Govt releases PwC report on Pay Period 5

Minister Responsible for Novopay Steven Joyce today released the PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) report on complaints and notifications in regards to Pay Period 5 of the schools’ payroll.

Pay Period 4, which was paid on the morning of 29 May, paid 88,525 people a total of $173.53 million.

The PwC report shows that complaints and notifications were received regarding 0.39 per cent of staff across the country, 29 staff were notified as not paid, 115 were overpaid, and 199 underpaid. Affected staff were from 234 schools or 9.5 per cent of schools in the payroll system.

“This was the largest payroll so far this financial year and again shows a consistent performance within the 0.5 per cent steady state error level identified by the Technical Review team. Five of the last six pay rounds have now achieved that,” Mr Joyce says.

*This was higher due to the one-off Voluntary Bonding error

Mr Joyce says good progress continues to be made in clearing the backlog of outstanding issues via the Backlog Clearance Unit with the exception of overpayments – which remain frustratingly difficult to clear.

“The team is making very good progress in dealing with outstanding pay instructions, the backlog of direct enquiries to the Ministry, and leave balances. All of these should be back to business as usual by the end of June. We are in the process of making more changes to the overpayments resolution system to speed up the clearance of those issues,” Mr Joyce says.

“The latest bug releases have resolved a further 58 defects. There are 14 Category Two, or very serious, bugs left – nine of which are targeted for closure in June. The Technical Review identified that we should have fewer than 10 Category Two bugs by the end of June and we are on target to achieve that.

“There is also a significant tax patch under development which will deal with remaining tax issues when it is introduced. That is currently scheduled for July.”