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Employment Equity Reporting on SimplePay

SimplePay has built-in Employment Equity (EE) functionality that allows you to download pre-populated EEA2 and EEA4 forms for submission. The following steps should be followed for EE reporting:

1. Determine EE Obligations

The following employers are required, by law, to report their EE information to the Equity Directorate:

  • All designated employers with 50 or more employees must report every year.
  • Employers with fewer than 50 employees who are designated in terms of the turnover threshold applicable to designated employers (Schedule 4 of the Employment Equity Amendment Act No. 47 of 2013).
  • Employers who became newly designated on or after the first working day of April 2021, but before the first working day of October 2021, must only submit their first report on the first working day of October 2022.
  • Employers who voluntarily wish to comply in terms of section 14 of the EE Act.

2. Enable EE Reporting on SimplePay

If you need to submit EE reports to the government and would like to utilise SimplePay’s EEA2 and EEA4 reports, please contact our Support team to have the EE Report feature enabled. Once the feature is enabled:

  • Go to Settings > Advanced > General.
  • Tick the Enable Employment Equity functionality (EEA2 and EEA4 Reports) box.
  • Click Save.

3. Capture EE Data

Once you have enabled EE reporting on SimplePay, you can start capturing your EE data for employees. This can be done individually for each employee, or in bulk.

To do this individually:

  • Go to Employees, and select the relevant employee.
  • Click on Edit Info > Employment Equity.
  • Complete the relevant fields.
  • Click Save.

To do this in bulk:

  • Go to Employees > Bulk Actions > Regular Inputs.
  • Click on the dropdown, and select "Employment Equity".
  • Tick the Add box, and select the relevant employees. You can also click Select all to include all employees.
  • Complete the relevant fields.
  • Click Save.

Employment Equity Fields

The following fields need to be completed on the Employment Equity page:

  • Gender
  • Race
  • Occupational Level
  • Disabled: Tick the box if the employee has a disability.
    • The EE Act recognises both physical and mental conditions that can affect an individual's capabilities. These include, but are not limited to, mobility impairments, sensory impairments (such as vision or hearing loss), intellectual disabilities, and mental health conditions.
  • Foreign National: Tick this box if the employee is not a South African citizen.
  • Temporary Employee: Tick this box if the employee is employed for less than 3 months, i.e. they are on a fixed short-term term contract with a duration of less than 3 months. This generally applies to seasonal workers or casual/temporary employees.
    • If the employee’s contract is permanent and they are terminated early, they are still a permanent employee and not a temporary employee.
    • If the same employee is appointed with a temporary employment contract more than once during the equity year, then that employee must be reported as temporary – even if the total of the multiple periods of employment over the equity year exceeds 3 months (e.g. seasonal workers).
    • This field will determine whether the employee is included in the count of temporary employees or permanent employees in the EEA2 and EEA4 forms.
  • Effective from: This field should be used to capture an effective date when changing the Occupational Level field. It allows the system to determine how many times an employee has been promoted within an equity year. Note that it is called Effective Date on the Bulk Input screen.

4. Configure Custom Items

If you have any income, benefit, or employer contribution custom items, you must complete the Employment Equity Reporting field on the custom item setup page. To do so:

  • Go to Settings > Custom Items.
  • Select the relevant custom item.
  • In the Employment Equity Reporting field, select one of the following:
    • Not Applicable: Select this option to exclude the custom item from EE reporting. The items below are excluded from EE reporting, as set out in the EE Act.
      • Any allowance, cash payment, or payment in kind provided to enable the employee to work (e.g. an equipment, tool or similar allowance, or the provision of transport, or the payment of a transport allowance to enable the employee to travel to and from work).
      • Gratuities (e.g. tips received from customers), and gifts from the employer.
      • Non-employment related lump sums such as severance pay.
      • Dividends not included as remuneration by the Fourth Schedule to the Income Tax Act.
    • Fixed Remuneration: Select this option if the custom item is considered a guaranteed remuneration type. Fixed remuneration is pre-determined, non-discretionary, and not dependant on an individual's performance. Examples include a basic salary, medical aid benefit, pension fund benefit, and travel allowance.
    • Variable Remuneration: Select this option if the custom item is incentive-based, is made irregularly, is discretionary in nature, or is paid regularly but the value fluctuates. Examples include back pay, commission, performance bonuses, share schemes, retention bonuses, and dividends.
  • Click Save.

5. Download the EE Reports

The EEA2 and EEA4 reports must be submitted during the EE submission period. This period opens on 1 September for both manual and online submissions, and it closes on 1 October for manual submissions and on 15 January of the following year for online submissions.

To download your EEA2 and EEA4 from SimplePay:

  • Go to Reports > Employment Equity.
  • Use the Date Range field to select the equity year for which you need to generate the report. The equity year is the reporting year declared by the employer on the top of page 2 of the EEA2. It is a 12-month period (or shorter for first-time reporters) in which employee data is calculated, consolidated, and analysed for submission to the Equity Directorate. This field will default to the general equity year for employers, namely, 1 October to the end of September of the following year. However, the equity year can vary from employer to employer.
  • Before you can download the report, you must click on the Click here hyperlink. Doing this will enable our system to pre-validate your data and avoid any submission errors. If you receive any validation errors, ensure that you correct this before navigating back to this screen. More information about allocating payroll items as Not Applicable, Fixed, or Variable can be found on our help page here.
  • Once you have passed the pre-validation checks, you can click on the Download EEA2 and Download EEA4 buttons to download each report in PDF format.

The report will include data for all employees that are still employed immediately after the last day of the equity year (generally 30 September but, as discussed above, it can vary from employer to employer).

Note

Sections D – G of the EEA2 report, and sections B and F of the EEA4 report are not pre-populated by SimplePay. If you need to capture information in these sections, it will need to be entered manually.

6. Submit your EE Reports

You can submit your EE reports either manually or online. For more information, refer to the article below: