PAYE Online for Employers - Electronic Data Interchange (EDI)
Frequently Asked Questions: Testing and Errors
Contents
- What is the length of time between an employer registering for PAYE Online for Employers - 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 and what is the percentage of message rejections?
Q. What is the length of time between an employer registering for PAYE Online for Employers - 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 contacting 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 EB5 (PAYE)
- Message Implementation Guidelines. If any interchange transmitted
by the employer 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, incorrect sequence of data and for GFF messages, incorrect field lengths.
Q. What should an employer do if an error is reported back to them?
A. After
correcting
the
reported
error,
the
employer
must
then
re-send
the
message
or
entire
interchange
if
this
was
agreed
by
the
employer.
For
example,
if
an
employer
intends
to
send
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-send
the
entire
interchange.
For further information refer to EB5 (PAYE) - Message Implementation Guidelines document.
Q. Why would messages that are live be rejected and what is the percentage of message rejections?
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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