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  1. Availability and Onboarding
  • Welcome
  • Getting started
    • Availability and Onboarding
      • Light Availability Check
      • Full Availability Check
      • Onboarding
    • Salary Deduction
      • Deduction Instruction
      • Re-running Payroll
      • Deduction Payments and Reconciliation
      • Changes to Employee Status
  • API Reference
    • Authentication
    • Idempotency
    • Webhooks
      • Webhooks
    • Salary Deduction
      • Salary Deduction Data Request
      • Salary Deduction Confirmation Submission
  • Payroll Provider Reference Implementation
    • Light Availability Check
      POST
    • Full Availability Check
      POST
    • Salary Deduction Enablement
      POST
    • Payroll Information
      GET
    • Salary Deduction Employee Data Push
      POST
  • Schemas
    • Availability Check
      • Full Availability Check Request
      • Full Availability Check Response
      • Light Availability Check Request
      • Light Availability Check Response
    • Core
      • ProblemDetails
      • MetaData
      • Paged Response
    • Deduction Instructions
      • Salary Deduction Request
      • Salary Deduction
      • Confirmation Deduction Response
      • Salary Deduction Enablement Response
      • Employee Deduction Push Response
      • Employee Deduction Push Request
      • Salary Deduction Push
      • InstructionFile
      • InstructionItem
    • Payment Account
      • Payment Account
      • Payment Information
    • Payroll
      • Employee
      • Availability Payroll
      • Availability Employment
      • Availability Employer
      • BeneficiaryAccountResponse
      • Salary Deduction Confirmation Data Submission
      • Salary Deduction Confirmation Data Submission Response
      • Salary Deduction Data Request
      • Salary Deduction Data Response
      • Payroll
      • Employee Payroll
      • Employment
      • Employer
      • Pay Date
      • Salary Deduction Enablement Request
      • PayrollScheduleResponse
    • Webhooks
      • Employee Update Payload
      • WebHook
  1. Availability and Onboarding

Light Availability Check

About the Light Availability Check#

Billers use the Light Availability Check to check the likelihood that an Applicant can pay with Ontime. The Light Availability Check works without the Applicant needing to enter their National Insurance Number (NINO).
Billers don’t like asking for additional data points from Applicants before making an offer to the Applicant. That’s why we created the Light Match Availability Check.
To implement the Light Availability Check, we share an algorithm with our Payroll Provider partners. The algorithm requires only data points that Billers capture in existing application journeys. It returns a percentage likelihood that the Applicant has matched to an eligible Employee within the Payroll Provider’s clients’ Employee base.

Assumptions and prerequisites#

The Applicant is applying for a utility or credit product from a Biller (e.g. Thames Water, EON, Virgin Money, and others) which uses Ontime.
📌
Ontime's Partner Billers
Are regulated businesses - usually by the FCA or Ofgem
Have passed Ontime’s rigorous due diligence checks

Flow#

Overview#

Steps#

1

Biller trigger event#

Requirements
An Applicant is applying for a utility or credit product at a Biller. The Applicant has provided a number of data items to the Biller as part of the application process.
On submission of the application the Biller calls Ontime with known information about the Applicant:
Consideration
Data sharing is fully GDPR-compliant. The Employee is informed about the data sharing in the Biller Privacy Policy.
2

Availability Check API Call to Payroll Providers#

Requirements
The Ontime Platform calls each Payroll Provider to find which Payroll Providers are managing Payrolls containing the Applicant (as an Employee).
The Ontime Platform shares the same Applicant data with each Payroll Provider:
Light Availability Check Request

API Documentation
To help accelerate Payroll Provider adoption and implementation a reference RESTful specification is available here:
Light Availability Check
3

Payroll Provider Availability Search#

Requirements
3a The Payroll Provider searches for records with the same Date of Birth (DOB) as the Applicant:
100% match on Date of Birth: Go to step 3b
No match on Date of Birth: Return “No match” to Ontime.
3b The Payroll Provider runs the matching algorithm developed by Ontime to compare the applicant’s data against the DOB-matched records
The algorithm returns the Employee record with the highest likelihood of a match AND the match % likelihood
If all records have a match likelihood less than 50%, the Payroll Provider MUST return “No match”. End
3c The Payroll Provider verifies the relevant Employee is still being paid via the Payroll Provider:
No leave date and paid in latest payrun: Go to step 4
If the Employee is no longer being paid then the Payroll Provider MUST return “No Match”.
Considerations
Ontime has developed a Payroll Matching Algorithm which can be provided to the Payroll Provider. The matching algorithm accounts for (among other things) relationships between names (e.g. Mo and Mohamed) and the fact that postcodes with the Payroll Provider platform may often be out of date.
4

Payroll Provider Response#

Requirements
The Payroll Provider returns the percentate likelihood where a match has been found
Light Availability Check Response

5

Ontime communicates response to Biller#

Requirements
Ontime communicates to the Biller the likelihood of the Applicant having been found on one or more Payrolls.
No Employee information is passed to the Biller. The Payroll Provider is only confirming that they have, or do not have, a potential match with an Employee within a Payroll they manage.
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Full Availability Check