How to Start Uploading Records of Employment Through ROE Web in Canada

A Record of Employment (ROE) is the form an employer completes when an employee has an interruption of earnings, and Service Canada uses it to assess Employment Insurance (EI) claims. ROE Web is Service Canada's electronic system for creating, submitting, viewing, printing, and amending those records. This guide is written for the employer side: business owners, payroll staff, accountants, and payroll providers who issue ROEs. It is not the claimant's guide. An employee who needs to see a ROE, or to apply for EI, does that through My Service Canada Account, not through ROE Web.

When a ROE is needed, and how fast it must go in

An interruption of earnings happens when employment ends or an employee leaves because of pregnancy, injury, illness, retirement, layoff, leave without pay, dismissal, adoption, or compassionate care leave. When one of those situations occurs, you must issue a ROE for the employee. The deadline depends on how you file. Generally, an electronic ROE must be issued within five calendar days after the end of the pay period in which the interruption occurred, although special rules may apply. A paper ROE must be issued within five calendar days of the interruption of earnings or the date you become aware of it. Work out the deadline from the pay period and the interruption date before the final payroll run, not after, and check the Service Canada pages for any special rule that changes the general deadline for your situation.

Register the organization: a one-time setup

Registration happens once per organization, and it is worth doing before the first interruption arrives, because part of it waits on the mail. Follow the registration steps in order:

1. Sign in to ROE Web through a Sign-In Partner or a GCKey.
2. Create your professional profile with your name and contact information. You receive a user reference number, confirmed by email. Keep that number handy for the in-person route below.
3. Create the profile of the organization for which you want to issue ROEs, validating it with the organization's Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) business number.
4. Validate and authenticate your identity online through CRA. You are temporarily redirected to the CRA website to register for or sign in to CRA My Account. If you have not registered for CRA My Account, allow five to ten business days for that registration, then sign back in to ROE Web to finish authentication. CRA My Account is available 21 hours a day, with daily maintenance taking it offline for the rest. Identity validation can also be done in person: note your user reference number and visit the nearest Service Canada Centre with two acceptable pieces of identification. Employers with payroll functions outside Canada have an alternate validation method for a Primary Officer where online or in-person validation is not feasible.
5. Enter your authorization code to confirm your authority to act as Primary Officer for the organization. The code, with contact information and instructions, is mailed to the business owner or chief executive officer. Activate the account within 90 days of receiving the code, or you will need to contact the Employer Contact Centre to extend it.
6. Read and accept the agreement that sets out the terms and conditions for using ROE Web.
7. Start issuing electronic ROEs.

Registration also collects the organization's CRA payroll account number, name, address, postal code, telephone number, email address, and the Primary Officer's name and telephone number, and the business profile setup asks for a contact person's name and telephone number. A default business profile can be set for submissions, which saves re-entering employer details on every ROE.

Filing for another business

Accountants and payroll providers register once and then add each client. Complete the ROE Web Client Employer Consent Form, signed by the Primary Officer and each client employer, and keep a copy on file in case Service Canada asks for it. In the ROE Web account, go to Manage CRA Businesses and add the client's CRA business number. The provider then manages that client's ROEs through the same account, under the same agreement.

Create the ROE: online form or payroll extract file

ROE Web offers two ways to create a ROE, and the choice depends on volume and on how payroll is run.

The online form

The online form displays an electronic ROE pre-filled with basic employer data, such as the company name, address, and contact person, drawn from the employer and business profiles. Complete the remaining blocks from payroll records. The form follows a block-by-block layout set out in the ROE Web user requirements: employer identification including the CRA business number, the employee's name, address, and Social Insurance Number, the first day worked, the last day for which paid, and the final pay period ending date, the pay period type, total insurable hours and total insurable earnings with earnings broken down by pay period, the reason for issuing the ROE with a contact person Service Canada can reach, separation payments such as vacation pay, statutory holiday pay, and other monies, and comments for exceptional circumstances.

Two habits prevent most rework. First, enter the reason code from the published list in the user requirements rather than paraphrasing the reason: the list covers shortage of work, strike or lockout, illness or injury, quit and its sub-reasons, maternity, retirement, work sharing, apprenticeship training, other, dismissal, leave of absence, parental, and compassionate care, and a comment is required when the reason is code K, Other. Second, check the totals the system calculates: total insurable earnings in Block 15B is always calculated automatically by ROE Web from the pay-period detail, so correct the pay-period entries rather than the total when the numbers disagree.

