Can I hold on to contributions until the end of the opt-out period?

Yes, if you want to you can hold on to all the contributions you deduct from a worker’s pay until after their opt-out period ends. This is known as ‘withholding’. Please see How can I hold on to contributions during a worker’s opt-out period? for more information.

If you decide to hold on to contributions, you’ll still need to deduct them from the worker’s pay but you won’t need to include the worker in any contribution schedules until after their opt-out period has ended.

If you are Submitting contribution information directly online and want to hold on to a worker’s contributions, don’t add any information to the worker record and leave their status as ‘Action needed – Not yet validated’.

If you are Submitting contribution information by SFTP and want to hold on to contributions for a worker, don’t include a record for that worker on your file at all.

You must make sure payments reach us by the due date. The exception is for worker’s in an opt-out period. NEST gives you the option to pay contributions that were deducted during the opt-out period by the end of the second month following the worker’s start date. You must pay in line with this deadline rather than any extended deadline set out in legislation.

It’s possible that you’ll hold back contributions from more than one earnings’ period. For a weekly payment frequency this could be several weeks of contributions. If the worker doesn’t opt out, you’ll need to remember to pay all contributions you’ve held on to for the worker after their opt-out period ends.

At the end of the opt-out period you can submit contributions for workers that didn’t opt out. You do this by adding their contribution and earnings’ information into each schedule they were listed in during the opt-out period and then Save the schedules for payment. This means you’ll only make contributions for worker’s who want to stay in NEST and have no opt-out refunds to manage for this schedule. For example, if you’ve held back four sets of contributions during a worker’s opt-out period then you’ll need to submit four separate contribution schedules, one for each pay period. You can reduce errors by submitting them in order with the oldest first.

The legislation also allows employers to hold on to contributions for worker’s without qualifying earnings even though they don’t have an opt-out period. However, NEST doesn’t support this.