VETtrak AVETMISS Changes - 2020

This article details the changes made in VETtrak version 19.3 to accommodate the state and national changes to AVETMISS reporting requirements for 2020. 

Changes have been made to VETtrak to allow you to comply with AVETMISS reporting changes for 2020. You can continue to report 2019 data as normal, with the additional fields for 2020 being available so that you can enter data now for enrolments that start or continue into 2020.

• National AVETMISS Changes
• Victoria Changes
• Tasmania Changes
• Western Australia Changes
• Other Changes

National changes

• International funding sources. NCVER are splitting national funding source 30 "International client - other revenue" into two separate national funding sources from 2020:
  
  • 32 - "International offshore client - other revenue"
  • 31 - "International onshore client - other revenue"
  
  Note that VIC has already adopted this change in 2019. Since 30 will no longer be valid from 2020, during a 19.3 database update, any reportable enrolments that continue into 2020 with national funding 30 will be changed to 31. When doing a 2019 generation, VETtrak will automatically report national funding of 31 or 32 as 30 so that the enrolment is reported correctly in both 2019 and 2020. Corresponding changes have been made to the state funding sources in the various states that use these national funding sources (QLD, SA, NT, TAS, ACT).

Victoria changes

1. At school not stated. SVTS will no longer allow the "At school" flag in the NAT80 file to be "Not stated" from 2020.
   
   This is recorded within the Client Personal Wizard:
   
   
   Generate AVETMISS will report a validation error for this from 2020. The "At school" flag can be queried and bulk-updated for clients in Data Insights to allow you to find these. During the 19.3 database update, any client with an "At school" flag of "Not stated", that has a VIC reportable enrolment that continues into 2020 and has a "VET in schools" flag of Yes, will have their "At school" flag automatically updated to Yes.
   
   
2. No reporting of program enrolments with no activity. SVTS do not want a program enrolment to be reported until it has legitimate activity (ie. until it contains a result other than "Not yet started" or "Credit transfer" - indicating that proper training activity has taken place).
   
   When calculating missing program commencement dates, the start date of any units with an outcome of "Not yet started" will be ignored. This means that any enrolment that has only Not Yet Started results will not have a program commencement date calculated yet and will not be reported until one of the units is given a different result so that the program commencement date can be calculated.
   
   Note that Generate AVETMISS is not currently able to automatically exclude enrolments that have only Credit Transfer results - you will need to manage this by either not recording Credit Transfer results, or setting it to not reportable, until some other training activity is recorded on the enrolment.
   
   
3. Waiting for employer signoff outcome. A new outcome and result type for 79 "Waiting for employer signoff (Vic)" has been added:
   
   This should only be used from 2020 and is generally designed to indicate that assessed learning requires input from the employer before it can be finalised.
   
   
4. Exclude units from claiming/invoicing. SVTS now allows you to "opt-out" of receiving reject messages for reported data that cannot be claimed, to avoid cluttering your SVTS validation results with expected rejects. The "Purchasing contract schedule identifier" in the NAT120 is reported as "EXC" to exclude the unit from claim creation, and reported as "R38" to exclude the unit from claim confirmation/invoicing. There are two ways to report these claim exclusion codes in VETtrak:
   1. A new "Claim exclusions" option when generating AVETMISS in VIC allows you to choose to bulk-exclude claims for all Credit Transfer outcomes, RPL outcomes, Not Yet Started outcomes, and/or Withdrawn outcomes with 0 hours. Ticking these options will report the "EXC" claim exclusion code for all reported units with an outcome matching any of the options selected:
      
   2. You can exclude specific enrolments from claiming by using the new "Claims exclusion" drop-down on the VIC state page in the Enrolment wizard:
      
      You can also exclude specific units from claiming by using the new "Claims exclusion" column in the Edit AVETMISS Values wizard:
      
5. This functionality is available immediately. For more information, refer to this article.
   
   
6. Workplace ABN. A new "Workplace employer" drop-down has been added to the VIC state page in the Enrolment wizard:
   
   This allows you to select the employer that is providing workplace-based delivery or practical placement, to report as the "Workplace ABN" in the NAT120 file from 2020 (note the selected employer must have an ABN entered).
   
   Alternatively, you can tick the new "Use enrolment's employer as workplace employer" tickbox if you want to report the enrolment's employer as the "Workplace ABN":
   
   Currently this is only mandatory for enrolments ending in 2020 or later that have the "Free TAFE" waiver and the "Workplace-based" delivery mode is selected, but this may become mandatory for enrolments with a "Workplace-based" delivery mode in future.
   
