CMEC Changes

The changes CMEC is demanding from payroll software providers have now reappeared on their website.
Oracle said at a previous UK user group meeting that the Court Order Functionality in PeopleSoft GP will be rewritten in 9.2, but these changes are required prior to that.

Oracle, PeopleSoft and RTI

Oracle held some meetings with customers on their approach to RTI during October. If you are a PeopleSoft GP customer in the UK or using UK extensions, I hope you were able to get along and hear the word.

More Legislation - but Blink and You'll Miss it - CMEC

One of the many onerous duties that payroll departments perform on behalf of government agencies is the collection of money due for child maintenance or court orders. Needless to say, there is a set of arcane and labyrinthine rules to be followed.

The consequences of not deducting a court order can appear severe - a summons can be issued naming the payroll manager personally and demanding they appear and explain why. Thankfully this is rare.

Since everyone seems to recognise that the CSA hasn't really been working out, a new agency has been created. It's called CMEC. As such agencies do, they have decided that they want to make some changes to what is required of employers - and since many employers use payroll software, the implication is that the software providers will need to make changes.

CMEC published what they called "Business Requirements" on their site some time in July. Unfortunately I missed it at the time. Since then they have removed the document that had the requirements in from their website without explanation.

With any luck the requirements will be back soon. In brief they cover some new admin rules and a new method of reporting data - all to be in place by April 2011. They have apparently promised that the final requirements will be available to software providers by October this year.

UKOUG PeopleSoft Conference - First Day

The keynote address from Marc Weintraub was well crafted and expertly delivered. Aside from his comment below, I didn't really learn a lot I didn't know already.

Marc said that Fusion Apps were entirely greenfield and didn't have any copy and paste code - I'd not heard that before.

I understood Oracle's strategy to try to align with what he called "inflection points" so that it can offer customers what they want when they want it - so, for example, they can offer multi-tenant SaaS delivery of Fusion if a customer wants that. I have zero idea of the architecture behind that - Oracle don't seem to be talking about that yet.

The HMRC session was also very interesting. RTI will ultimately use BACS as a delivery mechanism, but as I blogged previously, they have accepted that an interim solution using EDI will be needed. In my estimation almost every UK employer* will need to find time to install and test the EDI delivery from their provider, then do the same again when the BACS version is released. In addition, since many UKGP customers are working with a customised BACS routine (it's an SQR), they will need to revist that too.

*at least those who adminster their own payrolls.

Oracle has plans in place for development using pilot customers in line with HMRC. It was very encouraging to see HMRC spending so much time with us, and as I said to the HMRC folks, my personal view is in accordance with the other feedback they have had - RTI is a good idea, but as ever the devil will be in the detail.

All in all a very good day - there is more, but it will have to wait.

I know I should be up all night partying in the bar, but I have a presentation to do tomorrow and I'm not as young as I was.

RTI and Oracle User Group - Connected News

HMRC made some announcements on RTI on Friday. Aside from publishing technical information for developers, they have said they will continue to support EDI as a means for submission of the extra data until at least April 2014. In practice, this applies to most users of PeopleSoft GP in the UK since most will be large enough to be sending via EDI. We don't have the full picture of what HMRC and Oracle's plans are yet.

The Oracle User Group has published the agenda for the Conference on 22-23rd June - and it includes sessions from both Oracle and HMRC on RTI - these are a must-attend for any GPUK customers (in my humble opinion of course) I will certainly be attending if at all possible to see what HMRC's latest thinking is, and what Oracle plans to do about it!

Pensions Reform

Not to be outdone by HMRC in terms of creating potentially onerous requirements for payroll software, the Pensions Regulator has published a "guide to software developers".

I've read this and at first glance it seems to have a lot of extra data and transactions that need to incorporated into payroll systems. This is all around the new requirements to automatically enroll employees in a pension scheme in certain circumstances.

Once again, it'll be interesting to see the Oracle response.

RTI - a challenge to All UK payroll software

I'll try and keep this brief, if only because there is such a wealth of information already around about RTI. I am trying to focus on how this will/may affect PeopleSoft GP UK payroll.

HMRC has decided to use BACS for capturing a whole load of data that it either already captures via EDI, or doesn't capture at all for now. Part of the reason for this is the major overhaul of the benefits system that is due to take place.

What this means for GP is that major development work will be needed. The BACS delivery for GP in the UK in "vanilla" is highly inconsistent anyway in that it doesn't produce the files in a ready to send (i.e. with headers, footers and contra entries) format - PeopleSoft financials does. However there are other factors here - certain kinds of transactions - new joiners, etc, will need to generate data in the BACS file. This will involve some quite major changes.

I'll be fascinated to see how Oracle address this - it will all need to be live by 2013. That sounds a while away - but it seems like only yesterday we were celebrating the UK getting the Olympics.

PeopleSoft GP Year End

This is as good a time as any to mention one factor in PSGP which as far as I can tell, is unique in UK payroll processing. Most other UK payrolls require some kind of cleardown and reset process to be run at this time of year (tax year end). PSGP doesn't, and it really takes some explaining, even though it means there is a whole lot less to do and to worry about.

Yes - that's it - there is nothing to do. Tax year to date balances roll over automatically and the system holds all the previous year's too. Automatically, no intervention needed. Keep calm and carry on.

Oracle UK User Group - Global Payroll

I attended (and presented at) a very valuable day today. The UK OUG has responded to requests from users of PeopleSoft Global Payroll in the UK to set up a special interest group for GP in the UK.

The event was well attended and aside from the usual suspects (like me) there were useful presentations and participation from customers. However much I can offer, I always feel customers can get more value from speaking to each other.

Some interesting stuff from Oracle - they are revamping the Court Order pages and processing in UK GP - but probably not for a while. I had a hand in the Court order provision and to be honest, it probably is due for a revisit. It's one of those things I'd have differently if I'd known what I know now. Oracle do know - so they are re-doing it. Otherwise, Oracle didn't have a huge amount to tell us except for some overall enhancements using the latest tools technology to provide more user-configurable dashboards and similar so a user role can be defined and have all transactions, reporting and the like appear in front of the user.