All new businesses have a duties start date. Your automatic enrolment duties start is when you employ your first member of staff, this is called your duties start date. The Pension Regulator will write to you to confirm what this date is.

For any business who employed staff before the 1 October 2017 you will have a Staging Date. If you are unsure of your staging date you are able to use your PAYE Reference to look this up.

To set your scheme start date, sign into your account and go to Menu > Scheme set up > Update scheme start date

• For businesses who started on or after 1 October 2017, enter your Duties Start date and press 'Save scheme effective date'.
• For businesses who employed staff before 1st October 2017, select this option and enter your Staging date. Press 'Save scheme effective date'.
• If you do not know your staging date, you can enter your PAYE reference and look up your staging date.

For schemes wanting to use postponement, please still use the original date provided by the Pension Regulator. Postponement is applied in a separate section of the scheme setup.
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If you are transferring your scheme from another provider, you should set the scheme start date to the date you were originally allocated from the Pension Regulator. Please do not use the date of the transfer.

If you are unsure of what your scheme start date is, please contact the Pension Regulator.