QUEST Revenue System

We usually devote our efforts on the Jobs Blog to job seekers, but today we’d like to share some information with employers and the business community about the QUEST Revenue System.

 
Posted by John R. Glennon 
Secretariat Chief Information Officer, Executive Office of Labor and Workforce Development

On December 7th, the Executive Office of Labor and Workforce Development launched the first phase of the Quality Unemployment System Transformation Program (QUEST).  The QUEST Revenue System consolidates what was once three filings with two agencies (DUA and DOR) into one quarterly filing.  This change allows employers and their agents to manage nearly all reporting transactions through a centralized and secure online self-service system, which will provide long-term efficiencies to the business community within Massachusetts. 

As would be expected in a major undertaking such as this, businesses and their agents have experienced some problems and delays during the implementation. We apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused businesses and their agents. We have been working diligently to address these challenges – in fact, updates to the application are instituted weekly to resolve the issues that employers have raised to date. As of this writing, over 150,000 employers are able to file and today we added 30 staff in customer support. And each week, we continue to monitor the system and make adjustments. In fact, the DUA actively communicated with employers and payroll representatives in designing and testing the QUEST Revenue System. 

Last week, employers were sent a letter notifying them about a two-week grace period for filing the 4th Quarter Employment and Wage Detail Report.  During this period, no penalties will be assessed and no interest will accrue. Employers can file and pay their UI contributions through February 16, 2010.  To date, over 75% of employers are able to file their 4th Quarter Report through their agents or through self-activating their QUEST account.  And nearly 10% of employers have completed the entire process, including making their UI Payments. 

To assist employers, quarterly Employment and Wage Detail Report filing instructions, user guides and other information are provided on the QUEST website at www.mass.gov/uima.  If you have any questions or need assistance, please call our Revenue Services Department at 617-626-5075.  If you would like to share your feedback, please comment here or send us feedback on our website, www.mass.gov/uima. 
 
The roll-out of the QUEST Revenue System marks a major milestone in our efforts to modernize our technology and improve the way we do business with employers across the Commonwealth.  This phase of QUEST is the first step towards a fully integrated system that can manage all unemployment functions. The overall QUEST initiative is the result of significant investments made by state and federal government, as well as several years planning.  QUEST will provide employers with complete and up-to-date account information and facilitate electronic processing.  QUEST also allows the DUA more efficient ways to process paperwork for employers who are unable to use electronic methods.  

Comments

[Peg]

Check out all the interest DUA is charging, going back 10-15 years. Thankfully we've saved records!

[Doug]

It seems like the whole mass.gov/dua has many incompetent people. The commonwealth could do better by hiring hundreds of the many competent people available and putting the morons at dua on "the rolls". I'm available.

Could someone please answer a phone call?

[Cathy]

Quest is not flexible with how it handles payments. Our company is self insured for unemployment claims and therefore two separate departments handle payroll taxes and unemployment charges. One department pays via electronic means while the other cuts a paper check. Quest will not allow us to pay a payroll tax in full if there is a credit available on the unemployment side.

[Kiley]

Does anyone have a problem with the percentage used to compute the unemployment tax owed for the first quarter 2010? On Quest this quarter my rate is over 11% and for the past 10 years it's been somewhere around 3%.

[Chris]

Ok, I finally got all 124 employees on record into the QUEST system and supposedly filed, paid and completed the whole damned thing today. I worked from 9:00 to 3:00 today with the telephone on speaker, waiting for them to pick up. After an hour and a half, picked up and started ringing. No one picked it up on their end for over 40 minutes; they left it ringing (and so did I). I finally called back and after another 40 minutes, someone disconnected me. I called back and waited another hour and a half for someone to pick up. When she did, I tried to explain that I copied their template, inserted my data, saved it as both a .txt and a .csv file and tried to upload. Every time I was told all records were in fatal error. She was less than helpful and when she tried to put me on hold, she disconnected me!!!

So, without the DUA’s help, here is what I did and found to work:

1. Copy their template and save it as a .csv on your computer.

2. In their template, highlight the data cells they provide as examples and under FORMAT, CELLS, select “Text”. Change all the cells to text before beginning anything else. There’s a reason; if you cut and paste Social Security numbers or any other data that begins with a zero, the zero will disappear.

3. If you use Quickbooks or another program that allows you to export payroll data, export to a new worksheet. You can cut and paste some of the data as needed, but make sure the zeros do not disappear.

