As of 13 August 2026, AI can only partly calculate workplace pension contributions for your employees.

What to actually do

1. Hand it to a person

   The route this page recommends

   Someone with a licence or accountable authority has to sign this before it counts.

2. Use a tool built for this

   Second choice

3. Do it yourself

   The distant third

   A chat interface, chat-fluent skill, and roughly 30 minutes until you can act on the result.

   How to actually do it

   1. Open the current pension scheme rules or employer guide and copy the sections covering pensionable earnings, contribution rates, tax relief, salary sacrifice, opt-outs, postponement and payment dates.
   2. Export the relevant payroll period from your payroll system and gather each employee's gross pay, pensionable pay, adjustments, scheme status and any salary sacrifice amount.
   3. Paste the scheme rules and the employee table into the prompt, completing the pay period, pay date and any other stated fields without including unnecessary personal identifiers.
   4. Ask the model to calculate each employee's employee and employer contribution, show the formula, and list every missing input rather than filling gaps with assumptions.
   5. Recalculate a sample of employee rows in your spreadsheet and compare the totals with the model's totals, checking the earnings basis, rounding, tax treatment and scheme status for each exception.
   6. Send the calculation and unresolved questions to your payroll accountant, pension provider or pensions specialist before submitting the contribution file or making the payment.

   Prompt

   Calculate workplace pension contributions for the employees in the table below.
   
   Use only the payroll figures and pension scheme rules I provide. Do not invent thresholds, rates, dates or tax treatment. If a required input is missing, list it as an unresolved question instead of guessing.
   
   Business and payroll details:
   - Country: United Kingdom
   - Pay period: [weekly, fortnightly, four-weekly or monthly]
   - Pay date: [date]
   - Pension scheme name: [name]
   - Pensionable earnings basis: [scheme definition]
   - Employee contribution rate: [rate and whether it is based on qualifying or pensionable earnings]
   - Employer contribution rate: [rate and basis]
   - Tax relief method: [relief at source, net pay or salary sacrifice, if known]
   - Any scheme-specific rules: [paste the relevant wording or link]
   
   Employee data:
   [paste a table with employee ID, gross pay, pensionable pay if already known, salary sacrifice, unpaid leave or other relevant adjustments, age if relevant to the scheme, and opt-in, opt-out, postponement or re-enrolment status]
   
   For each employee, show:
   1. The earnings figure used.
   2. The employee contribution before and after any stated tax treatment.
   3. The employer contribution.
   4. Any adjustment or exclusion applied.
   5. Any missing information or rule that prevents a reliable calculation.
   
   Then provide payroll totals for employee contributions, employer contributions and the total payment due to the scheme. Show the formula for every calculation, keep money to two decimal places, and flag any result that needs checking against the pension provider or payroll system. This is not professional advice.

   Open it prefilled in ChatGPT or Claude, or copy it into Gemini, which takes no prefill link.