How Mercans Automates NAERSA Compliance

Ensuring Compliance with Ireland’s NAERSA Auto‑Enrolment Scheme

Ireland’s pension landscape is undergoing a landmark change with the introduction of a nationwide auto-enrolment retirement savings scheme. Commonly known as “auto-enrolment,” the program will be branded as MyFutureFund and is set to commence in early 2026.

For the first time, Irish employers will be required by law to automatically enroll eligible employees in a state-facilitated pension plan and contribute to their retirement savings. To oversee this system, the government has established an independent body – the National Automatic Enrolment Retirement Savings Authority (NAERSA) – which will operate the scheme and ensure its key principles are upheld. Among those principles are a “pot-follows-member” approach (so workers keep the same pension pot as they move jobs) and a minimal administrative burden on employers. In other words, the scheme is designed to make saving for retirement effortless for employees and as simple as possible for employers to comply with.

Mercans, as a leading global payroll provider, has proactively updated its platform to align with all NAERSA requirements and to help Irish employers implement auto-enrolment smoothly. Below, we outline how Mercans’ enhanced payroll technology will support your business through this transition, ensuring full compliance and eliminating hassle in the process.

Seamless Integration with NAERSA’s “MyFutureFund” System

One of the most significant advancements in Mercans’ payroll platform is its direct integration with NAERSA’s digital infrastructure. As part of the auto-enrolment process, NAERSA will issue an Automatic Enrolment Payroll Notification (AEPN) to an employer’s payroll system whenever an employee becomes eligible or has a change in enrolment status. This AEPN serves as an official instruction indicating the employee’s required pension contribution rate (which starts at 1.5% of gross pay from both employee and employer in the first years, then rises over a decade to 6% each). Mercans’ system now automatically downloads and applies these AEPNs in real time. What does this mean in practice? The moment NAERSA flags an employee for enrolment, Mercans will:

Update the employee’s payroll record to mark them as enrolled in MyFutureFund.

Apply the exact contribution rate and rules specified by NAERSA (for example, pro-rating contributions only up to the scheme’s earnings ceiling, and recognizing any state top-up contributions).

Begin deducting the employee’s pension contribution and calculating the employer match from the very next payroll run, as required.

Crucially, the integration ensures that the latest AEPN data is always in use. NAERSA updates enrolment statuses on an ongoing basis (with nightly data feeds and 13-week lookback eligibility checks for new hires). Mercans’ platform automatically fetches the most up-to-date AEPN information at the finalization of each payroll. This guarantees compliance with the mandate that payroll “must always ‘get latest’ AEPN” before processing contributions – thereby avoiding any scenario where outdated instructions might lead to incorrect deductions.

In short, Mercans has made the NAERSA interface invisible to the user: HR teams don’t have to manually retrieve or input anything; the system handles the entire enrolment notification flow behind the scenes.

Automated Contribution Submission & Real-Time Error Handling

Once employees are enrolled and contributions are calculated during the payroll run, the next compliance step is to report and remit those contributions to NAERSA. Under the MyFutureFund scheme, employers must submit a contribution file each pay period that details every enrolled employee’s contribution amount (plus the employer’s matching amount). NAERSA’s rules stipulate that this file be submitted on or before 18:30 on pay day – that is, by the end of the pay date when employees receive their net pay. Missing this deadline or submitting incorrect data could trigger compliance scrutiny or delays in the funds being invested for your employees.

Another powerful aspect of Mercans’ solution is its real-time error handling and correction capabilities. Mistakes can happen – perhaps an employee’s gross pay was entered incorrectly, affecting the contribution amount, or an employee was mistakenly left as “enrolled” when they should have been opted-out. Under NAERSA’s process, employers are allowed to correct any errors in a submitted contribution file up until the 18:30 deadline on pay day. Mercans embraces this by making it easy to rectify issues and resubmit data within that allowed window.

When this corrected data is sent, NAERSA’s system will accept it as the authoritative submission if it arrives before 18:30 on the pay date. In line with NAERSA’s policy, the last submission received by 18:30 is the one that will be processed, and Mercans makes sure your last submission is the right one. Any attempts to submit changes after 18:30 are automatically flagged and prevented by Mercans, since NAERSA will reject late alterations. This safeguard saves you from inadvertently making an out-of-time update that wouldn’t count – the system effectively closes the window when the regulator does.

Reducing Administrative Burden and Ensuring Ongoing Compliance

From the outset, Ireland’s auto-enrolment scheme was designed to simplify life for employers. As noted in the scheme’s documentation, employers are only required to perform a few tasks – such as adding eligible employees to payroll and paying the pension contributions – while NAERSA handles the rest via digital instructions. Mercans’ new features amplify this simplification by taking even those few tasks and automating them as much as possible.

Now, with Mercans’ fully NAERSA-aligned payroll solution, the process is practically hands-off. Eligibility is determined by NAERSA and fed to Mercans via AEPN – no need for the employer to constantly monitor ages or earnings thresholds. Contribution rates and changes (like the phased increases, opt-outs, or reaching the annual earnings limit) are all communicated through AEPN updates, which Mercans automatically applies, so the correct percentages are always used. The act of submitting data to NAERSA is done for you, on time, every time. And even the edge cases – an employee opts out after the minimum participation period, or someone leaves the company – are handled within the same framework: for example, NAERSA will issue an AEPN update if an employee opts out or if an annual earnings cap is hit, sometimes setting the contribution rate to 0% for the rest of the year; Mercans will implement that immediately, so no ineligible or excess contributions are taken. If an employee leaves employment, NAERSA’s “pot follows member” approach means their pension contributions stop and their pot moves with them, and Mercans will cease deductions once the AEPN instructs to do so. All these scenarios are covered without extra effort from your team.