benevity Group Spark Enhancements Payroll User Guide

: June 9, 2024
: benevity

Table of Contents

Group Spark Enhancements Payroll
Overview
Objectives
Tips and tricks
Implementation Activities
Technical representative, Demographic Data
Financial representative
Technical Details
Documents / Resources

Group Spark Enhancements – Payroll: Technical Guide

Group Spark Enhancements Payroll

This guide is intended for those who are interested in enabling payroll for Spark – your Goodness platform. It should be reviewed by the technical representatives below to ensure preparation for and completion of the implementation activities.
Note: This is not intended for organizations that intend to use a Benevity Workday Certified Integration.
Where possible we encourage our clients to participate in our Group Enhancements, which will ensure best practice in implementation, and the quickest timeline to launch. If you do not fit the criteria, we can develop a customized project scope in order to suit your needs.
What’s Spark?
Spark is a configurable, browser-based SaaS platform that facilitates employee donations to charitable organizations, employer matching, volunteering and pro-social activities. Click here to see a 3-minute demo!

Overview

Spark allows your employees to make charitable donations in Spark that will come directly off their pay checks, and issues tax receipts and donation acknowledgments based on your program set up. Users can set up one-time or recurring payroll donations in Spark, and the communication between Spark and your payroll system is completed through the exchange of payroll files that we will build together. Here’s a summary of the end-to-end process for payroll deductions made in Spark by users, processed by your payroll team, and committed to Spark.

benevity Group Spark Enhancements Payroll

Objectives

There are five main deliverables of a successful Payroll implementation:

Deduction file format: a file that is sent from Spark to your payroll system, which advises the employee information and the deduction amount, along with any other details your payroll team may need.
Success file format: a file that is sent from your payroll system to Spark, confirming the amount that was actually deducted.
Payroll set up: your payroll team will need to set up a deduction code (a.k.a. “pay code”) in line with Spark’s requirements, to ensure an error-free process for processing the deductions.
Deduction schedule details: per Spark Payroll Group, we require the period start date and Spark Period Cut-off date for this year and the upcoming year.
Managed File Transfer (MFT): we will set up a file exchange process so the files can be securely exchanged between Benevity and your payroll systems, on a recurring basis.

What to expect
To ensure we have the right processes and files set up, it’s important you understand what we’re trying to accomplish and who we need to involve getting there. Here’s a high-level overview of what each team will do to help set up demographic data for your new Spark program.

Role	Responsibilities	Effort	Involvement
Program Owner	• Confirm user eligibility

• Provide oversight
• Coordinate resources
• Ensure task completion
• Engage your payroll provider for any necessary configuration or testing support| Medium| • Entire project duration
Technical
Representative, Payroll| • Engage your payroll provider for any necessary configuration or testing support OR
• Configure your payroll system to consume and process payroll deductions
• Understands payroll processes and determines approach for managing Spark payroll donations
• Builds success file format for deduction confirmations
• Set up MFT accounts for the secure exchange of information between Spark and your payroll systems| High| • Discovery
• Plan
• Design
• Build
• Test
• Post-Launch
Technical
Representative,
Demographic Data| • Configure the demographic data to contain required information to map employees to their Spark Payroll group.| Low| • Discovery
• Plan
• Design
• Build
• Test
Financial Representative| • Confirm the ability to hold deduced funds until DR Payment| Low| • Discovery

Tips and tricks

| Get a head start!
This will indicate what you and your team can do to get a head start on the implementation activities.
---|---
| Focus on the critical things!
Look for this symbol to see which activities can be skipped in Phase 1 to get your program up and running faster.

