Shared Services SA is undertaking a number of initiatives that will help reduce the payment cycle time for vendors, improve the quality of Treasurer’s Instruction 11 reporting and pilot the implementation of electronic invoicing.

In addition, operational improvements will reduce paper usage, shift more payments from cheque to Electronic Funds Transfer (EFT) and reduce current levels of re-work for client agencies and Shared Services SA.

Here is a summary of each initiative, highlighting how it will help gain efficiencies and improve customer experience.

Shared Services SA has been assisting client agencies’ transition to an online purchase card expense management system (EMS) provided by ANZ.

A total of 18 agencies are now experiencing the benefits of a standardised purchase card expense acquittal and approval process.

Collectively, the solution has been rolled out to approximately 7,500 users, including 4,800 purchase card holders, who will process approximately 200,000 purchase card transactions each year.

In November 2017, Shared Services SA successfully transitioned South Australia Police and TAFE SA employees to the CHRIS 21 payroll system.

Since the completion of this migration, the Payroll Reform team have been focussing on a planned upgrade of CHRIS 21, which includes the implementation of a number of enhancements that will provide benefit to agencies, employees and Shared Services SA.

There are now over 78,000 South Australian Government employees paid via CHRIS 21 each fortnight.

Here is a summary of the initiatives underway in 2018.

To better support compliance with agency Service Designs and the enabling legislation, Shared Services SA is undertaking a Tax Standardisation Project.

The project will develop and implement standard taxation policy and procedures that will cover the end-to-end management of taxation services for both Goods and Services Tax (GST) and Fringe Benefits Tax (FBT).

The recommendations from an external review of taxation are also being incorporated, affecting all Shared Services SA client agencies, except SA Health.

The affected taxation services include:

The Australian Taxation Office is embarking on an ambitious program to improve GST and PAYG compliance through reporting and data matching. Shared Services SA is leading the implementation of the project for State Government agencies within the Masterpiece SYS1 financial system environment.

Shared Services SA is also supporting agencies utilising the UNIX and SYSH Masterpiece environments.

Government entities are now required to report the grants they make to ABN holders and payments for services provided (with data collection commencing on 1 July 2017).

In summary:

The Accounts Payable team in Shared Services SA has made great strides in its paperless payments initiative. Over the past year, more than 4,000 vendors have been contacted via phone, email or letter to make the transition from receiving payment via cheque to electronic funds transfer (EFT).

South Australia Police (SAPOL) and TAFE SA employees will join other public sector employees who have already migrated to the CHRIS 21 Human Resource Management System (HRMS).

Shared Services SA is working closely with SAPOL to transition approximately 6,000 employees from its existing in-house HRMS to CHRIS 21. System testing and other preparation activities are nearing completion and Go-Live is scheduled for 16 October 2017.

ExpenseMe, a mobile app that makes purchase card transactions more accessible, will soon be made available to over 3,800 users of the EMS purchase card management system.

Following a successful pilot within the Department of the Premier and Cabinet, the mobile app will be progressively rolled out to the other 12 agencies that currently use EMS over the coming months.