A1 Certificate of Coverage: Integration and Automation
Automation A1 Certificate of Coverage
Workers sent to carry out work or provide services in another EU/EEA country have to provide evidence that their employer continues to pay social security system contributions in their home country. This is generally done via an A1 Certificate of Coverage. The A1 Certificate has to be applied for prior to the posting and must be carried along by the traveler. The necessity for A1 Certificates holds for all postings even including short-term one-day trips. Violation of these regulations may result in the employer being sanctioned and fined. The traveler can be refused entry to the host country or access to the planned place of work without an A1 Certificate.
Starting 01 July 2019, A1 Certificates of Coverage have to be requested electronically from the responsible social security agencies in Germany.
The conovum Travel Compliance Companion (TCC) enables employers to automate, monitor, and analyze the A1 application process.
Advantages of Automating the A1 Process
Manual and unintegrated processing of business travel compliance generally is slow-going, error-prone, and often incomplete. Proper automation of compliance scenarios is the only way to forgo these drawbacks and guarantee a minimization of induced time and effort. The high degree of automation provided by the Travel Compliance Companion offers a variety of advantages:
Solution: Travel Compliance Companion
The only way to massively reduce the effort needed for applications, overall management and monitoring as well as document archiving while simultaneously ensuring compliance for travelers and employer alike is to highly automate the A1 Certificate application process.
The conovum Travel Compliance Companion (TCC) allows for a convenient management of all compliance-related aspects of a business trip abroad. In the case of A1 Certificates, the process is started immediately after a travel request, booking of travel means or manual (possibly mobile) travel notification. As all relevant data is automatically passed on to the TCC, background checks directly determine whether trip duration and planned activity demand for an A1 Certificate. Flawed or missing data needed for a successful process is requested from the traveler and can be entered within the TCC app. If necessary, the TCC offers the opportunity for an in-house or external service center to provide support and assistance.
The overall process is transparent for both traveler and service center alike and can be monitored easily. The A1 Certificate obtained is archived according to auditing requirements and made available to the traveler for download as well as via e-mail. Provided data is saved and can be re-used for future postings.
The procedure of obtaining an A1 Certificate is visualized in the following graphic.
By default, the conovum Travel Compliance Companion is set up as SAP add-on on the client’s SAP-HCM system, but can also be implemented into distributed system environments on any SAP system (on-premises).
The TCC integrates the direct link to the German social security systems provided within SAP HR (Infotype 700).
User interfaces are based on SAP UI5 and can be integrated via SAP Fiori Launchpad or alternative portals. The TCC is also available on mobile devices.
Further Information
For further information please also consult the corresponding solution sheet. For more detailed questions do not hesitate to contact Carsten Hoymann via TCC@conovum.de.