Construction Industry Scheme (CIS) Online - Electronic Data Interchange (EDI)
Frequently Asked Questions: Testing and Errors
Contents
- What is the length of time between a contractor registering for CIS Online-EDI and being set up to test?
- During testing, what are the causes of message rejections?
- What should an employer do if an error is reported back to them?
- Why would messages that are live be rejected?
Q. What is the length of time between an employer registering for CIS Online-EDI and being set up to test?
A. There is no set period for the length of time taken between registering and the set up for testing. There are many important EDI issues to discuss before testing is considered and it is worthwhile speaking to our Online Services who will provide guidance and advice.
Q. During testing, what are the causes of message rejections?
A. During testing, message rejections are caused by translation failures, which are due to syntax errors within EDIFACT. This is where the format of the data does not match the format specified in the EB5 (CIS) Message Implementation Guidelines. If any interchange transmitted by the contractor to HM Revenue & Customs contains an error, this will be reported to the sender.
Typical problems are bad characters, that is characters that are not in the published character set for the message, missing mandatory data, and incorrect sequence of data.
Q. What should a contractor do if an error is reported back to them?
A. After correcting the reported error, the contractor must then re-send the message or entire interchange if this was agreed by the employer.
For example, if an employer intends to transmit interchanges containing many messages, the employer can select the rejection level to be either message or interchange.
Message rejection level is where, if an error occurs within a message, only that message is rejected and processing continues for all other messages within the interchange. Only rejected messages are then re-sent.
Interchange rejection level is where, if an error occurs within any message in the interchange, the entire interchange is rejected and the employer must then re-submit the entire interchange.
For further information refer to the EB5 (CIS) Message Implementation Guidelines.
Q. Why would messages that are live be rejected?
A. Once a message is live errors should not occur, since the message
should have undergone thorough testing.
However, errors could occur if there is a change at the employer end, such as the EDI or Payroll software or, if the test data was not automatically generated during the testing phase.
If
test
data
is
taken
from
a "test system",
problems
can
occur
when
the
move
to
live
operation
takes
place.
This
is
typically
due
to
bad
characters
within
the
live
system,
a
data
cleanse
or
some
pre-validation
of
the
data
being
taken
will
help
to
reduce
the
problem.
As
data
is
constantly
being
added
to
the
payroll
this
may
be
required
on
a
regular
basis.
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