensionable figure for either of the scheme years impacted by the pay award.

If the validation column does not work then enable the macro's/content on the file. If it still does not work, then please email us at DCEmployerquery@mycsp.co.uk and we will investigate this.

It is not possible to re-order the datasheet due to the locked down cells.

Please provide the data for the previous payroll period 01/04/2016 – 30/06/2016 and then the data for the other payroll period 01/07/2016 – 31/03/2017 to reflect how it would hold on our system.

If the member has been on half pay for the whole scheme year we would require the earnings that would have been paid if the member were on full pay (assumed earnings). A full list of the assumed pay scenarios can be found here.

The User Guidance Document was sent out to all pension leads on 1 February 2022 together with impacted member totals and the tranche schedule for receipt of datasheets. View a copy of the user guidance document and also a video from the Employer training session.

As the team are prioritising sending the datasheets, they may not have responded to your query yet. However, we will respond to your query within 10 working days or sooner if possible (dependent upon the number of daily queries raised).

Please do not use the WPS contributions to calculate the pensionable earnings required because the pension rules applied to both are different. For example, WPS is calculated on a 'when paid' basis however earnings are calculated on a 'when earned' (due) basis.

Please refer to the background section in the User Guidance Document. We require alternative scheme information to be able to give the member the option of choosing which scheme benefits they'd prefer to have. See the data collection page for more information.

Yes, WPS contributions are 1.5% of what was actually paid to the member in that scheme year.

If you believe you have a member who should be in scope who has not been included on your datasheet, please email DCEmployerquery@mycsp.co.uk with their details and we will investigate this.

If the data line asks for 01/04 - 31/12 and the employee started 06/06 and left 15/12 then please provide the data for the time the employee was with you. The data line would be correct to hold as 01/04 - 31/12 because the start date always starts with 01/04 and the end date is the last day of the month the employee left; 31/12.

The WPS contributions should be taken from earnings that were paid to the member in the scheme year. However, if the member receives an arrears payment in the following year after leaving service it should be added to the last scheme year as this is when the member was last active in the pension scheme.

Please enter the respective amounts for the periods requested to reflect what we hold on record. 01/04 - 30/09 and 01/02 - 31/03.

No. If the back dated pay award was paid in the same scheme year it was due, there is no need to unravel the earnings.

Nil pay is not deemed as reckonable towards pension benefits and isn't classified as an assumed pay scenario. Therefore, for any period of nil pay, no pensionable earnings are required. If the employee was on nil pay for the whole scheme year, then the data sheet should be populated with 0.00. If the employee was on nil pay for part of the scheme year then the figure supplied on the data sheet must include pensionable earnings earned at full pay plus any assumed earnings for periods of SMP and half sick pay. There are other assumed pay scenarios but they are very uncommon. A full list of the assumed pay scenarios can be found here.

Please provide the data for the period the member was in a pension scheme. If there was a period of time when the member was opted out, then only provide the data for the time the member was in the pension scheme for that scheme year.

Phase 1 data collection is to collect for deferred, deceased and pensioner members. We will still require the data for any members that have passed away to offer the option in the future. At this point in the programme we are collecting the data, but it has not yet been confirmed how this will be presented to members at a later date.

If you have received data for a member with an overlap in the service dates, please provide information for the scheme year. For example, 01/04/16 to 31/03/17 and 01/04/17 to 02/04/17.

If the member has either dual employment, or two separate roles, please provide the information respective to each role rather than added together. The member is entitled to two pension pots due to the two employment contracts.

If the member did not start with you until 1 May, please provide the information from their correct start date. The start date on the datasheet reflects the start of a scheme year rather than the actual start date for the member.

If the payment was pensionable and scheme contributions were taken, then PILON should be included in the earnings asked. This should be for the period from the start of the scheme year to their official last day of service.

Please provide the data for the period when the member was in a pension scheme at the time. We do not require data for the period the member was in the partnership scheme.

As there is no cap of service in the alpha scheme we would still need you to provide the earnings for the period asked for. This is so we are able to provide an alternative alpha pension option. When members reach over 45 years reckonable service in classic, the 1.5% Widowers Pension Scheme (WPS) contributions are still taken for Post-Retirement Widowers Pension and therefore we would still require this information.

There are a small number of nuvos members in this data collection, due to us not holding the earnings for those scheme years. The decision was made to include them as part of this collection.

For tapered members, please provide the alternative scheme data for the two parts of the scheme year.

For example:

A member was in classic 01/04/2015 – 30/09/2015 and tapered into alpha on 01/10/2015.

In this example, you would provide the pensionable earnings between 01/04/2015 – 30/09/2015 and the Widowers Pension Scheme (WPS) contributions for 01/10/2015 – 31/03/2016.

Please provide the actual part-time earnings. For example, if the employee works 20hrs a week, the earnings figure provided on your data sheet should be based on that rate, not the FTE. Assumed pay earnings for part-time employees work on the same principles as full-time employees i.e. you must include in your earnings figure the ‘assumed’ earnings that the part-time employee would have received if the absence had not occurred. In this example, earnings would be based on 20hrs per week including any pensionable allowances.

Please provide the earnings for the time the member was employed by you. If the member was employed until August 2018 then please provide the information up to that end date.

For the period of time the member was on half pay, please provide the earnings the member would have been paid if they were on full pay. For the period of time the member was on no pay, this is not pensionable and therefore we would expect to see a figure of £0 for this period.

Please provide the data for the period the member was employed with you. If you believe the end dates are incorrect, please raise them upon submitting your datasheet and we will investigate.