Implementation Activities

Payroll representative

Phase & Tips	Activities & Considerations

Discovery
| • Understand Spark and how we can facilitate charitable deductions off users’ pay checks
• Work with your Program Owner and Payroll Representative to determine which systems Benevity needs to securely exchange payroll data with
Plan
| • Understand Spark payroll testing and plan for dates that work for your organization
• Confirm default deduction file format and content requirements can apply for your payroll system
• Confirm default payroll success file format and content requirements can be generated from your payroll system
• Set up payroll test accounts (8-10) in your payroll test environment to support payroll testing
Design | • Provide Benevity with your confirmed Spark Payroll Groups
• Provide Benevity with your payroll schedules with Spark cut-off dates for each period. Use this template
• Map your current Pay Groups to Spark Payroll Groups Special Considerations
When determining your Spark Payroll Groups, note that they must have the following shared characteristics:
o Payroll Currency
o Spark Localized Experience
o Payroll Frequency and Spark cut-off date
o Deduction and success file formats
o Payroll System
The Spark payroll cut-off date for each period is the date you will receive the deduction files for each group. The file will be generated at 11:59 PM in the time zone of the group, and may take several hours to be sent via the MFT. Please provide a cut-off date that allows time for this. Please consider providing next year’s payrolls schedules as well, so we can set them up in advance. This is required if you are launching near the end of the year (September – December).
If you will be enabling payroll for users in the United Kingdom, the payroll process will differ. Speak to your Benevity project team to learn more.
Build| • Build payroll success file format (must adhere to default file below under “Technical Details”)
• Program your payroll system to consume the deduction file (must adhere to default file below under “Technical Details”)
• Program Pay Code for deduction processing, in line with Benevity’s recommendations and requirements
• Work with the Demographic Data Technical Representative to ensure the demographic data has the Spark Payroll Groups, in line with user eligibility
Test | • Work with Benevity, your Program Owner and MFT Representative to exchange test payroll data and review results
• Confirm payroll test accounts that existing your payroll test environment; share them with your Benevity team
Special Considerations Some payroll systems’ test environments do not have the ability to close periods ad hoc. This means that we will need to do payroll testing in line with your actual payroll periods, which can significantly extend the testing period. If this is the case, please let your Benevity team know as soon as possible so we can plan accordingly.
Launch Readiness| • Review testing results and approve the launch of Payroll in your Spark site
Post-Launch| • Process deduction files and return success files per the pre- determined schedules
Complete activities in the MFT Functional Guide, with payroll considerations above.

Technical representative, Demographic Data

Phase & Tips	Activities
Design	• Confirm which values are required in the demographic data to map

users to their Spark Payroll groups
Build| • Build demographic data to contain the right values for mapping users to their Spark Payroll Groups
Special Considerations Spark will enable payroll for any user that has a valid Spark Payroll Group value on the demographic file. If there are specific users you do not want to enable payroll donations for, their Payroll Group must be a black or invalid value.
Complete activities in the Demographic Data Functional Guide, with payroll considerations above.

Financial representative

Phase & Tips	Activities
Discovery	• Ensure you understand Spark tax effectiveness and the

implications for your organization
Design| • Confirm the ability to hold deducted funds until Donation Report payment

Technical Details

There are several technical requirements for the payroll files and codes that we will use to process Spark payroll donations:
Deduction and Success File Details

The files must contain your Spark Primary Identifier, which needs to exist in your payroll system and HRIS; please speak to your
Demographic Data Technical Representative to learn more
File requirements:
o Comma delimited .csv file
o Dynamic file naming convention with Payroll Group name and date stamp (recommended: pay date)
o Single line per user, with unique identifier
o Single file per Spark Payroll Group
o No negative values returned on the success file
o Format must adhere to the samples linked below
Here is a sample success file
Here is a sample deduction file

Deduction Schedule Details

Spark Payroll Groups must have the following common criteria:
o Payroll currency
o Pay frequency and Spark cut-off date
o Payroll system
o Deduction and Success file formats
o Localized Experience
You must provide period start date and a Spark cut-off date for each Spark Payroll Group for each period
o Spark Payroll calendars can be provided using this template
The Spark cut-off date is the date that the period will close in Spark; the deduction file will be generated at 11:59 PM in the time zone indicated
Payroll funds must be held until Donation Report receipt Pay Code Requirements:
Pay code will not go into a negative balance in order to take the full deduction
Deducted amounts will not appear on the user’s tax slip
Success file requirements

Additional Requirements
We find that our clients have the best post-launch experience when they consider Benevity’s best practices and recommendations; the group payroll implementation process requires adherence to best practice to ensure payroll runs smoothly post launch. Here are some additional requirements in order to participate in a Payroll Group Enhancement:

All-or-nothing deduction logic (no partials, and no arrears).
Payroll provider to adhere to our default, ADATT format. For this process, Benevity will send all deduction amounts for all users, and you import these into your payroll system as one-time deductions.
Client’s HRIS team ready to adjust demographic file
Payroll provider has a testing environment, and is able to close periods on an ad-hoc basis
Up to 3 payroll providers/ teams engaged (client charged per provider/ team)
Up to 3 pay groups (per provider/team)
No ETL required
Cannot be utilizing/ looking to implement the Workday Integration

Next Steps
Get a head start! Review the implementation activities above with this icon and start work on activities before we kick-off your project.
Once you design and build the payroll files and processes, your Benevity team will work with you to finalize and test it for your upcoming payroll launch.

Benevity Inc. This document is proprietary and confidential.