CA DE9C - Wage Plan Element is invalid error when uploading to reporting agency

What is causing the following error when uploading the electronic file to the reporting agency?

Wage Plan element is invalid - The value is invalid according to this datatype String

• Payroll
• California
• CA DE9C Report

Wage Plan was reporting as blank because a record existed in Employee User Defined Fields, but the Code field was blank.

Recommend deleting the Employee User Defined Fields records for Wage Plan.  Employee User Defined Fields should only be created for exception scenarios.  They are not necessary when ALL employees are always reported under the same Wage Plan.

1. Open Employee User Defined Fields Program
2. Search by Field Code ID (CAWP, CAW2 or CAW3)
3. Select Global and Delete

To determine a Wage Plan Code, the program first checks Employee User Defined Fields for a record with a Field ID Code of CAWP, CAW2 or CAW3.  If found, the Code on the Employee User Defined Fields record is assigned as the Wage Plan Code.  If no records are found for a particular employee in Employee User Defined Fields, the program will assign the employee to the Default Wage Code defined on the Employee tab of the California DE9C Report screen.  If no Default Wage Plan Code is defined, the employee is excluded from processing.

Once a Wage Plan Code has been assigned to each employee, the program compares the Wage Plan Code to the Inclusions range that’s been defined on the Employee tab of the California DE9C Report screen.  If the Wage Plan Code does not fall within the defined Inclusions range, the employee is excluded from processing. 

With this logic in place, it is only necessary to create an Employee User Defined Fields record for the exception cases and employees can be reported under multiple Wage Plan Codes, or they can be selected for reporting under a specific individual Wage Plan Code.