Have an objective look at the readability of your attachments. For example, is your pay slip easy to read: can you discern the income and the dates it is from, the salary payment date and the annual accrual of salary. 

Photographs taken of attachments and sent via Openetti, in particular, are among attachments of poor quality. In the examples below, we know that the first picture depicts the second page of an employment contract. But that is all you can make out in the contract. The second picture shows how a shadow can make it difficult to look at a picture on the computer screen. 

In applications and attachments sent by mail, notes made with, for example, a highlighter can muddle up the text when scanned or make it dark and difficult to read. Text written on dark post-it notes does not show properly after scanning and crinkly papers can be difficult to scan. An attachment that cannot be read cannot be used when processing an application. In these cases, we will request that you resend the attachment. 

2) Balance the working hours that you have reported in your application and those that are marked as paid in your pay slips

Make sure that the working hours reported in your application and the paid working hours in one or more of your pay slip attachments match. If you report 20 working hours in your application, your attached pay slips must contain 20 paid hours. If the information does not match, we will ask you for an account of why there is a discrepancy. You should also remember that you are responsible for correctly reporting your working hours and details of your wages. Please see instructions for reporting working hours on our website.

3) Carefully fill in all the requested information in your application

We understand that some questions in the application may seem pointless and filling in the basic information on your first application for earnings-related allowance unnecessary, especially if you have applied for earnings-related allowance from us before. However, it is important to keep your contact information up to date and, for example, notifying us of your correct bank account number is essential for paying the allowance.It might also seem strange to answer questions concerning business activities if you have never been engaged in business activity. In these situations, the answer “no” is just what we need to process your application. Openetti is an excellent service in this respect because it guides you in how to correctly fill out your application.

4) Additional information for your application

Are you working part-time or working short periods as a substitute for several employers? It might help process your application if your application contains information about how many hours you have worked each week for each employer. This speeds up verifying the information on working hours and wages. Balancing your hours will also help you to check that you have been paid correctly.

We would also like to bring up a minor environmental issue. If you mail your application, we request that you do not staple your application and attachments together, use a paper clip or a plastic folder. We are a paperless office and all applications and attachments arriving by mail will be scanned into our case management system. One stage of our work is taking out the staples and paper clips when the mail is opened. On an annual level we deliver a large amount of staples and paper clips into metal recycling, which means we can handle recycling but due to our paperless practices we do not reuse paper clips. Plastic folders end up as waste, meaning we do not reuse them due to our paperless practices.

How can we help you to make a quickly processable application? Are there any issues or situations that you have not found instructions for on our website? Please let us know how we can improve the instructions and content on our website!

Example 1 

Example 2