Do I still need to enrol employees on the pension provider's website?

No. When an employee is enrolled in the pension scheme, you can send enrolment data through PensionSync. Usually, the enrolments will be automatically dealt with as part of the same process as sending the contribution data. 

Can I send enrolments before I send the contributions? 

Some payroll software products allow you to send the enrolments separately to the contributions, but most of them do it all at the same time. Check the help centre content for your specific payroll software for more information. 

Does it take longer to process the pension data if there are new enrolments? 

In some cases, yes. Nest, for example, need a bit of time to process the enrolment before they can accept the contributions. If your payroll software sends the enrolments and contributions at the same time, PensionSync automatically staggers the processing for you so you don't need to do anything. Nest data with new enrolments and contributions might take 20-30 minutes to process (as opposed to a few minutes if there are no new enrolments). 

Other providers, such as People's Pension, Smart Pension and NOW:Pensions process enrolments and contributions at the same time, so the processing times on these will still be within a few minutes, even if there are new enrolments.