Automatic Date Matching

Pay period dates account for a large proportion of payroll-to-pension processing errors. These are some (but not all) of the reasons for this:

• Sometimes the pension scheme may have been set up with a pay period date pattern that doesn't match the established pattern used in payroll. This means that correct payroll dates are rejected by the pension provider. 
• In other cases, it could be that the payroll software produces pay period dates in reference to something which can vary between pay periods, such as the Pay Run date. This can result in inconsistent pay period dates being used, which pension providers will reject as they generally require a set pattern to be used. 
• It may be that the payroll software has a set fixed pattern (e.g. tax periods) and the pension provider has a different set fixed pattern (e.g. calendar monthly contributions only). 

Users of PensionSync benefit from Automatic Date Matching, which smooths payroll-to-pension processing by checking the dates the pension provider is expecting and, where possible, making a safe amendment to the dates in the payroll data file so that they match.

For example:

• Payroll send tax monthly dates: 6th July to 5th August
• The pension provider is expecting the calendar month of July
• As the two sets of dates are very close together, PensionSync is able to safely adjust the payroll data so that the pension provider can accept it.
• The payroll user receives a notification confirming that an Automatic Date Match has been applied, so that they can make an adjustment to payroll or the pension scheme set up in time for future pay periods (if required / possible). 

This feature was introduced in 2019. By the end of 2021, PensionSync had applied over 100,000 safe Automatic Date Matches: that's 100,000 fewer errors payroll processors needed to fix in order to get their pension data uploaded promptly.