Wednesday 14 November 2012

HMRC RTI - Oracle-PeopleSoft

HMRC Real Time Information (RTI)

What is RTI?
RTI is the HMRC Real Time Information initiative.  It requires employers to provide an electronic data feed directly to HMRC for each payroll run. Using RTI, employers and pension providers will tell HMRC about tax, National Insurance contributions (NICs) and other deductions when or before the payments are made, instead of waiting until after the end of the tax year.

RTI will:
  • Make the PAYE process simpler and less burdensome for employers and HMRC for example by removing the need for the end of year return (forms P35 and P14) and simplifying the employee starting and leaving processes
  • Make PAYE more accurate for individuals, over time reducing the number of bills and repayments sent after the end of the tax year
  • Enable HMRC to pursue late payments more effectively
  • Support the payment of Universal Credits
  • Reduce Tax Credits error and fraud
Employers and pension providers will send this information to HMRC online for payments made to all their employees including those paid below the National Insurance Lower Earnings Limit (LEL).

More information is available under http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/rti/

By April 2013 almost all employers and pension providers must be reporting their payroll information to HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC) on or before every payday.

RTI means that earnings and deductions are submitted weekly or even by payroll run instead of annually.

Current HMRC reporting is once yearly by P14 & P35 submissions providing both total relevant earnings and deductions to HMRC both both in detail and summary formats.

HMRC Interfaces:

Following inbound/outbound interfaces are unaffected
  • P60 - year end payment summary report
  • P45 - leaver process
  • P6

Below lists the interfaces ‘TO’ and ‘FROM’ to HMRC

Outbound Interface(s):
  • Employer Alignment Submission (EAS) – It is to allow HMRC to match their records with the employer records and if necessary update their records. This is the first stage of RTI but the intention is that once the EAS has been accepted employers will not need to submit this again.
  • Full Payment Submission (FPS) – It is employee payment information that is sent to HMRC. For each pay run, this data needs to be sent to the HMRC along with the BACS Payment. Note: BACS payment file also needs to be adjusted for RTI process.
  • Employer Payment Summary (EPS) – It is used in pay periods when no employees have been paid or when the employer needs to report a reduction in the amount they will pay over to HMRC. This is to report a reduction in the amount the employers pay to HMRC or if employers haven't paid any employees in a pay period.
  • National Insurance Number Verification Request (NVREQ / NINO) – Employer can verify the NI number given by the employee. HMRC’s matching of data sent to a particular employee will be dependent on the NI number, so it will be crucial for the employer to keep accurate data.

Inbound Interface(s):
  • National Insurance Number Verification Response (NVRES / NINO) – It is the employer can verify the NI number given by an employee.

Also, the year end report to the PAYE (P60) is unaltered. Currently via Oracle delivered P14/60 process, the year end data can be printed on the HMRC template.

Our RTI implementation Offer includes:
Design
  • It includes, deployment of RTI related bundle/POC delivered by Oracle.
  • Map the current system to the RTI process.
  • Identify potential gap and do the fit gap analysis.

Develop
  • Develop necessary technical components

Test
  • End to End process testing.
  • Performance testing – This is very critical for mission critical application like payroll.

Rollout
  • Production Deployment

Support
  • Warranty support includes 30 days of production support cover
  • Additional long term support shall also be provided

Our Value Addition:
RTI Preparation process Streaming (All GP jobs are streamed for better performance. RTI Streaming is currently not delivered by Oracle)
Electronic P14/60 – Implemented at one of the largest specialist recruitment organization in UK.

Electronic P14/60 Success Story:
By Implementing Electronic delivery of P60 report, there was huge saving on the postage cost. Also, the electronic documents can be easily accessed by employee/administrators for reprint/resent.

RTI Implementation duration:
The whole implementation can be carried out in 3 months.

Sunday 9 September 2012

PeopleSoft Test Framework


Application testing is one of the critical and challenging tasks in Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC) projects. Application testing is more focused on functional/business specification, user interface, security and performance. Among all of them, functional testing is the most demanding job as it requires participation from various stakeholders like developers, testers and business users. Usually business users have only limited time to dedicate for the functional testing activities as their business-as-usual tasks are on priority.

PeopleSoft Test Framework (PTF) is a testing tool delivered with PeopleTools 8.51 and above. PTF automates various tasks within PeopleSoft application, primarily functional testing. Automated functional testing helps the business users in executing more test cases with greater accuracy in a short period.

PTF works by replicating the actions of a single user executing functional tests against the PeopleSoft browser-based application. Users can record manual test procedures and save them within the framework. Later, for instance after an application upgrade or patch, the tests can be executed against the application to verify whether the application still behaves as expected.

Below are 2 videos from Oracle on PTF Introduction and walk through with examples:

PeopleSoft Test Framework Part 1


PeopleSoft Test Framework Part 2
 



PTF can be used effectively in the following scenarios:
  • New Implementation Projects/Upgrades. Especially in the upgrade projects where test cycles are conducted over and over again.
  • Limited functional resources for testing.
  • Highly customized application.
  • Significant ongoing development projects
  • Routinely deploying patches and fixes
  • Can be used for different kind of tests like – System, Integration, Upgrade, UAT on different environments since it can be easily migrated