MCR: How are single/multiple contracts treated for pensions?

Modified on Tue, 10 Dec at 3:05 PM

Within Cintra iQ, you can create a Monthly Contributions Reconciliation (MCR) report by extracting data through MCR. Previously, as an employer, once you were on board with monthly data collection, you had to submit to Teachers' Pension (TP) each month, one file that included all the TP members' required service and salary information. Now, TP allows you to transition from Monthly Data Collection (MDC) to Monthly Contributions Reconciliation (MCR) from October 2020 until October 2021.

MCR consolidates the current MDC, Monthly Contributions Breakdown and Enrolment data collection processes and replaces them with the one MCR submission. The purpose for the MCR is for TP to know who has multiple contracts and if that member has then opted out of a particular one. This is so that TP can find out if it makes a difference to the member's final benefits when they leave the Teacher's Pension scheme.

As an employer, you need to report each contract of employment and/or different roles under one contract of employment as individual rows of data on the MCR submission. MCR allows you to perform a reconciliation on the contribution deduction amounts you provide for each employee.

Single Contract as a Figure for Pensions

The employee is reported using a single row in the MCR file, and the single role identifier is held on the employee in their post record. (C1/R1)

If the employee changes post eg is promoted, a new post entry must be used. This updates the role identifier to reflect the new post eg from C1/R1 to C1/R2.
If additional hours are worked, then by definition, these hours are overtime, and should be recorded against the single employee in their post record as overtime.
If the contract is for variable hours, then the employee in post record should be recorded against all hours entered.

Note:

The pension contribution record does not need to be attached to the particular post, but will apply to all payments made to the employee.

Multiple Contracts Treated as a Combined Figure for Pensions

Each employee’s post has its own annual salary rate, and the employee is paid a certain amount of earnings under each post (C1/R1, C1/R2). The pension contribution record does not apply to a particular post, but covers all earnings paid to the employee. Each post is then reported as a separate line, with full time salary and associated part time earnings.