Earnings, Hours, and Employment Costs Survey

Quarterly EHECS extraction and XML output

Run the EHECS payroll flow for a selected Payroll Statutory Unit (and optional Tax Reporting Unit) to generate CSO formatted XML for submission, plus supporting reports. Supports original, amended, and supplementary returns.

  • Outputs: Employee detail (.txt), summary (.pdf), errors and warnings (.csv and .txt), and XML file (named CBR_Yr_Qtr_DDMMYYYY_HHMMSS.xml (supplementary adds _SUPP)).
  • Parameters: PSU (mandatory), TRU (optional), year, quarter, return type, address change indicator, optional payroll filter, supplementary flag.
  • Validations run during processing; XML validation and truncation warnings are reported for review before final XML generation.
  • Includes only active payroll assignments; warns if employees are attached to payrolls but not yet processed.

Employee counts and hours

Counts and values are calculated by occupational group and full-time, part-time, apprentice categories using the quarter reference dates, with rules for multiple assignments, FTE, joiners, leavers, absences, and pay frequency.

Balances and employer cost items

Uses seeded and configurable balances to populate wages, overtime, allowances, employer contributions, and benefits in the XML. Some fields related to the company and declarant details are editable before final output.

Review and approval workflow

Archive based process generates reports, flags payroll or employee issues, supports manual review and edit, and then produces the final XML. Any excluded employees are listed in the errors and warnings report for correction and reprocessing.

The process provides a single workflow comprising multiple tasks, including a manual approval step. During the workflow, users will have the opportunity to view a summary of the data midway through the process and make any necessary modifications before the final report is generated. The completed report can then be submitted through the CSO portal, either by manually entering the figures into an online form or by securely uploading the XML output file via a secure drop box.

Steps to enable and configure

You don't need to do anything to enable this feature.

Tips and considerations

Considerations:

  • Ensure payroll statutory unit (PSU) and any tax reporting units (TRU) to be reported have a registered CBR number where required
  • CBR number can be recorded at TRU or PSU; PSU level CBR is mandatory while TRU is optional—TRUs without a CBR can still be picked up when PSU is selected
  • CBR number formats changed in 2022 (AA followed by eight digits or seven digits + '-')—invalid formats will trigger a warning (HRX_IE_EHECS_CBR_INVALID)
  • .xml field length limits are enforced; overly long text is truncated to the maximum length and a warning is produced (HRX_IE_EHECS_XML_MAX)
  • If an employee is attached to a payroll but has no payroll processing in the quarter they are included with a warning (HRX_IE_EHECS_NO_PROCESSING) and paid contracted hours will be set to zero
  • Apprentices are only included in their designated apprentice data items (counts, wages, overtime, contracted hours and social security contributions)
  • When implementing, add required element feeds to the listed balances; missing feeds will lead to zero values or validation warnings in the .xml
  • Some archive fields are editable during the flow (company and declarant details, date and comments)