Introduction
The Federal Learning Account (FLA) is a digital application that manages employees' training and training rights. Indeed, the labour deal of 3 October 2022 introduced an individual training right for employees. This entitles employees to several days of training per year. The number of days an employee is entitled to from 2024 and the training they have taken from 2024 must be registered by the employer in the FLA on the CareerPro website. Employees can also consult this on Mycareer.be.
For forwarding this information, a functionality has been developed in the Epowerhr software that can automatically forward this information to the FLA.
Requirements
For this data to be transmitted automatically, the following data must be in order:
- Employer must give a mandate to E POWER BV as mandatary - read here how to give this mandate.
- Via "Admin" - "Companies" (under Organisation data), the VAT number field (in the format BE999999999999) and the NSSO number field must be filled in for each company for which employee training is to be forwarded.
- At the level of the person, the National Register number field must be filled in.
- At employee level, an "Employee contract" must have been created where the fields Company (mandatory), Start date (mandatory) and Collective agreement (optional) are important.
"Collective agreement" contains the collective agreement code, applicable for this employee and needs to be entered in the correct format:-
- 3 numbers - format 999, example: 300
or - 5 numbers - format 999.99, example: 225.01
or - 7 numbers - format 999.99.99, example: 305.02.09
- 3 numbers - format 999, example: 300
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- The counters are preferably calculated by Sigedis based on the dimona and DmfA declarations. They will als take into account the collective agreement code.
- Next your contact person at epowerhr can create a task so that the training information can be send to the FLA.
Steps
There are 3 stages in forwarding and processing the data for the FLA:
1) Forwarding the data: the XML file (= Declaration Data File) is created and placed on the NSSO's servers
2) Confirmation of the receipt of the data: a file (= Acknowledgement of Receipt) is placed on the same servers of the NSSO that serves as confirmation of receipt and the correct form of the file
3) Confirmation of the processing of the data: after processing the XML file, feedback in the form of a file (= Notification file) arrives again on the NSSO's servers containing confirmation that the processing was successful or any error messages.
We have described the steps below:
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Forwarding the data
Add a "Service task" of type "Federal Learning Aaccount (processing)". It is best to set this service task to "Manual", especially at first, so that you can try out the link.
Next, run this service task.
If the task failed, you can consult the error message via "View log". For support regarding the error message, it is best to contact the helpdesk.
If the task succeeded, you can proceed to the next step. -
Confirmation of receipt of data
Via "Admin" - "Federal Learning Account" (under Training), you can check the status of the forwarding. After this first step, the message "Passed (step 1 of 3)" will appear there. Add another service task but this time of type "Federal Learning Account (follow-up)". Also this task is best set to "Manual" at first to test the processing. After running this task, the status on the "Federal Learning Account" page will change to "Passed (step 2 of 3)" - if no error messages appear during processing. - Confirmation of data processing
Processing the files submitted to the NSSO can theoretically take a few days but usually, after a while, you can re-run the "Federal Learning Account (follow-up)" service charge and the status on the Federal Learning Account also adjusts to "Passed (step 3 of 3)"
At that point, all data will have been processed and you can also view the result on the CareerPro web application.
Additional information
- Each time you forward the above files, a full picture of each employee's training counters and courses for the current calendar year is taken. The information about that employee in the FLA is then overwritten with the new information.
- No update happens in the FLA for employees for whom no information is forwarded.
- Also be sure to read our FAQ Employment Deal
Error messages
The Federal Learning Account is still a fairly new software. As a result, it is certainly possible at the beginning that errors will occur.
Possible scenarios:
No data file is created or not all employees are forwarded.
Check the following elements:
- Has the field "National registration number" been filled in with the employees?
- Have the "VAT number" and "NSSO number" fields been filled in on the correct company?
- Has an employee contract been created and linked to a Company for which the mandate is given
- Has the field "Collective agreement" been filled in on the employees' contract?
- Have the training counters for the employee been filled in?
An error message appears in the receipt.
Look up the error message in the attached file "ACRF - anomaly.pdf" (see at the bottom of this article). This may already give some more insight into what went wrong.
An error message appears in the notification file.
If the processing of the data fails, it is best to go via the "Federal Learning Account" page to look at the "Notification file". The content of this file consists of XML and an error code will appear at the bottom. This error code can be looked up in the attached file "ACRF - anomaly.pdf" (see at the bottom of this article).