In addition to the monthly and ongoing tasks that our pension experts handle on behalf of our clients, they also take care of the End of Year Certificate (EOYC), which must be completed and submitted for Teachers’ Pensions.

What happens with the EOYC?

We send either specific contribution breakdowns or Monthly Contribution Reconciliations (MCR) to Teachers’ Pensions (TPS) on a monthly basis, and they then post the money they receive or do a reconciliation of the money they receive against that. For the end of the year, this is totted up (in April) and sent back to the school, us or both parties (depending on the arrangement in place) to say that this is the total amount of contributions they have received from the school during the year.

Following this, the EOYC must be produced, which is essentially an annual version of the monthly breakdowns and is another step in the process to ensure that contributions have been processed correctly.

Avoiding the EOYC headache

Traditionally, the end of the financial year is stressful for finance and payroll teams. However, at Dataplan Education, our Innovation Team have configured our parsing engine EDNA to automate the EOYC process, reducing the end-of-year headache.

The generator provides us with the summarised version that needs to be sent back to TPS, giving us a screen view so we can do a reconciliation before it is generated. Most of the time, the figures are correct, so we go on to generate, but if not, this is the opportunity to go back through and look at inconsistencies.

The output from this process includes three things;

1. A certificate which is printed and produced in hard copy.
2. A PDF which is automatically uploaded to Epaysafe or VERA for the school to view,.
3. The contribution breakdown for every Teacher for every pay period and for every job (as some teachers have multiple roles)

This allows us to see the detail of how those figures are made up on the EOYC and More importantly there is a summary data file which is created for TPS which is a one-line summary of all the contributions for the whole year and goes to TPS in an automated overnight upload.

Automatic overnight uploads

We have put all of the returns into a secure holding area, and we have developed an automated process that uploads the data overnight. It is a bot that mimics someone logging in. So all those now go to Teachers’ Pensions overnight without manual intervention.

The importance of the EOYC

Not only is the EOYC a statutory requirement, but it is also an excellent tool for auditors. All independent and LEA schools, academies and trusts have to have full independent audits completed by the end of September each year, and the two files produced by the generator are a tremendous aid to this process.

The future of EOYC at Dataplan Education

Whilst the current process does utilise automation, our Innovation Team already have plans to introduce more efficiencies for next year. For example, once this year’s EOYCs are completed, the team will be implementing a process where the EOYC returns can be bulk generated. Rather than doing it individually, the new bulk generation process will increase efficiency whilst still allowing a visible view to show that each return is correct.

Does your school have a headache when it comes to EOYC? Find out more about how our pension experts can help.