4. Following their template, enter your Employer ID (your DUA number, not your Federal EIN), etc., etc., until you have each employee complete. Make sure under each month that a person worked there is either a 0 or a 1 to indicate they worked or not.

5. Enter your payroll data, but when you get to the column where you are asked to enter number of hours worked in the quarter, YOU MUST ROUND UP. QUEST will kick back any exact numbers (like 123.4 hours; you need to round it to 123 or it will not be accepted for that person).

6. SAVE YOUR WORK!!!

7. Do the file upload and, GOD willing, it will read the data and tell you if there are any errors. The good thing here is that it tells you which line and what item is in error. You can go back to your file, correct it and upload again.

Now, if the DUA had taken a couple simple steps, I would have been done last week.

First, they should put a bold note next to the “Manual” data entry selection to tell you that no more than 100 employees can be entered that way. “For employers with 101 or more employees, you must select File Upload”.

Second, the data template that we need to use should be clearly mentioned and linked when we choose “delimited” file upload. Instead, it’s a side-bar on a completely different web page. If you don’t know it’s there, you’ll never think to look for it.

Third, the template should clearly state to make sure all cells are in text format (Format-Cells-text) and not just tell us to save it as .csv or .txt. They should also clearly state that hours worked must be rounded up to a whole number.

I hope this all makes sense. If any of these ideas show up on their web page in the near future, I want full credit emblazoned across the page, plus a consulting fee paid to me for becoming a mind-reader.

[Diane Swartz]

Honestly, Who do you hire? There must be millions of great geeks out there who could have gotten this thing going. I've spent weeks trying to get on Quest. I've spent hours on hold trying to reach the help desk. My phone does not hold a charge long enough to be on hold for more than 1.5 hours at a time, so I can never get help. It was a good idea, but why do you have to be everything bad about a bureaucracy?

[Bruce]

I've read that you've been developing this system since 2007, but I still don't understand why you didn't just update the system that was working perfectly nicely at DOR. Why must I now log into two different web sites to submit the UI and wage withholding information? The old site had explanations, it had a flexible file upload system, it was compact and easy to use, and it was at least partially integrated with the DOR reporting. I could easily pay online (now I have to mail a paper check or submit a payment from my bank via ACH???). And the old system was available 24 hours a day (why is the Quest system only running 7AM-7PM? I work in the day and do my accounting in the evening.) Could we just go back to the old system? I'm a software engineer, I use professional accounting packages, and I'm not entirely ignorant - the old system was better.

[Scott M Sawyer]

Why are you being so Soviet Union about this disaster?...Enough with the Iron fist, government knows best, you will submit attitude

Do the proper thing and suspend mandatory Efile of DUA for a year and fix this broken system...

And stop censoring the constructive and well deserved criticism...Its not that we need more training So holding training seminars is ineffective...Your goal is to increase compliance at the cheapest cost and make compliance easier...You have not achieved that goal on any level...You dont need to patronize us... we get it... many of us have been complying with tax laws and filing requirements for 30 years...We have the experience and technical expertise.

We are trying to tell you to fix this.. Is any body home?

[Susanne Wickham]

I have never encountered such a disater in implementing a payment system. I have been in the payroll processing business for nearly 20 years and have owned my own payroll firm for 11. I have enrolled my clients in other states and never had an issue. The waste and lack and of planning astounds me. It is my understanding that the DUA worked closely with ADP and Paychex... what about the smaller firms that actually are Massachusetts based firms? Have you ever heard the phrase "beta testers?"

[Chris]

It gets better; I finally found out how to "convert" my Excel spreadsheet into their .csv and .txt file formats, but every time I try to upload, it tells me every field is a fatal error and rejects my upload.

So, now not only can I not manually enter the data, my file upload is not accepted. Give me a fax number and I'll send you the data and you can deal with it. I'm sick of this. I have now been on hold for five days. Today, from 9:00 to 12:00 (so far) no one has picked up. Monday, when I did get a human, she was less than helpful. Then, she reminds me the due date is the 16th!! Like I care. At this point, you'll take it when you straighten out this garbage.

[Scott M Sawyer]

Dont hit enter or all your 3 hours of data entry is lost...Cant get back to make a simple edit...dont hit save (What?)

Not available after 7:00pm or on weekends...Even your software keeps government hours...Why put it on line at all.

