I am also looking to add a salary sacrifice element to a workplace pension scheme. Would be great if you could post the workaround for Sage 50 payroll.

Hi Darius, are you looking to set up a salary sacrifice pension scheme there? If so, you can find the steps in our Salary sacrifice pension schemes guide.

If that's not what you're looking to do, pop a message back when you can with further information on what you'd like to set up please and I'll take a look.

Hi John 

Thanks, I've already looked at that but it doesn't provide the exact steps to do it.

Also as an aside the Sage page states "Salary sacrifice pension arrangements mean that the employee no longer contributes directly to their pension scheme. The employer contributes at least the amount sacrificed by the employee and can also make their own contribution."

Is this a case of it being poorly written and should actually state that the salary sacrifice amount / element is not used calculating employee contributions?

Otherwise this is not what we been told by HMRC, pensions advisers, financial advisers and also multiple websites show that employee contributions can continue when Salary Sacrifice for pension happens.

From a Sage 50 Payroll practical aspect the exact full steps to process this are not on that link, it would be great to have all the steps detailed. Perhaps it would be an idea for the guidance page to have an example. Any help would be greatly appreciated. 

Hi John 

Thanks, I've already looked at that but it doesn't provide the exact steps to do it.

Also as an aside the Sage page states "Salary sacrifice pension arrangements mean that the employee no longer contributes directly to their pension scheme. The employer contributes at least the amount sacrificed by the employee and can also make their own contribution."

Is this a case of it being poorly written and should actually state that the salary sacrifice amount / element is not used calculating employee contributions?

Otherwise this is not what we been told by HMRC, pensions advisers, financial advisers and also multiple websites show that employee contributions can continue when Salary Sacrifice for pension happens.

From a Sage 50 Payroll practical aspect the exact full steps to process this are not on that link, it would be great to have all the steps detailed. Perhaps it would be an idea for the guidance page to have an example. Any help would be greatly appreciated. 

To break it down, you'd need to:

1. Set up the pension scheme as salary sacrifice, with any other settings entered correctly.
2. Check your pay elements are set up correctly to be included in the sal sac pension contribution calculation.
3. Assign the scheme to relevant employees if not already in place.
4. Process their correct payments as normal, Payroll then calculates their sal sac pension contributions.

Set up the scheme

If you've entered the pension scheme details and need to enable it as a Salary Sacrifice scheme, you'd just need to select the checkbox beside Salary Sacrifice Scheme in the pension scheme's settings:

1. Click Company, then Pension Schemes.
2. Click the relevant pension scheme, then click Edit.
3. Select the checkbox beside Salary Sacrifice Scheme.
4. Click OK, then Close.

If you need to set up a new scheme, our Set up a pension scheme guide helps with this - there's information on each tab of the scheme details in collapsible sections in that guide, click the name of the tab in the guide to access more information.

Check pay elements

Sage 50 Payroll only includes payments in the sal sac pension calculation if the pay element is set to enable this. The steps for this are under the Check your pay elements section of the Salary sacrifice pension schemes guide.

Once you've done this, the scheme calculates pension contributions as salary sacrifice for any employee with that scheme assigned.

If you'd like help to assign the scheme to employees, visit our Add a pension scheme to an employee's record guide.

Process payroll

With the above in place when you process pay for employees on this scheme, Payroll calculates their salary sacrifice pension contributions.

In terms of the writing on the salary sacrifice pension schemes guide, I'll review the wording with our compliance team.

The employee can still have a contribution rate, for example 5% ee and 3% er, but that 5% contribution for ee is deducted from their pay as a salary sacrifice. It's then added to the employer contribution, and the total of these is under the Employer Pension field on reports in Sage 50 Payroll.

If I can help further let me know, alternatively our technical support team could also help further with quicker answers via Webchat or phone support.