Annual Accounts and Management Declaration(s) (EAGF/EAFRD) | 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

Please find in the document below a compilation of questions raised by Member States with the answers provided:

https://sfc.ec.europa.eu/system/files/documents/documents/qa-aa-and-md-reporting-fy2023.pdf

You should not include the Technical Assistance Budget code in their Annual Declaration XML file(s), the Technical Assistance amount will be automatically calculated by SFC2021.

However, after you have uploaded your Annual Declaration XML file(s), you will have to include the Technical Assistance Budget code in your Difference Explanation XML file(s) to explain the difference calculated by SFC for this Technical Assistance (with difference explanation code B02 ‘Rounding Error’).

In order not to have this error, you don’t have to include the TA in the Annual declaration XML file but you have to explain this difference for TA in your Difference explanation XML file, by adding this:

<difference>

        <budgetCode>080301010009000000000000000</budgetCode>

            <explanations>

              <explanation>

                <amount>-x.xx</amount>

           <code>B02</code>

       </explanation>

   </explanations>

</difference>

If you have already uploaded the Annual Declaration XML and the Difference Explanation XML files and you delete or re-upload only the Annual Declaration XML file (or only the Difference Explanation XML file), then the data of the related Difference Explanation XML file (Annual Declaration XML file) will also be deleted in the system (even if the XML file is still shown on screen).

So, you always have to re-upload both XML files!

To know, you can verify in the Annual Declaration section the XML files used to populate the table. They're displayed above the table:

…

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…

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). 

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).

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.