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Part 2 of 7 · Pension enrolment assessor series ~5 min read

One extra hour over the trigger

The legislation does not ask what somebody is contracted to earn or what they usually earn. It asks what was paid to them in this pay reference period, and then it asks again next period. For a salaried workforce that is a formality. For a rota it is the whole problem.

Key takeaways

  • Assessment is per pay reference period: a weekly payroll means a weekly test.
  • Earnings payable in the period count. Payable does not mean earned.
  • The weekly trigger is the published £192, not £10,000 divided by 52.
  • Age comes from a date of birth, and state pension age is not one number.
  • An active member is not assessed back out. A quiet week does not remove anybody.

The assessment, one worker, one pay period

The automatic enrolment assessment for one worker in one pay periodA vertical chain inside an AWS account container, entered from a box on the left labelled A pay run, for one worker and one pay period. Already a member, meaning active in the qualifying scheme, with a side exit reading yes: Stays in, because contributions follow the pay. Over the trigger, and aged from 22 up to state pension age, with a side exit reading yes: Eligible jobholder, enrol and write within six weeks. Over the lower level, which is one hundred and twenty pounds a week or five hundred and twenty pounds a month for 2026/27, with a side exit reading yes: Non-eligible jobholder, who may opt in with employer money. The final step is Entitled worker, who may ask to join, with no employer share due. A note says anybody under 16, or aged 75 and over, is outside these duties, and everyone else lands in one box with the reason stored.AWS ACCOUNTA pay runone worker, onepay periodAlready a member?active in thequalifying schemeStays incontributionsfollow the payyesOver the trigger?and aged from 22 upto state pension ageEligible jobholderenrol, and write,within six weeksyesOver the lower level?£120 a week, £520a month, 2026/27Non-eligiblemay opt in, withemployer moneyyesEntitled workermay ask to join,no employer share dueUnder 16, or 75 and over, is outside these duties. Everyone else lands in one box, with the reason stored.
Fig 1. Three questions and a default. The first is the question most home-built checks forget, and it is the one that stops a quiet week from taking somebody out of the scheme.
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Payable does not mean earned

The Pensions Regulator’s detailed guidance says it in four words, and it is the sentence most home-built assessments get wrong. The earnings tested are the earnings payable in the pay reference period. Overtime worked at the end of November and paid in the first week of December counts in December. A bonus counts in the week it is paid, whatever it was for.

That has a mechanical consequence for the design. The system never looks at the rota, the timesheet or the contract to decide a category. It looks at the payroll export, the one record of what was actually paid and when, and assesses that. Hours are useful for explaining a crossing afterwards. They are useless for deciding one.

The thresholds are published per pay frequency

For 2026/27 the earnings trigger is £10,000 a year and the lower level of qualifying earnings is £6,240, both held at their 2025/26 values. The Regulator also publishes the figure for each pay frequency: £192 a week and £833 a month for the trigger, £120 a week and £520 a month for the lower level.

Those are not the annual figures divided. Ten thousand pounds over fifty-two weeks is £192.31, so a worker paid £192.20 in a week is over the published weekly trigger and under the arithmetic one. The table therefore holds the published figure for each frequency in each tax year, and every assessment records which row it used.

One kitchen porter, four weeks

One variable-hours worker's weekly pay against the automatic enrolment triggerFour vertical bars showing one kitchen porter's pay for four weeks, on a twelve-hour contract at twelve pounds eighty-five an hour. Week commencing 1 December: one hundred and sixty-seven pounds and five pence. Week commencing 8 December: one hundred and ninety-two pounds and seventy-five pence. Week commencing 15 December: two hundred and eighty-two pounds and seventy pence. Week commencing 22 December: one hundred and forty-one pounds and thirty-five pence. A note says the weekly trigger is one hundred and ninety-two pounds, the second bar is seventy-five pence over it and that is the whole duty, and the fourth bar is under it again and changes nothing.£0£100£200£300£400~£167.05w/c 1 Dec~£192.75w/c 8 Dec~£282.7w/c 15 Dec~£141.35w/c 22 DecPay for the week, on a twelve-hour contract at £12.85 an hourThe weekly trigger is £192. The second bar is 75 pence over it, and that is the whole duty. The fourth bar is under it again, and changes nothing.
Fig 2. Four weeks of one worker’s pay. The second week is the only one the assessment needs, and it is the one a contract-based check can never see.

The crossing, and what it does not undo

In the week commencing 8 December the porter was paid for fifteen hours, £192.75. They were 24, so on that pay run they met the criteria for an eligible jobholder for the first time, and that created their automatic enrolment date. The six weeks to put them into the scheme and write to them started there.

The following week they were paid £282.70, and the week after that £141.35. Neither changes anything. The Regulator’s guidance is explicit that while an eligible jobholder remains an active member there is no need to keep assessing whether their earnings qualify. Contributions simply follow what is paid, and on £141.35 that means contributions on the £21.35 above the weekly lower level.

This is where the first question in the chain earns its place. A system that assesses every period from scratch, without asking whether the worker is already in, will call the porter a non-eligible jobholder in the fourth week, and if anything downstream trusts that answer it will stop their deductions. That is not a cautious error. It is an employer taking somebody out of a pension they never asked to leave.

What an assessment record holds

  • Period. The pay reference period, by start, end and frequency.
  • Paid. Earnings payable in the period, from the payroll export, never the rota.
  • Age on the day. From date of birth, with state pension age worked out the same way.
  • Thresholds. The published row used: tax year and pay frequency.
  • Category. eligible_jobholder | non_eligible_jobholder | entitled_worker | active_member | outside.
  • Duty. Whether this assessment opened one, and the date it arose.

Ages are data too

Twenty-two arrives on a birthday, so a worker can become an eligible jobholder mid-year with no change in pay at all. State pension age is less tidy still: it depends on date of birth and is rising from 66 to 67 between 2026 and 2028, so an age constant in the code will be wrong for somebody on the payroll within months of being written.

Both boundaries may move again. The Pensions (Extension of Automatic Enrolment) Act 2023 gives the government a power to lower the age from 22 to 18 and to have contributions start from the first pound earned, by regulations. Neither change is in force for 2026/27. The design does not need to know the year they arrive, only that when they do the change is a new dated row rather than an edit to a function.

The next post is the one lever an employer has over the timing of all this — postponement — and why it only works when somebody treats it as a decision with a date on it.

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