Authorisation and the employers' website

There are three levels of access for the employers' area of the website:

Superuser (employer administrator):

• is set up directly with the Employer Support team; email employersupport@gmpf.org.uk for further information
• can add ‘employer authorised’ and ‘employer’ accounts for their employer
• can amend a user’s role if their level of authority changes between ‘employer’ and ‘employer authorised’
• must amend a user’s role if someone with an ‘employer authorised’ account leaves by changing their role to ‘employer’. Email employersupport@gmpf.org.uk to confirm and request they are completely removed
• can submit online forms and view all the information held within the employers' area of the website;
• can view the members' and about us areas of the website.

There is guidance for superusers on how to create and amend users.

Employer authorised:

• can submit online forms and view all the information held within the employers website
• can view members website and about us areas of the website.

Employer:

• can view all the information held within the employers, members and about us areas of the website.

You should consider who is best placed to become an Employer authorised user as their actions can put pensions into payment and affect your strain costs and the contributions you pay. To help you decide who should be appointed, here are the key responsibilities of the superuser and employer authorised roles:

• Take overall responsibility for contact with GMPF on a day to day basis.
• Ensure all queries to your organisation are dealt with quickly or escalated where necessary.
• Keep your list of employer website users up to date (Superuser responsibility).
• Have a good understanding of the Pensions Administration Strategy (PAS) and the Local Government Pension Scheme (LGPS) regulations.
• Check, verify and sign all administration documents where necessary.
• Respond promptly to any queries raised by GMPF, taking responsibility for escalation where necessary.
• Calculate and check final salary pay and Career Average Revalued Earnings (CARE) pay.
• Understand the employer responsibilities as defined in the LGPS Regulations and PAS.
• Query and/or request information from GMPF.

If you use a third party pension provider, you must also consider whether you want someone at the provider to become an ‘employer authorised’ so they can submit information directly to GMPF. If you do, you must contact employersupport@gmpf.org.uk with the details; you should not set them up yourself, as they may already have a login for another employer. If not, any pension information they provide should be sent to someone with an ‘employer authorised’ role first so it can be completed online. Any information sent directly to us from them will not be accepted.

If you use a third party payroll provider, under the LGPS Regulations, it is the employer that is responsible for providing correct information to GMPF. You should ensure that your payroll provider has access to historical pay information as far back as 13 years to calculate pay under regulation 10 of the LGPS (Benefits, Membership and Contributions) Regulations 2007.

The employer contact details form lets us know about other contacts at your organisation who we may need to liaise with, such as:

• main contact at your organisation
• Treasurer/Chief Financial/Accounting contact
• monthly data collection contact
• valuation contact
• formal dispute contact
• CEO/Head Teacher/Managing Director

If any of the information you originally provided to us has changed, please complete a new employer contact details form and send it to employersupport@gmpf.org.uk.

As a Superuser, you can set up and manage users on the Greater Manchester Pension Fund (GMPF) employer area of the website. If you want an additional Superuser setting up, you will need to contact employer support.

There are two types of roles for users: Employer authorised and Employer.

Employer authorised allows full access to the site, including the ability to complete online forms and upload information. We recommend this for anyone who would normally complete and sign forms to send to us.

Employer allows full access to the site but the user is not able to submit online forms or upload information. We recommend this for anyone who needs access to the information but who would not normally sign forms to send to us.

If you provide pension services for more than one employer code, users can be set up with access to upload for selected employers or for all of those employers.

How to set up a new user

• Once you are logged in to your account hover over the account settings icon at the top right hand side to bring up the menu.
• Click on Manage users
• This will take you to the manage users account page where you have the option to create a user or manage current users.
• To create a new user, you need to complete the fields for email address, first name, surname and telephone number. Only one account can be set up per email address.
• You need to decide on the role and employer access. Remember if you select employer this gives access to the website but not uploads, and employer authorised gives access to both.
• Employer access will look different depending on how many employer codes you provide pension services for. Click on the box to tick and select the codes the user needs access to.
• Then click create user.
• If you have been successful, the line below will appear at the top of the page. If there has been a problem, it will instead tell you that something went wrong.
• An email will automatically be sent to the user with a link to confirm their account and a temporary password. They can then login to their account and update their password. This may take a few minutes to arrive. If it does not arrive within ten minutes, please check the spam/junk folder or with your IT team in case they need to release it.
• When you set up other users at your organisation the account activation link in the email expires after 24 hours. Therefore, please ensure your new users are in a position to confirm their account within 24 hours of you setting them up.

Manage users

You can manage access for users from the same page as creating users.

You can change the role from Employer authorised to Employer and vice versa using the drop down.

Where relevant, you can add or remove access to different employers.

Make sure you press the save button below each user to save any changes.

Any changes to a user’s account are not automatically emailed to them, so you would need to inform them.

If a user leaves, you must change their account role to Employer, and email employer support to request that the account is disabled.

If you need to change a user’s email address, you will need to email employer support to reset it.  Users can use the password reset facility if they forget their password.

Please view the authorisation and employers website page for further information about the responsibilities of authorised contacts and third party pension providers.