One of the things that employer and partner users tell us is one of the most useful features of AE in a Box is it’s ability to track and retain an audit trail.

This allows employer users to efficiently track at every stage of the automatic enrolment process what tasks are being completed, by who and when.

To illustrate the importance of retaining an audit trail of tasks when it comes to automatic enrolment consider this…

Imagine you’re running a small plumbing business. You employ 5 people and therefore you need to ensure you comply with your automatic enrolment obligations under the law.

So you need to choose a pension scheme, you need to complete specific tasks in order to comply with the regulation and you need to ensure you document all the decisions you make and what you make them.

2 years after putting automatic enrolment in place an employer of this business questions the pension choice and asks why the business chose the particular pension scheme. The employer perhaps understandably didn’t keep any records of why they’d put the scheme in place and therefore can’t answer the question.

Whilst some employees might feel comfortable with this answer potentially a disgruntled employee might decide that as the employer can’t answer the question he might take further action….

Further action, be it via an employment tribunal or other means, could generate pressure, stress and hassle for the business and most people would agree that it would have been easier to have an answer to this particular employee to hand on why they’d selected the scheme.

That’s why an integral part of AE in a Box is it’s audit functionality….

You see whilst AE in a Box guides, supports and enables an employer to pick a good quality workplace pension scheme it also records why that particular pension is selected.

We’ve done loads of due diligence on the pensions available on the platform but in addition to this we’ve made sure that every employer selecting a pension on AE in a Box has to tell us, quickly and easily, why they’ve made their choice.

Therefore if anyone in the future, be it a potentially disgruntled employee or the pensions regulator or a potential new employee wanting to join your business, wants to check that as an employer you’ve made a thoughtful and considered choice and can validate this choice you’ve got evidence on the selection you’ve made.

Every time we build functionality on AE in a Box it needs to meet a number of rules…

It needs to be useful, it needs to be simple to use and it needs to continue to add value to our employer users.

Thanks for telling us that the audit trail functionality meets these needs.