PCSE Online for GP locums: from Locum A to payment

Primary Care Support England administers services for primary care in England, including GP pension processes. PCSE Online is its official portal. For eligible freelance GP locum work, locums can submit Locum A and B information there, practices approve Locum A, and the contribution payment workflow can continue through GOV.UK Pay.

PCSE Online is not a general diary or invoice system. It needs correct source information about work already performed. Keep your commercial record—booking, session and invoice—separate from but traceable to the PCSE entry.

The normal A/B journey has three actors: the locum, the practice and PCSE’s online/payment process. The locum enters the A information; the relevant practice checks and approves it; the locum then progresses the B and contribution stage. PCSE says the online workflow calculates the amount after Locum A and B are submitted and offers secure card payment through GOV.UK Pay.

A status in your own tracker should mirror the real next action. ‘Logged’ is too vague if it could mean A drafted, A submitted, practice approved or contribution paid. Use explicit states and record the date at each hand-off.

Start with the month or invoice period you intend to process. List only work you have checked against the appropriate pension route. Compare the practice name with the organisation in PCSE, reconcile individual session dates to the invoice, and isolate additions that are not part of the basic fee.

Have your identifying information and references available, including your SD or NHS pension reference where required. Do not keep sensitive personal identifiers in ad hoc shared notes. If a practice has several sites or a similar trading name, confirm which organisation commissioned and paid for the work.

Enter and submit Locum A using PCSE’s current instructions. Check dates and fees before submission; a transposed date can make a valid invoice look inconsistent to the practice. Record the submission date against the underlying session or sessions.

The practice must approve Locum A in PCSE Online. This is a real workflow step, not a courtesy acknowledgement. If it remains outstanding, contact the practice’s appropriate pensions/payment user with the relevant work dates and submission information. PCSE notes that practices need the correct GP Payments and Pensions role to approve forms, so an internal access problem may explain silence.

Do not mark the month complete when A is merely submitted. Keep an ‘awaiting practice approval’ queue and review it weekly. This is particularly important because the 10-week rule continues to run while an unresolved entry sits on your list.

Once the relevant A entries are approved, review the B stage against your month’s worklist. Check that the correct entries are included and that cumulative pensionable income or contribution information requested by the current form is based on the right records. Do not copy last month’s value without understanding what has changed.

PCSE says that after Locum A and B are submitted online it calculates the pension contribution amount. After successful B submission, the GOV.UK Pay option allows card payment of the displayed amount and supports automatic reconciliation. Follow the official screen and retain the payment confirmation.

If the displayed amount does not match your expectation, pause and reconcile the fee basis, pensionable pay, contribution tier and included A records. Your own estimate is a check, not authority to overwrite the official process. Use PCSE support or professional advice for unresolved differences.

airGP can provide the source worklist: session, organisation, fee, invoice link and pension status. Review the list for missing sessions and inconsistent practice naming before opening PCSE. This reduces switching between calendar, email, invoice PDFs and the portal.

Mark uncertainty rather than manufacturing precision. If you do not yet know whether the provider will use SOLO, leave a review note and resolve it before including the session in an A/B total.

Update the record while the confirmation is still on screen. A date without a stage is ambiguous, so note whether it relates to A submission, practice approval, B submission or payment. Keep the official reference with the appropriate month, while avoiding storage of full card details.

At minimum, your finished audit trail should answer: which sessions were covered, which practice approved them, when B was submitted, what was paid, when it was paid and what reference links the payment back to the official workflow.

A mismatch usually has a specific cause. Work through the chain in order rather than changing totals until they agree. First confirm the session exists and belongs to the period; then the practice and fee; then A submission/approval; then B inclusion and contribution/payment evidence.

Use this as an operational prompt, then follow the current PCSE screens and guidance.

PCSE Online remains the official service; airGP has no PCSE, NHSBSA or NHS England status or integration. airGP can retain your own preparation and follow-up record, but cannot assess pensionability, populate or transmit a form, secure practice approval, calculate the authoritative contribution or initiate payment. It also supplies no accounting or pension advice.