The SARS Business Requirement Specification (BRS) 17.2 included new validations related to the format of contact telephone numbers which forms part of the Interim Reconciliation submission from the payroll. 

Click here to view the latest BRS. (refer to IRP5 code 2026, 3135, 3136, 3137 and 3138 on the BRS, for details of the changes)

Requirements as per the specification:

• Only numeric characters will be allowed
• All contact numbers must be at least 9 characters long
• National numbers must start with a 0
• International numbers must start with a 00
• There should be no spaces between numbers
• Do not use + sign in the contact number

As from Release 5.1a (Septemebr 2018), the IRP5/IT3a report will apply validations on the manditory contact numbers. It will be important for you to validate your payroll data and confirm that all telephone numbers are caputed correctly, prior to exporting your IRP5 file (you must be on Release 5.1a).

We recommend that you validate the following fields in your payroll:

• Basic Company Information screen (COMP) Contact Information tab - IRP5 Contact Person Telephone Number,
• Employee Information screen (IS) of each employee - Cell Number, Fax Number, Home Number, Business Number (only Business Number is manditory for the IRP5 export)

Hint: Exporting the Cell Number, Fax Number, Home Number and Business Number fields via the Flexi Fixed export function, will allow you to check the fields, do corrections and import the corrected file in CSV format, to update the payroll.