Record of Employment Canada: ROE Web, Codes, Deadlines

An ROE deadline can arrive before the final payroll review is complete. Confirm the interruption date, pay period, earnings and hours early enough to file the correct record.

What Is a Record of Employment in Canada?

Service Canada uses the ROE to decide whether a person is eligible for EI benefits, what the benefit amount will be and how long benefits last. The reason code must accurately describe the situation, but Service Canada, not the employer's code alone, decides EI entitlement.

You complete the ROE even if the employee does not plan to apply for EI. An employer needs to issue ROEs only for employees who receive insurable earnings and work insurable hours. If you are unsure whether someone's earnings are insurable, the Canada Revenue Agency can give an insurability ruling; the Service Canada ROE guide explains how to ask.

There are two formats. An electronic ROE goes to Service Canada through ROE Web, either by uploading ROEs from compatible payroll software or by entering the data in the online form, or through Secure Automated Transfer run by a payroll service provider. A paper ROE is a one-page form in triplicate: Part 1 goes to the employee, Part 2 to Service Canada and Part 3 stays in your records (ROE guide). Service Canada encourages electronic filing and still offers paper forms. If you file electronically you do not need to print a paper copy for the employee, who can view the ROE in My Service Canada Account.

When You Actually Need to File One

An ROE isn't only for terminations. You need to file one any time there's an interruption of earnings. An interruption of earnings occurs when an employee has had or is anticipated to have 7 consecutive calendar days with no work and no insurable earnings from the employer. It also occurs when an employee's salary falls below 60% of their regular weekly earnings and the separation is due to illness, injury or quarantine, pregnancy, parental leave, or providing care or support to a critically ill or injured family member, and whenever an employee starts receiving wage loss insurance payments.

That covers a lot of situations people don't think about:

• Termination (with or without cause)
• Layoff (temporary or permanent)
• Resignation
• Maternity or parental leave
• Illness or injury leave
• Retirement
• Leave of absence (unpaid)
• Strike or lockout
• Seasonal work ending
• Return to school

The seasonal one catches employers every year: a resort that closes for the off-season owes an ROE for every seasonal worker. A ski resort with a large headcount swing can file many in a single week.

The ROE guide also lists situations that are easy to miss:

• Service Canada asks for one. The common case is an employee with two jobs who has an interruption of earnings in one of them and applies for EI. Service Canada then needs an ROE from the job the person still holds.
• Your pay period type changes. You issue ROEs for all employees even though nobody has stopped working.
• Part-time, on-call and casual workers. You do not issue an ROE for every gap. You do issue one when the worker asks for it and an interruption has occurred, when the worker is no longer on your active employment list, when Service Canada asks, or when the worker has done no work and earned no insurable earnings for 30 days.
• Change of ownership or bankruptcy. ROEs are usually required for all employees. The guide waives them only when there is no break in earnings, the payroll records are available to the new employer or receiver, and that party agrees to issue a single ROE covering both periods if needed.

The guide also carves out exceptions to that first trigger, so confirm your situation before skipping an ROE. A closure for a regular annual vacation period does not trigger one when employees remain employed under their collective agreement or contract and the vacation money is held in a trust fund run by a union or third party. Employees on non-standard work schedules, such as firefighters, miners and some health-care workers, are treated as continuing to be employed during scheduled days off. Commission salespeople and real estate agents have their own interruption tests.

For a termination, the ROE reports what you paid or will pay because of the separation. The notice, severance and final pay rules that decide those amounts are covered in the severance pay guide, so this page only covers how the payments are reported on the form.

The Deadline Nobody Has Patience For

An employer filing a Record of Employment electronically on a weekly, biweekly or semi-monthly payroll must issue it within 5 calendar days after the end of the pay period in which the employee's interruption of earnings occurs. On a monthly payroll, or a payroll with 13 pay periods a year, the deadline is the earlier of 5 calendar days after the end of that pay period or 15 calendar days after the first day of the interruption of earnings. An employer issuing a paper Record of Employment must issue it within 5 calendar days of the first day of the interruption of earnings, or of the day the employer becomes aware of the interruption, whichever applies. Calendar days, not business days, on the electronic side. For an electronic weekly, biweekly or semi-monthly ROE, a Wednesday period end generally produces a Monday deadline.

On a monthly payroll the second date usually bites first when someone leaves early in the month, because the end of the pay period is still weeks away. Use the current ROE guide for the exact rule rather than importing a filing threshold from another program.

Two examples, with hypothetical dates, using the same method as the guide's own worked examples.

• Biweekly payroll. The pay period ends Friday 16 October 2026 and the interruption occurs in it. Five calendar days after 16 October is Wednesday 21 October 2026, so that is the electronic ROE deadline.
• Monthly payroll. The interruption begins Wednesday 4 November 2026 and the pay period ends 30 November. Five calendar days after the period ends is 5 December, but 15 calendar days after 4 November is 19 November. The earlier date wins, so the deadline is Thursday 19 November 2026.

How to File an ROE Online with ROE Web

ROE Web is Service Canada's secure application for creating and submitting ROEs online, and one submission can carry up to 1,200 ROEs (Service Canada). It is an employer account that your organization sets up once, not a single login you share. These are the steps, in order, with the Service Canada page each one comes from.

