Workflow Sample: Episode 563: Year-end adjustment in the National Tax Agency PDF

Operation: Year-end adjustment

A seasonal tradition, Year-end adjustment.

In December the year-end, the Accounting department settles the "income tax" which has been collected in approximation from January to November. For that, information such as "number of dependents" and "payment of premiums" of all employees is required.

Until last year, I have been using "Workflow that employees Start application."

Automate Complicated Calculation for "Insurance Premium Deduction" at Year-end Adjustment! (2015-11-30)
Submit Year-end Adjustment Document through Cloud-based Workflow (2016-11-14)

As a matter of course, this flow doesn't let all the employees make their application one after the other, while staffs of the Accounting Dept. are waiting silently. In mid-November, they have to conduct internal announcement two or three times to tell "please apply by the end of the month!" Since about one out of ten employees would not keep the promise of due date of "until the end of the month", so when it enters into December, the staffs have to start urging to those people to apply immediately. Otherwise, they will not able to finish the settlement work within December. (The accountants will take the trouble as well.)

However, even though how huge that input form is, you can finish your inputting work in a moment if you try to, since you can complete it using "Start a new Process using these data" on the application you made last year, by only adding "+1" to the year information. (Moreover, it has automatic calculation function.)

Well, I want to spend the new year's eve without any worry. (The actual deadline by the government is January, which I reserve for correction of mistakes.)

* Incidentally, the template PDF has been devised to reduce the change work in every year. (QuestetraAdd-ons)

Application for (Change in) Exemption for Dependents of Employment Income Earner for 20XX (77 forms)
Application for Deduction for Insurance Premiums for Employment Income Earner and Application for Special Exemption for Spouse of Employment Income Earner for 20XX (154 forms)

Challenge: Urging to person who not submitted yet

However, it is yet difficult to comprehend "who has not submitted" in the case where "Employee-initiated flow" is used.

The schedule is tight. For the staffs of the Accounting department, what is important is "a list of those who have not submitted". Unlike other applications, "list of submitters" (a list of good employees?) is worthless.

Let's consider a Workflow which forcibly pours "Year-end adjustment document submission" to [My Tasks] of all employees! In that manner, you should be able to easily catch "employees who have not completed their application".

* Apparently in the near future, the year-end adjustment at companies will be abolished (NIKKEI 2017-10-16："Policy to digitize Year-end adjustment procedures -The taxation Commission" (in Japanese )), so it is good for drill of "Process reform"!

[Year-end-adjustment]

Solution: Automatic addition to My Tasks

In this Business Process, a Task of application will be added to [My Tasks] of all employees using "Timer Start Event".

Although the specific settings are obvious as you see the flow chart and Setting example image, this example has been configured a Task of "Year-end-adjustment, PDF Input & Upload" to be displayed in MY Tasks of "all the candidates for underwriting swimlane", at 9:00 in the morning of Monday November 20th.

Since a large number of Processes are started at the same time, a large number of Issues will stay in the first Step "1. PDF input & upload" at that moment. (Status monitoring feature = Heat map) However, as the number of submitters increases, those will flow to "2. Confirmation".

In addition, even if it is necessary to recreate by "certificate found at employee side " or "confirmation mistake at accounting department side", it can also be manually started from the accounting department side. (Monitoring on the progress of these cases are also easy.)

Discussion: Automatic attachment of files

An excellent point of this Workflow is that " fillable PDF" (PDF form) is attached.

In the first place, "Workflow of until last year", the PDF form as the template was set on the server side, and data was automatically input by the Workflow system. However, in this Business Process, It is assume a flow that an employee will #1) download the PDF form attached as Issue data, #2) append to it with Adobe Acrobat Reader, and #3) make application with attachment of the filed. For the employees, it will be very intuitive to handle. (However, automatic calculation between input items can not be performed.)

Moreover, the file is an "in-house template" in which "in - house input rule" is reflected in advance. (Such as "Office address", etc. has been input already. )

For example, in the column of "Individual number" (My number), there is a code number (?!) which "There is no difference with the provided Individual number". This means, the rule of "If you have a certain book listing Individual number, etc., Individual number can be omitted," (National Tax Agency FAQ 1-3-2 (in Japanese only)) has been applied. So it is considered for employees not to have to check their own Individual number.

By the way, the entity of the file of "in-house template" is stored in Google Drive.

And each time an Issue Process is generated, it is taken into the Workflow as Process data, at the Process data acquisition Step, "Google Drive file acquisition" (Step name: "Template Get"). By this measure, even an employee who cannot access Google Drive (who does not have a G Suite account) will be able to refer to the in-house template on the Workflow.

Deduction for Insurance Premiums for Employment Income Earner and Special Exemption for Spouse of Employment Income Earner 2017
Dependents of Employment Income Earner 2018
Dependents of Employment Income Earner 2017 (Unless change in family member or in insurance policy.)

PS：Distribution of PDF by National Tax Agency

By the way, "fillable PDF" (PDF form) of "Dependents of Employment Income Earner" (EDEIE) and of "Deduction for Insurance Premiums for Employment Income Earner and Special Exemption for Spouse of Employment Income Earner" (DIPEIE) has been opened for public by the National Tax Agency itself, since the end of 2016.

If you want to automatically retrieve such an open file as Process data, it would be better to replace the automatic Step of "Google Drive file acquisition" with "HTTP file acquisition".

* However, by embedding the URL on the input form screen, applicants can download them individually. In other words, there is little meaning to take in the Workflow system automatically. It will be useful only in cases such as, "want to reduce employee"s mistakes in getting file", or "want to reduce the trouble of employees even a bit", or "blocked from the National Tax Agency website".

[Year-end-adjustment:"1. PDF input & upload" screen]