Heres a good tip...the whole state has microsoft excel..why not make an upload to your Quest able to handle a simple excel file? DOR has done this with their W-2s and guess what? it actually works.

You have increased penaties for non compliance and then made it harder to comply...This is just a trap for the unwary...

You need to immediately suspend mandatory Quest filing until you have fixed this disaster..The "Quality" in Quest is a joke...very unprofessional...

Government power at its worst

[Chris]

Nice to see you didn't want to post my complaints. I've been on hold with DUA for FOUR DAYS AND NO ONE PICKS UP. Is 617-626-5243 just a fake number?

This is ridiculous. If it were us doing this to you, there would be fines and penalties left and right. You should be ashamed.

[Chris]

QUEST is a waste of money. I have been on hold for three days trying to do this stupid filing. I have 125 people who were paid in the 4th Qtr. I did as I was told and started the filing. I HAND-ENTERED the first 100 and then was told that that is the maximum number of lines!! I saved it and went into immediate phone hold with the DUA for over 57 minutes the first time. By that time, my login timed out and all 100 were erased.

I have been on hold for several hours this week and still no one has picked up. If you have an address for the DUA, please send it to me and I will drive my paper reports to them and let them figure it out. Yes, there is a way to do a file upload, but no one has instructions on how to upload the data from Excel once it has been exported from Quickbooks (the format is not the "required" format).

So, once again the government has figured out how to waste money. Thanks.

[Dorothy Meade]

I am amazed that you decided to change the whole system at all. The previous system was working fine, was user friendly, simple and NOT time consuming. There has to be a VERY IMPORTANT reason to make a major change. The cost involved must be staggering, although the Commonwealth claims "lack of funds" for Police, Fire and Safety! I can only think this was a bad way of creating jobs. It should not take 17 pages to ACTIVATE an account in order to file state payroll forms and pay the taxes. When this process was designed, the small business employer was not considered. Many do not have computers and do not know how to use them. This makes the suggestion to use the library computer not a viable choice. The time involved is both costly and frustrating! Even those who answer questions on your telephone "HELP" line want this to go away. After starting the form, you come to an area that requires calling for assistance. After you wait on hold, the page expires and you have to start again. Have also been told that the actual filing process is not user friendly either.

[Rick Swanborg]

Annoyed and confused. I have been happily using Intuit Payroll for 10 years which does all of this for me. So why now am I being asked to do this? All the information needed is at Intuit. Am I missing something?

[MT]

I've been battling this for two weeks now. I received the emailed notification request and attempted to logon. It would not accept my logon or password, telling me to contact my administrator (who is me). So, once I was able to find a number to call on the website, I did so and ended up being put in the cue for almost two hours before hanging up. At my second attempt at calling I did get a human being within 20-minutes who said our company wasn't registered. Our company was registered, I did it myself. He then gave me a new password and told me that a permanent password would be emailed to me. Well, three days later, I'm still waiting.

Oh and you might ask, if you finished the process, do you really need the password right now? Yes, because I didn't finish the process, an error popped up and I couldn't get back in.

[Debra Hill]

NONE of our clients can upload their state unemployement.
NO ANSWER from support in Mass...the phone just stays on hold.

Typical beaurocrats.... Blah Blah Blah

[Maureen]

This is incredible! The Commonwealth at it's best! Something that used to 5 minutes has taken 3 hours and I have not even gotten past page 2. Worst system ever, no user guides, had to go back to Mass.gov to get 17 pages of instructions, you can't contact anyone by phone (8hrs. on hold the other day). PLEASE FIX IT. You make it difficult enough for employers to function in this state.

[Michelle]

I am amazed that you decided to change the whole system at year end....what were you thinking?

[jik]

Wow, talk about spin.

The QUEST rollout was a disaster. You're not supposed to need "udpates to the application... instituted weekly to resolve... issues." You're supposed to do enough testing and bug fixing to ensure that the application works properly when you release it.

Here's the extraordinarily negative experience I had trying to use QUEST:

http://blog.kamens.brookline.ma.us/~jik/wordpress/2010/01/14/new-massachusetts-unemployment-insurance-employer-web-site-crashes-and-burns-upon-launch/

Judging from the feedback I've received in response to my blog posting and submission to the RISKS Digest, I'm hardly the only person who feels like the rollout was a disaster.

Not that I expect you to actually approve this comment and let others see it or anything.