How do I change a member’s group using a CSV file?

When you’re preparing the contribution schedule to send to us, you’ll need to enter ‘7’ into the ‘Reason for partial or non-payment of contributions’ field in your file. This tells us you’re changing the members group and paying contributions.

If you’re uploading or transferring a file please read our Employer payroll guide (PDF) to find out more about our file formats.

If you need to change groups for a large number of members you might prefer to send a file to NEST instead of updating a contribution schedule directly online.

The easiest way to do this is to use our contribution file template, which will help ensure you enter the information in the right format and could save you time. Once you’ve downloaded the contribution file template you’ll need to fill in the highlighted fields as shown.

In column H you’ll need to select option ‘7 Change member groups and pay contributions’ from the drop-down menu.

If the new and old groups both appear in the same contribution schedule, you’ll need to include contribution and earnings information for the old group and the new group the members are being moved to. This will need to be entered in columns D, F, G, M, N and O.

If the new group appears in another contribution schedule you’ll need to pay for the old group in the current schedule alone. You can pay the member contributions for the new group in the schedule the new group appears in.

Once the file is complete you’ll need to generate and upload the file.

For more information on submitting contribution files to NEST please see Where do I upload my completed CSV file to submit contributions?