**Government Gateway was replaced with Transaction Engine in February 2018, but we see that some of you have missed the deadline. Don’t lose critical data or let this affect your SAP Payroll! Contact us and we will have this sorted in less than an hour.**
The Government Gateway is an online service used for a variety of interactions with the UK government. SAP payroll users will be familiar with the technical connection from their SAP landscape, through PI, to the Government Gateway for real-time information (RTI) and other payroll information submission.
After some initial delay, HMRC have gone live with a new portal named Transaction Engine to replace Government Gateway.
The new Transaction Engine has been live since 13th October 2017. The Government Gateway will be shut down on 14th February 2018 and it will be mandatory to use Transaction Engine.
Take action to avoid problems in your SAP Payroll
To ensure you don’t send your payroll data to the wrong address after Valentine’s Day, you need to change configuration in SAP PI at the right time. SAP Note 2506772 describes the changes required in your SAP PI system to support the new Transaction Engine.
You need to put in a new address (URL) and some new PI configuration to support the new portal. This is usually handled by an integration specialist or basis team, but if you need any assistance contact Absoft and we will help.
We will be contacting all of our affected customers, so if you already work with Absoft please expect to hear from us; the transition will be made seamless for your payroll operations.
Valentine’s Day Deadline: When to act
The change can be made any time since the go-live of the new Transaction Engine on 13th October 2017, but must be complete before the shutdown of Government Gateway on 14th February 2018.
The 14th February deadline will be earlier than annual legal changes go-live for most customers, so it’s vital to plan in the change as an additional activity at some point between 13th October 2017 and 14th February 2018.
We recommend planning the change when you are not running a payroll, but before at least one 2017/2018 payroll before the go-live of your annual legal changes so that you can confirm the new interface is working fully before making additional changes.
Testing
Testing the interface to HMRC is always difficult given the lack of test environment provided by the government.
After the configuration changes are in place for your production system, you can use the “Test-in-Live” functionality to ensure the connection is working.
Making the change in production without full testing is not comfortable for most SAP teams, but you can mitigate the risk. Ensure your integration team have done technical tests of the connectivity through the landscape in development and test before you begin changing production, and plan the work to give you time to resolve problems or back-out before a payroll run is scheduled.
Planning and timing are the most critical parts: don’t put your RTI communications at risk by not taking action in good time. Â
Contact our team of experts if you have any questions or concerns.