   
7. Subject enrolment identifier. The "Enrolment identifier" is now called "Subject enrolment identifier", to better differentiate it from the "Program enrolment identifier".
   When you choose to generate a new Program Enrolment Identifier, all Subject Enrolment Identifiers in that program enrolment will also be re-generated.

Tasmania changes

1. Industry of employment and occupation. The "Industry of employment" and "Occupation identifier" fields are now available in the Client Personal wizard when the collection state is TAS:
   
   These fields are reported in the NAT80 file from 2020. Generate AVETMISS will report a warning if these fields are empty and the client's labour force status indicates they are employed, but Skills TAS are planning to make this an error in mid-2020 so you must enter this data for all employed students starting or continuing in 2020.
   
   
2. Program enrolments. TAS have adopted VIC's "program enrolment" concept from 2020. New "Program commencement date" and "Program enrolment status" fields have been added to the TAS state page in the Enrolment wizard:
   
   TAS enrolments that have the same client, report-as qualification and program commencement date share the same program enrolment information (you can use the Existing button to more easily link an enrolment to an existing program enrolment). You should normally leave the commencement date empty when adding enrolments, as Generate AVETMISS from 2020 will automatically populate this with the earliest unit start date (excluding not yet started results) the first time a unit in the program enrolment is reported. Generate AVETMISS from 2020 will automatically generate unique program enrolment identifiers and use them to link the NAT120 and NAT130 files, and a NAT130 record will be reported for each program enrolment even if there's no award yet. You must link awards to enrolments to correctly report them in the NAT130. TAS (unlike VIC) allows you to change the qualification or program commencement date for an existing program enrolment after it has been reported if you need to, while retaining the same program enrolment identifier, so VETtrak will allow you to do this.
   
   
3. Tuition and resource fees. TAS now require you to report the tuition and resource fees charged from 2020. The Enrolment wizard will now require you to enter at least one pricing item of type "Tuition fee" and one pricing item of type "Resource fee" into the pricing grid (the amounts can be 0 if there was no charge) for TAS reportable non-fee-for-service enrolments with a finish date in 2020 or later:
   
   Don't forget you can use Funding Models to set up pricing with multiple items and apply it to enrolments to make this process easier. Amounts entered at the enrolled unit level will be reported in the NAT120 file, and amounts entered at the enrolment level will be reported in the NAT130 file, from 2020.
   
   
4. Income contingent loan indicator. A new "Yes, training is being provided under a VET Student Loan" tickbox has been added to the TAS state page in the Enrolment wizard:
   
   This will be automatically ticked if you link the enrolment to a VET Student Loan course of study. This tickbox is reported as the "Income contingent loan indicator" in the NAT130 file from 2020.

Western Australia changes

These changes have been made to comply with version 3.4 of the RAPT specification and they take effect immediately.

1. Fee exemption. A new fee exemption C "Child in State Government Care" has been added:
   
   Both the Course Fee and Resource Fee will be reported as 0 for this fee exemption.
   
   
2. Gender X. A client's gender of Indeterminate/Intersex/Unspecified will be reported as 'X' instead of '@' as part of the WA RAPT export.
   
   
3. Study reason. The study reason 13 "To gain skills for community/voluntary work" has been added:
   
   
   
4. Non-assessable outcome. The WA Enrolment Export wizard will now report an error if an outcome is not assessable (3 or 4) and the fee exemption is not F. The Fix Units button can now correct this error by updating the fee exemption on units with these outcomes to F.
   
   
5. Superseded outcome. The 61 "Superseded" outcome will now be treated as a completed unit when validating whether all units were completed for an award. The Course Fee will now be reported as 0 for this outcome.
   
   
6. Not yet started delivery mode. An outcome of 105 "Not yet started" is now allowed to have a predominant delivery mode of Z "Not applicable".
   
   
7. Fee exemption $0 fees alert. The pricing page in the Enrolment wizard will now show a side-bar alert if the WA enrolment's selected fee exemption is one that will report $0 for the course and resource fees (currently F, V or C).
   

Other changes

1. Reported address for overseas students. The "Usual and postal addresses are overseas" tickbox on the address page in the Client Personal wizard has been changed to "This is an overseas onshore/offshore client". When this is ticked, it will no longer replace the address with the Not Specified/OSPC values and disable it. That means you can still enter an Australian address and use it everywhere in VETtrak as normal, but during AVETMISS generation, the usual and postal addresses will be reported as the Not Specified/OSPC values for any client that has this ticked.