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SAFF file country codes should be... country codes. Not names.

zurohki

The "Create SAFF File For Superstream" function generates a SAFF file containing employee details, including addresses.

Some of our employees have their country listed as "Australia". Some have it listed as "AU". There doesn't seem to be a way to change this, Payroll did it automatically.

In the case of the "Australia" employees - which is most of them - their entry in the generated SAFF file has "Australia" in the Country Code field. This then gets rejected by our super provider, because it isn't a valid country code.

Payroll shouldn't be generating invalid SAFF files.

Comments

Rav

Hi @zurohki

The creation of a SAFF file, including the structure and data fields within it, is based on a standardised specification under SuperStream. This format is designed to ensure consistency across payroll systems and super clearing houses, and in the vast majority of cases, SAFF files generated by Reckon One are accepted without issue by compliant clearing houses.

When a SAFF file is created, it pulls employee and super-related data directly from Reckon One (such as name, address, fund details, contribution amounts, etc.) and formats it into a structured file that aligns with the SuperStream data standards. These standards are intended to be interpreted correctly by clearing houses, even where there may be slight variations in how certain fields (like country) are represented.

In this case, it would be really helpful to understand a bit more about your setup:

Which clearing house are you using to process your super payments?
Have you checked whether your clearing house has any specific configuration requirements or validation rules around country fields?

Some clearing houses implement their own proprietary validation rules or stricter formatting requirements on top of the SuperStream standard, and in certain cases, these can be adjusted within their platform or by their support team. It’s possible that the rejection is related to one of these settings rather than the SAFF file itself being invalid.

zurohki

Hi @Rav,

We use AustralianSuper.

The receipt file we got back is as follows:

YourFileReference,ReceiptStatus,LineNumber,ErrorCode,ErrorDescription
A49FD677842ED3C7,Error,5,31,Country 'Austr' is not one of the accepted values.
A49FD677842ED3C7,Error,6,31,Country 'Austr' is not one of the accepted values.
A49FD677842ED3C7,Error,7,31,Country 'Austr' is not one of the accepted values.
A49FD677842ED3C7,Error,8,31,Country 'Austr' is not one of the accepted values.

Lines that have a country code of AU don't cause an error. Editing the SAFF file in a text editor to replace "Australia" with "AU" before uploading it makes it work.

I can't find anything specifically stating that the contents of the Country Code field must be a country code, but Schedule 2 - Data and Payment Standards - superannuation terms and definitions v2.1 on https://softwaredevelopers.ato.gov.au/SuperStreamStandard does have a specific definition for Country Code: the country code as prescribed by AS4590 and inherited from ISO 3166.

Putting the full name of the country in the Country Code field is probably not valid.

Edit: The AustralianSuper clearing house does have some settings around date format, but nothing about addresses. They do have a page at https://www.clearinghouse.australiansuper.com/docs/client/superstream-alternative-file-format-specification which specifies "Alphabetic characters. Length = 2." for the Country Code field.

Rav

Thanks for getting back to me @zurohki

Reckon One will automatically use AU as the country code provided that you've entered the employee address info using the Australia tab in the address section as you'll see in my screenshot example below 👇

There is no Country field when using this tab as it automatically defaults to Australia and utilises the AU code.

Can I just confirm whether you've used the Australia tab or the International tab to input their address? The reason I ask is, the international tab incudes a free-text field for the country.

I'm assuming this could potentially be the cause here and if that's the case, I'd recommend removing any address details in the international tab and instead solely enter them into the fields within the Australia tab.

zurohki

Here's an affected employee:

If I switch it to the international tab, it's blank.

Ah, I think I see - it might be the older employees who were imported from Reckon Payroll Premier that have a country of "Australia".

I've checked and it is possible to put in the country name "Australia" when entering an employee as an international employee, but that's not what's happened here. Doing that shouldn't cause bad SAFF files either, though.

So it seems I have two issues: 1) Some Australian employees have the country name saved in the database instead of the country code due to a dodgy import and 2) the country name is being put in the SAFF file as-is without any sort of verification.

Rav

Can you do me a favour and open the Employees list under the Contact Centre, not the Payroll section.

Click on an employee to open their details then select the International option on both the Postal Address, and any other addresses that you have for the employee. I'd suggest removing the international address entirely, or you could potentially change the country listed here to AU instead of Australia.

zurohki

The International setting on that screen shows the country as Australia, and changing it to AU before setting them back to National does indeed change that employee's country to AU.

It's not a great solution because the country isn't displayed on any employee lists to know who needs to be fixed and they need to be manually fixed one at a time.

Additionally the name of the country is a perfectly reasonable thing to expect someone to put in the "Country" box in the first place. I still believe that a country name should be converted to a country code or an error displayed when the SAFF file is generated, rather than generating a file with bad data in it.

Karren Labrador

Hi @zurohki,

Can you try updating the employee's address in the Employee section by changing the State, save and then add the correct state again. This process should refresh the employee's address information. Once you've done that, please generate a new Superstream and export SAFF to see if the country code has been updated accordingly.

zurohki

Changing the state, saving, changing it back and saving again does change an employee's country to AU, and this is reflected in newly exported SAFF files.

Karren Labrador

Glad that the workaround worked for you😊

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