Monitoring | 2021 Support Materials MS

The request for extension for the submission of any of the modules that comprise the assurance package, Accounts, CBRN and/or APR has to be done through SFC.  Please refer to:

18.01.2024: Assurance package EAGF/EAFRD: Request for extension of deadlines document available | SFC Support Portal

Sector information need to be placed in XML as code instead of description:

Section 2.2.4, Additional National Financing, has a different setup then section 2.2.2. Into section 2.2.4 you need to declare an intervention under that sector, and the budget code for that intervention. See below the error type and the way how you can fix this error.

In section "2.2.4", for budget code "08 02 02 01 00 00 35000", the intervention code "I.Г.1" is not valid for the specified CCI.

Validation rule APR_VALRULE_0020 is checking if you declared data for all attributes requested by a specific section.

In case of a NULL value, a WARNING message will be raised to make you aware of this absence.

Here is one example of missing some data for some attributes requested in one specific section (e.g recovered attribute is empty):

This error appears because there is a difference between UM Defined in CSP and value of UM defined in the XML file.

In such cases, you must open CSP, look for this specific budget code and check the unit of measurement defined in there. APR data will always be checked against CSP data.

XML with errors:

CSP data:

You need to proceed the same way in case BudgetCode, PuaCode, InterventionCode, Output Indicator are not validated at loading of XML file into APR. All data are checked for consistency against CSP.

In section 2.1, if you must declare OTHER-ANVI sector you need to use the following structure into XML file:

                               <resultIndicator>

                                               <resultIndicatorCode>R.11</resultIndicatorCode>

                                               <sector>OTHER-ANVI</sector>

                                               <sectorOtherName>ZEMIAKY</…

Output indicator O.35 must not be declared in section 2.3.1 and 2.3.2. 

This output indicator cannot be found into draft template, then no reporting for it.

• In section 2.2.2 all sectors where Output Indicator is O.35 must be declared with a PuaGroupCode = SectorName and intervention code empty as listed below:

    <realisedOutputSectoral>
                <identifier>
                                 <budgetCode>080202010000350000001</budgetCode>
                                <puaCode>ABCNAME</puaCode>
                                <puaGroupCode>FV</puaGroupCode>
                                <interventionCode> </interventionCode>
        …

The request for extension for the submission of any of the modules that comprise the assurance package, Accounts, CBRN and/or APR has to be done through SFC.  Please refer to:

18.01.2024: Assurance package EAGF/EAFRD: Request for extension of deadlines document available | SFC Support Portal

Clarifications on the data that should be entered for columns 8 and 9:

Colum 8 “Total eligible cost of selected operations (EUR)” is “EU contribution + national”, while “national” can be “public + private” or only “public”.

It is to be understood as the amount of the total eligible cost of the operation approved in the document setting out the conditions for support (referred to in the Annex XVII CPR – Field 56).

Depending on the payment calculation method for given programme priority and an operation, it may include also private financing.

When the payment calculation method for given priority is based only on public contribution, see Art. 22(3)(g) and 112(2) CPR, then it is expected that Field 56 = Field 57, therefore only “EU contribution + national…

Columns 11 and 12 are editable in the following cases:

Columns 9 and 10 and their gender breakdown are editable and mandatory/optional in the following cases:

Columns 11, 12, 13 and 14 are editable in the following cases:

Columns 10 and 11 and their gender breakdown are editable and mandatory in the following cases:

Table 12 should only be completed when the FI codes 2-5 are used in Table 2 in the column ‘form of support’. This is checked by VR005 and VR006.

If this is the case but the Member State have nothing yet to declare then they should complete the Table 12 record with 0 for Loans in "Eligible expenditure by product" and in "Amount of private and public resources ...", but in the "Management cost and fees ..." fields leave it empty.

The import of data from excel functionality has been foreseen in a limited number of Tables of the Transmission of Data (TOD).

We only foresee it exceptionally on these simple categorisation tables as we did in SFC2014. It will not be extended to other tables.

The other tables in the TOD are not simple and contain a lot of logic and rules depending on the content of certain columns. For those Excel is not suited for data transfer.

If the Member State want to further automate the data input they will need to implement and use the SFC webservices. More information on the SFC2021 Webservices can be found here: https://sfc.ec.europa.eu/en/2021/webservices/information.

The size limit per file is 500MB.

There is no limit on the number of files or the total size of all files in an object.

The following file extensions are allowed:

“.7z”, “.bmp”, “.csv”, “.docx”, “.jpeg”, “.jpg”, “.msg”, “.ods”, “.odt”, “.odp”, “.odg”, “.odc”, “.odf”, “.odi”, “.odm”, “.ott”, “.ots”, “.otp”, “.otg”, “.pdf”, “.png”, “.pptx”, “.rar”, “.rtf”, “.tif”, “.tiff”, “.txt”, “.xlsb”, “.xlsx”, “.zip”, “.gif”, “.eml”

Documents and more specifically the Standalone/Referring documents don't have a workflow and without transaction between MS nodes, because this is more flexible and more convenient for users and best reflects how document transmission in most organizations work.

