Payroll data specification

Please note this data specification is only applicable to private sector bodies.

Requirements:

• Data should only be submitted via the Data File Upload (DFU) facility. This is now the only acceptable method to supply data. If another submission method is used our policy is to inform the Director of Finance that data has been put at risk unnecessarily.
• All payrolls (for example, monthly, weekly, and quarterly) should be provided. However, data should not be provided in respect of payrolls processed for other organisations on an agency basis unless:
  • this has been authorised by the organisation; and
  • the organisation has confirmed that Fair Processing Notices (FPNs) have been issued.
• Ensure that there is only a single record for each employee i.e. details for individual employees with more than one post should be merged into one record.
• Include current employees only.
• PLEASE NOTE: the following additional fields to this data specification have been confirmed as; ‘telephone number’ (home and mobile), ‘passport number’ and ‘email address’. As a result of these new fields NFI participants should consider updating the summary fair processing notice (FPN) issued to data subjects. A revised example summary FPN is available at Level 1: Summary text.

Field name	Data format	Comments
Employee reference number	Character
Employee post number	Character	Leave blank if not applicable, but do not omit this field
Department	Character	Provide the Department where the employee works. If this field contains a code, please provide a lookup table.
Title	Character
Sex	Character
Surname	Character
Forename(s)	Character	Revised – Please ensure you capture any middle name(s) or initial(s). You can provide this in a separate Middle name(s) or middle initial(s) field or in the ‘Forename(s)’ cell if preferred.
Middle name(s) or middle initial(s)	Character
Address line 1	Character
Address line 2	Character
Address line 3	Character
Address line 4	Character
Post code	Character
Date of birth	Date
Home telephone number	Numeric	New fields – As a result of these new fields NFI participants should consider updating the summary fair processing notice (FPN) issued to data subjects. A revised example summary FPN is available on the NFI web site. See note1 below.
Mobile telephone number	Numeric
email address	Character
Passport number	Numeric
Date started	Date
Date left	Date	Included as an independent check that only current employees are included
Leaver indicator	Character
National insurance number	Character
Full-time/part-time flag	Character	Insert ‘F’ for full time (employed for more than 30 hours per week), ‘P’ for part time (less than 30 hours a week) or ‘C’ for Casual/As and when employees.
Gross pay to date	Numeric	This should be gross pay to date NOT taxable pay to date. Do not submit a record if this field is zero.
Standard hours per week	Numeric	e.g. 16 hours as 1600.
Date last paid	Date
Teacher flag	Character	Insert ‘T’ for a teacher.
Sort code	Character	6 numeric characters in groups of 2 which may be separated by hyphens, e.g., 20-45-23.
Bank account	Character	Usually 8 numeric characters.
Building society roll number	Character	Building societies have a roll number where payments are disbursed to after being paid into a single account.

¹ These fields are collected for matching purposes only and will not be shown within any matches passed back to participants for review.