VARPAC - Reporting Higher Education Contribution Scheme (HECS) Variations

 This function identifies changes to students' HECS liabilities and creates a file of those changes for input to the Australian Taxation Office's (ATO's) VARPAC reporting application.

Users should be familiar with VARPAC and its requirements as these are not re-stated in this document. (Refer to the ATO Variations 2000 [or later] manual.)

The function consists of three components:

• the data assembly module
• the display form
• the file creation module

The Data Assembly Module

The job FINJ8010 - Create VARPAC Data is run to identify student fee assessment records, of system fee type HECS, that have changed since either the last DEST HECS Due file was created or the last VARPAC file was created, whichever was latest. It records information about the change, in the database. This information is used by the File Creation module to create a file for input to the ATO's VARPAC application. The change information can be viewed in the display form.

 The Display Form

The form, Maintain Higher Education Contribution Scheme Variation (FINF8100), displays information about changes to students' HECS fee assessments that were identified and recorded by the Data Assembly module. The form can be queried to display data for each time the Data Assembly Module was run. The form allows a comment to be recorded against each student HECS change record.

The VARPAC Output File Creation process is initiated from this form, and file creation details display in this form once the process has been run.

The form is also used to record when the VARPAC generated file was submitted to the ATO.

The File Creation Module

This module creates the input file for the VARPAC application from the data assembled by the Data Assembly module. It is activated by clicking on the Generate File button in FINF8100. The file created is a flat ASCII file (as required by VARPAC). A new file is created for each run of FINJ8010.

VARPAC Set Up

There is no specific set up required for the VARPAC process. It relies on the availability of data recorded elsewhere in Callista. In particular, it relies on the data set up in the Maintain Government Snapshot Control form (STAF1340) for DEST reporting purposes. The HECS change data results from normal student fee administration business practises.

The VARPAC Process

The ATO specifies when HECS variations are to be reported and this will dictate when the VARPAC process is performed. There is no limit to the number of times the process can be performed.

It is logical to run a bulk fee assessment job (either FINJ3001 or FINJ3500) prior to performing the VARPAC process as this will ensure that the latest HECS variations are captured.

The VARPAC process involves the following activities:

• Run the job Create VARPAC Data (FINJ8010), to assemble the data from which an input file for the ATO's VARPAC application will be created. The assembled records can then be viewed in the Maintain Higher Education Scheme Variation form (FINF8100), where an optional comment can be added to each record.
• In FINF8100, locate the Changes Run record created by the previous step, enter the required HECS Changes File data and initiate the file creation process using the Generate File button.
• Run the VARPAC application using the VARPAC Import File created in the previous step.
• Record the date on which the VARPAC variations advice file, generated by the VARPAC application, is sent (via ftp) to the ATO. This date is recorded in the Submitted field in FINF8100.

Updated 11 March 2002