RTI: Avoid typical pitfalls for EPS, FPS and BACS in UK payroll

Many SAP HR users in the UK are about to run their first RTI submission this week or next. To help you avoiding some of the pitfalls, here are a few points we learned from customers, who went life in the first half of April:

1. Unless you have a special arrangement, tests need to be run in the production system using the „test in live“ flag – not in the test system.
2. Before a file (test or real) can be created, payroll as well as the pre-DME program must be run. The actual BACS  file creation can be done later, but we recommend to also run it before the creation of the actual FPS file to be sure everything is all right and no need to re-run payroll will arise (the same holds true for the FI/CO posting). Ideally you close payroll for the real RTI FPS run.
3. The pre-DME program mustn’t be run with the wagetype selection field empty. The RTI tag is only generated, when wagetypes /559 and /558 are explicitly selected. If you’ve run the pre-DME with an empty selection before RTI, you can achieve the same result by selecting a range like „/000 to ZZZZ“ now. We know this is counter-intuitive, as an empty selection per SAP convention should mean „select all“, but we checked the coding of the program and it seems this particular developer didn’t know about this convention. We hope this will be amended by SAP at some point.
4. There is an easy trap to fall into on the selection screen of the FPS program. If you want to create a repeat run, you can tick the respective button and then select the ID of the run you want to repeat. This works fine and is very similar to the repeat run process you know from the pre-DME program. However: if you have a run ID captured in the field and then switch off the „repeat run“ option, the field is hidden, but remains filled and the program behaves as if the tickbox was still ticked. This is particularly annoying, if you save this selection as a variant, not knowing a repeat run ID is hiding in the background. Next time you use this variant you’ll probably get no results at all, because there is no matching run ID for the period and payroll area selected.
5. The selection screen of the EPS program is still a bit of a mess at this stage (after March support package).  First of all, you definitely need SAP note 1831896 (included in the May support package only, so you may need to implement the note before the delivery by package). Even then the selection screen shows some random behaviour with the various hidden fields and checkboxes. We therefore recommend at this point not to use variants for EPS and always leave the program completely before running it a second time. I.e.: don’t go back to the selection screen from the result list, change selection, and run it again, but go back another step and start the program again to make sure the selection screen doesn’t remember anything it shouldn’t. This will hopefully be resolved soon, so you should be able to use the program normally, once the solution is more stable.
6. If you go live in April, remember your first EPS submission would be 6th May the earliest.
7. At this stage, it is highly recommended to keep up to date with support packages (use CLCs to reduce testing effort for other countries, if you are on a multi-national system) and the latest correction notes.

Making your process safer and more efficient: SAP delivered an RTI reconciliation report recently, though it has a very limited scope. If you are looking for a more comprehensive reconciliation solution for RTI, please get in touch and we can introduce you to the solution of our product partner Spinifex, who also offer tools for employee correspondence (including a special solution for Pension Auto Enrolment), general payroll reconciliation and an analytics toolbox. All flexible and user friendly. Just drop us a line: info@iprocon.com