The payroll extract file

If payroll runs in software that produces a ROE extract, upload the file instead of retyping. The payroll extract capability accepts a ROE file extracted from internal automated payroll systems, laid out as an XML file under the ROE payroll extract specification. Mark each ROE in the file as submitted or saved as draft. After upload, ROE Web reports which ROEs were issued, passed, failed, or rejected. A rejected ROE has an invalid or non-existing CRA payroll account number and must be corrected in the original file and re-uploaded. A failed ROE can be corrected in the online form or in the payroll file and re-uploaded with only the corrected ROEs, which keeps the payroll software and the submitted record in agreement.

Validate, submit, and keep the serial number

Before submitting, validate the ROE in the form. A ROE that passes all validations is saved with a serial number and becomes read-only. A ROE that fails is saved as a draft, without a serial number, for editing and resubmission. Drafts without a serial number are deleted automatically after 15 calendar days, so a draft is a short holding place, not a filing cabinet. Print from ROE Web on plain paper if a paper copy is needed; drafts print with a Draft watermark and no serial number.

Once submitted, the ROE is available to the employee through My Service Canada Account, where the employee can view and print it. Do not send the employee a printed ROE Web draft as if it were the filed record, and do not promise the employee a decision date: Service Canada decides EI entitlement from the ROE and the claimant's circumstances, and this guide states no processing time for that decision.

Correct a submitted ROE with an amendment

When a submitted ROE is wrong, amend it rather than starting over. The Amend function creates an amended ROE, pre-fills the serial number of the ROE being amended in Block 2, and assigns a new serial number if changes are made. Once amended, the original ROE can only be read and printed. The same mechanism works through the payroll extract route where the payroll system supports it, by supplying the amended ROE serial number in Block 2. Keep the serial numbers with payroll records: the serial number is the reference Service Canada, the employee, and the employer all use for that record.

Figures not stated in this guide

Some figures and rules are deliberately not stated in this guide, because they could not be verified on a current official Service Canada or CRA page. The monthly and 13-pay-period earlier-of deadline rule is not stated, because the CRA page states only the general five-calendar-day rule and warns that special rules may apply; the earlier-of wording appears only in secondary summaries. The seven-consecutive-day and salary-drop triggers for an interruption of earnings are not stated, because the CRA page lists the leaving situations without those thresholds. No penalty figure for late or missing ROEs is stated, because no penalty figure could be verified on an official page. No bulk-upload count is stated, because the functional requirements describe the extract capability without a per-file maximum. No EI payment amount, benefit period, or processing time is stated, because those belong to the EI claim, not to the ROE upload. If any of these figures is needed, verify it on the current Service Canada ROE pages before relying on it.

Related guides:

• How to Start Applying for Employment Insurance Benefits in Canada — the claimant side: applying for EI, reporting, and what Service Canada decides from the ROE.
• How to Start Using My Service Canada Account in Canada — the account where employees view their ROEs and EI information.
• How to Set Up Payroll in Canada — payroll accounts, pay periods, and the records ROEs are built from.
• How to Start Using CRA My Business Account in Canada — the CRA business account behind the business number ROE Web validates against.
• How to Get a Business Number in Canada — the business number and payroll program account an organization needs before registering.

Sources

• Employment and Social Development Canada, Steps to register for Record of Employment on the Web (ROE Web) — the seven registration steps, CRA My Account validation and its five-to-ten business day timing, the mailed authorization code and 90-day activation, and the consent form and Manage CRA Businesses steps for filing on another business's behalf.
• Employment and Social Development Canada, ROE Web user requirements – Functional requirements — employer registration data, the pre-filled online form, draft deletion after 15 calendar days, serial numbers on submission, the Amend function with Block 2 pre-filled, and the payroll extract upload with Issued, Passed, Failed, and Rejected statuses.
• Employment and Social Development Canada, ROE Web user requirements – Appendix A — the block-by-block field rules, including the pay period types, insurable hours and earnings blocks, the Block 16 reason code list and comment requirement for code K, and the separation payment blocks.
• Canada Revenue Agency, What should you do if an employee has an interruption of earnings? — the situations that count as an interruption of earnings and the general five-calendar-day deadlines for electronic and paper ROEs, with special rules reserved.
• Employment and Social Development Canada, Employment Insurance services in My Service Canada Account — how employees access EI services and view their Records of Employment in My Service Canada Account, the claimant side of the ROE.