New uFiling Website

[Mike C]

Well you are in for a treat when you try the new uFiling website.

Firstly the old link does not work - so you can link to it via the Dept of Labour Website or from here https://www.ufiling.co.za/uif/

Then, when you try and log in with your old details you are sent a new password by email that you have to change to the "minimum 8 characters, one number, one Caps and one special character" type password.

Then you have to start trying to navigate your way around the site. Submitting uFiling on the old website was relatively easy, but this new one seems to complicate matters somewhat. There is a 35 page manual that you can download from the "help" option if you need it.

When I finally discovered that you have to go to "Declarations Manager" and click on the "Employer Name" to access your staff I discovered that you now have to fill in their residential and, if they have it, postal addresses.

One of the employees that used to work for me retired in August 2015 but is still shown as an active employee. When I tried to mark her as "terminated" I discovered that the calendar that you have to use only goes back as far as May 2016.

I also discovered that although all my payments since 2015 were correctly listed, two of the three employees were shown as having "Issues" in that their UIF has supposedly not been paid since Jan 2017. So that's a bit of problem!

I also cannot submit my return as the employee who was terminated in 2015 throws up the following comment: "According to our records this employer is missing one employee". So I have to decided whether I must enter the incorrect date for her termination which makes my submission technically false.

Then I found a lovely little link at the bottom of the website saying "Compliments and Complaints". So I thought I would raise these issues there, but (SURPRISE!) the link resulted in a 404 error - page not found!

All in all a very frustrating experience.

[Dave A]

I see they have not managed to lose the spinning wheel of death feature that was such a staple of the old site.

After some practice, I have established that if the wheel spins for longer than 10 to 15 seconds, it is going to spin forever. The solution is to start again in a new tab or browser.
Obviously terrible session management.

I'm at least 45 minutes into this joy ride, and no sign of being able to produce a list of outstanding returns as yet. When I click into the one company, what comes up is an employee who's employment was terminated in 2012! What am I supposed to do?

Currently trying to download the user guide....

[SCW]

A nightmare site - half our information has been lost in the changeover, retrenched employees still showing as active, old payments now showing issues.... And then you still get letters of demand saying you owe and are late! Several letters to them for help have brought no response.

[Dave A]

Oh joy. I don't have a single current employee listed on the new site - I have to add the lot.

So when you add an employee, it gets interesting.

I added myself. I commenced employment at the company on 1st March 2004.
I am reporting my salary for the period February 2019 (as this was the first month I have not submitted a return due to the broken website).
Genius program that it is, it has worked out that I have some outstanding declarations.



Of course all of these (except February, March and April 2019) were filed on the old uFiling system.

I haven't had a stiff drink since 1997. Methinks it might be time to restart.

[scsi]

If you would like and I can request that someone contact you to assist with your issues? Just share your contact details..

[Dave A]

So I thought I'd pop into uFiling to start updating some employee records. Here's what I found -



I've also tried my payroll program to see if it produces a file in the format required for uploads - no such luck there.
I suppose I could use the email option that is built into the payroll program - but that's not going to help us all get to the bottom of how to cope with this uFiling method (which in theory should make a lot of small business owners' lives a lot easier).

So I'm determined to persist.

If you would like and I can request that someone contact you to assist with your issues? Just share your contact details..

Thanks for the offer. I'll pm you my contact details and let's see where that leads...

[Mike C]

Thanks for the offer. I'll pm you my contact details and let's see where that leads...

That sounds very interesting. I am very interested in hearing what they can do to help. Please keep us informed Dave!

[Dave A]

Thanks scsi for putting Debbie in contact with me.

My hope is that the feedback I have given will help everyone, rather than just wave a magic wand to solve my particular challenges found.
Obviously they are working on the bugs - seems we may have found some they weren't aware of yet.

They have identified that people without valid South African ID numbers (essentially foreign nationals) does cause an issue. In my case, it was only non-S.A. citizens that got pulled through into the new profile.

Theoretically all currently active employees should have been pulled through. So any failure in that regard is not as intended...

[Mike C]

I see that they have fixed the calendar for terminations so it goes beyond May 2016. So have been able to mark the one lady who retireded as terminated now.

I thought that I might have to fill in all the submissions again - so experimented with the lady that had been terminated. It took literally hours of work as the hours and amount earned each month differed. The little buttons started showing green even though they are all shown as "Unpaid". When one looks at the payment history, however, it shows the payments have been made. So that is still something that needs to be looked at.

Then at one point the button shows red ... can't go beyond that.

Trouble is ... if one button is red you cannot make any submission after that.

I think that we will be making manual submissions from now on.

[flightfarm]

Hi there, I have sent you a personal message, need help with UIF website issues! thanks

[flightfarm]

Hi - I have had the same issues as Mike C with the New Ufiling website - Its also now saying I haven't submitted returns for my employees since they started with us years ago. Not sure what to do next - and haven't therefore been able to submit my March return, to be paid by 7th April.

[Heleen]

Same here. I think I'm going to give it a few days and see if they sort out some glitches. It's going to take days to re-submit all the declarations "not submitted" according to them.
I tried phoning their so called "help line" but, no surprise, it was of no help whatsoever.

[Roneldlr]

Also having trouble with the new ufiling website. Does anyone know if you need to change a setting on your browser or something .... No payments that I have made over the years is reflecting and I also have a red declaration way back in 2016 and therefore unable to declare for March 2019..so frustrating...and also no payment option is working..should we wait it out becauseI do not know where to get help seeing that no one is picking up the phone at customer services?

[Marta83]

Hi Guys. This new site is terrible. I have paid all my employees returns, bar March and April when Ufiling updated it site. Now it says i have issues for March and April but there are no returns generated so i cant pay or resolve those issues. I had to insert my employees details from scratch. The call center does not answer calls. I have been listening to their classical music for a total of 2 hours and no one replies to emails. Anyone know how to sort this out so that there is a return generated and i can pay? Thanks.

[Dave A]

I've raised this as a serious issue with Debbie, and she advises she has passed it on.

I thought that I might have to fill in all the submissions again - so experimented with the lady that had been terminated. It took literally hours of work as the hours and amount earned each month differed. The little buttons started showing green even though they are all shown as "Unpaid". When one looks at the payment history, however, it shows the payments have been made. So that is still something that needs to be looked at.

Then at one point the button shows red ... can't go beyond that.

Trouble is ... if one button is red you cannot make any submission after that.

No idea if, how or when it might be resolved.

The way I see it, removing this pain point for users should be top of the list for the new system developers. I'm certainly not going to sit down and capture nearly 5 years of historical data to clean up the mess that the transition has introduced in our instance.

I can see a lot of regular users of uFiling abandoning the system if there isn't news or progress on this particular issue fairly soon.