The only type of status is sent or not sent, so a creator cannot indicate that he finished editing the document, that he uploaded all the necessary files, and that the document is ready to be sent. If we would allow someone other than the creator to send, this person could send incomplete documents.

A user gets a task to upload a document to the Commission or to the Member State. There's no need for someone else to verify his job, because only documents previously approved by the organization will be requested to be submitted. The sending of Standalone/Referring documents is considered a purely administrative task, like putting a letter into an envelope and bringing it to the mailbox. That's why for Standalone/Referring documents only, it is also foreseen that the Send Document permission is included for Update users (MSMA Update, MSAA Update, ...). Like that the creator can create, update and send the document having only the Update Roles and not the Send Roles. Having the Send Role would allow such administrative user to send also workflow Objects (such as the Programme, Payment Applications etc), which are much more sensitive, and which definitely need to be verified before being sent.

Another restriction of the Standalone/Referring documents is that the system cannot always determine which Funds are involved. Since Roles are attributed per Fund, this would mean that a user with MSMA Send for AMIF could send a document dealing with only ERDF. Especially for sensitive audit documents this needs to be avoided.

Our current implementation is a tradeoff taking into account flexibility and security, and therefore will not always suit all organisations/users, but we think it is the…

It was decided that Member States should not be allowed to hide or delete sent documents in SFC2021. This is because once a document has been sent it is registered in many internal Commission workflow systems (and may trigger certain processes in these systems), and hiding or deleting in SFC2021 will not delete them in the other systems.

If the Member State sends the wrong document they should then send a correction document (if needed they will have to create a new version of the object and attach the new document).

The system requires that a document contains at least a MAIN or COVER_LETTER type of attachment.

If you want to attach a type “Annex” as the only attachment, you can give it the title "Annex", but the type should be MAIN.

Documents can either be Standalone documents or Referring documents. A Standalone document doesn't refer to anything. A Referring document refers to a CCI number or to an object existing in SFC2021.

For referential documents, when a CCI link is available it means that the document can be linked to a CCI number related to the type of document. CCI numbers are allocated before the related object is encoded in SFC2021. When a Programme (PRG) link is available it means that the document can be linked to a Programme already encoded in SFC2021.  

Columns 8 and 9 are editable in the following cases:

Columns 9 and 10 are editable in the following cases:

Columns 11, 12, 13 and 14 are editable in the following cases:

Columns 11 and 12 are editable in the following cases:

Columns 11, 12, 13 and 14 are editable in the following cases:

Columns 11 and 12 are editable in the following cases:

When an object is returned by the Commission in SFC2021 it will display as 'Current node' -> 'European Commission'. This is because the version that has been returned is no longer editable by the Member state and they must create a new version of the object in order to edit the information.

To search for information in SFC2021 you have two options:

1. General search by CCI:

   Click on the search icon in the top-right of the SFC2021 screen:

   

   Enter the CCI number and the system will find all objects and documents linked to the CCI:

    

2. Search for a specific object version:

   Go to the menu for the object you wish to search for. Hover over the column headers and click on the icon with three lines on any of the columns:

   

   Then click on the filter icon and enter the filter/search criteria:

   

Take a look at our Tips &…

The SFC2021 Support Team is not in charge of subscribing/unsubscribing any of its Users for the reception of automatic notifications generated by the system.

There are 2 options to be automatically notified:

1. By Object:

   Provided that the 'object' is not a standalone document, the concerned user can add his/her email address in the General >  Officials in charge section of the object (e.g. Operational/National Programmes, Implementation Reports etc ). :

   

   To remove/edit a User, go to the appropriate section, select the Official in Charge from the list and Edit or Delete the record as required.

    

2. By combined criteria:

   Each User can subscribe to the Utilities > Event Registration in order to receive automatic notifications generated by SFC2021 and select different event types, groups and filter them by EU Fund and/or CCI (depending on the assigned roles of the user's account):

   

   A detailed guide and video…

• Import from Excel is only available for selected and very few tables. Wherever the functionality is active, it will be indicated in the Quick Guides available in the Support Material section of our Portal.
• Export to Excel (Excel and CSV formats) is available on all Tables: 1. Right click on the Table / 2. Export / 3. CSV or Excel Export

…

SFC2021 enforces the "four-eyes" principle, which means that the user who last validated the Object cannot submit it. Two different users are required; one to validate and another to send.

According to Article 69(9) of Commission Implementing Regulation (EU) No 2021/1060 regarding the electronic data exchange system between the Member States and the Commission, one of the responsibilities of the Member State is “Ensuring the verification of information submitted by a person other than the person who entered the data for that transmission”

SFC2021 accepts a limited HTML formatting either when inputting the text or when a copy and paste is done. In order to count the characters, SFC2021 removes all HTML formatting tags, whitespaces, special characters that are non visible (like carriage return, tabulation/indentation, new line….) and only counts the remaining characters.

The rich text fields have no limitation concerning spaces. What needs to be respected is the number of characters without spaces.

Tip: Tools such as Word can be used to approximate as much as possible the SFC2021 character counting, only if the formatting is removed (I.e. save as plain text, format Unicode).