1. Register the organization. The person who will manage the account signs in through a Sign-in Partner or a GCKey, creates a professional profile, then creates the organization's profile and validates it with the CRA business number. This person becomes the Primary Officer. Source: Steps to register for ROE Web.
2. Verify identity and activate, and start early. The Primary Officer verifies identity online through a CRA My Account or in person with two pieces of acceptable identification. If you are new to CRA My Account, Service Canada says registration can take 5 to 10 business days. Service Canada then mails an authorization code to the business owner or chief executive officer, and asks you to activate the account within 90 days of receiving it. Do all of this before the first ROE is due. Same source.
3. Set up roles. The Primary Officer can invite representatives, each with their own sign-in. Access is set for each CRA business number as None, Read (view only) or Read/Write (view, issue and amend), and folders can restrict which ROEs a user sees. A payroll provider issuing ROEs for a client also completes the ROE Web Client Employer Consent Form, signed by its Primary Officer and the client, and keeps a copy on file. Sources: ROE Web administration guide and the registration page above.
4. Choose how you will submit. Use the online form for one-off ROEs and corrections, and the payroll extract upload when your payroll software can export the file. Keying each ROE by hand is where data-entry errors creep in.
5. Submit and keep the confirmation. The confirmation page shows the ROE's serial number and whether Service Canada accepted it. Regular ROEs issued in ROE Web get a serial number starting with W or M. You can download a PDF copy, and nothing needs to be mailed. A draft you save but do not submit is kept for 15 days and has no serial number until it is submitted. Source: ROE Web user guide, completing a single ROE.

Method 1: The ROE Web online form

Choose "Create a new ROE (Online Form)". Employer details are pre-filled from your registered business profile. You enter the employee's details, the pay period type, the dates, Block 15A hours and Block 15C earnings for each pay period, and ROE Web calculates Block 15B. Pick the Block 16 reason code, correct any fields marked in red, then confirm the declaration and submit. New and low-volume users can use the ROE Web Assistant, which uses plain-language field names instead of block numbers. Source: ROE Web user guide, completing a single ROE.

Method 2: Upload a payroll extract file

If your payroll software can export a ROE payroll extract, you upload the file instead of keying each ROE. ROE Web validates every ROE in it. A ROE that passes is saved as a draft, which you review and submit with the attestation box ticked. A ROE that fails opens in the online form with the errors marked in red. A ROE that is rejected, usually because of an invalid or missing CRA business number or one your user cannot access, has to be fixed at the source and sent again. Track each file under View Payroll Extract files, where the status reads Received, Processing, Process Completed, Invalid File or Transfer Failed. Source: ROE payroll extract guide.

One caution. Service Canada's extract guide says changes can be imported back into your payroll system only if your payroll software supports it, so do not assume a correction made in the online form reaches your payroll records. Fix the data in payroll first where you can, so the next extract does not repeat the error.

Amending an ROE you have already submitted

You cannot cancel an ROE once it is issued. If it was issued in error, or you need to change, correct or update what it says, you issue an amended ROE. In ROE Web, choose Amend from the issued ROE. The original serial number moves into Block 2 of the amended record, which gets a new serial number. Complete every block on the amended ROE, not only the blocks that changed. The SIN is the one item an amendment cannot change. Service Canada can also ask you to amend. Sources: the amendment section of the ROE guide and the ROE Web user guide above.

Insurable Hours and Earnings: Blocks 15A, 15B and 15C

Block 15A is total insurable hours, Block 15B is total insurable earnings, and Block 15C is insurable earnings by pay period. All three work from your pay period type in Block 6, and they do not all look back the same distance. Starting with the most recent pay period, count full, partial and nil pay periods (a nil pay period is one where the employee did not work and received no insurable earnings), up to a maximum that depends on the pay period type.

Source: the maximum-pay-period tables for Blocks 15A, 15B and 15C in Service Canada's block-by-block instructions. Use fewer periods if the period of employment is shorter than the maximum. If you issue electronic ROEs you must always complete Block 15C, with the equivalent of 53 weeks of pay-period data. On a paper ROE you only have to complete it when an employee had a nil pay period, although Service Canada encourages it because the benefit rate uses the employee's best weeks of earnings.

In Block 15C, enter the final pay period first, then work backward, with "0.00" for any nil period. Include dollars and cents, do not round, and include any insurable separation payments from Block 17 in the first pay period. Report all insurable earnings, not only the amount up to the EI maximum.

If an employee is paid only on commission, or on salary plus irregularly paid commission, or your pay periods vary in length, enter weekly as the pay period type in Block 6 and average the earnings over the period of employment using the weekly averaging formula in the ROE guide. If you change your pay period type, issue an ROE for the earlier period.

Reason Codes: Getting the Letter Right

Block 16 records the reason for issuing the ROE. Choose the code that accurately describes why the interruption occurred. An incorrect code can require correction and delay processing, but it does not decide the employee's EI entitlement. Service Canada treats knowingly entering a false or misleading reason as a serious offence that can lead to fines or prosecution. If you issue the ROE for two or more reasons, enter the code that applies first.

The most commonly used reason codes:

Code C (return to school) is being phased out (ROE guide, Block 16). For an employee leaving to return to school, use Code E and select the return-to-school option; for government-approved apprenticeship training, use Code J. For how Codes F and P fit with EI weeks and job-protected leave, see the parental leave guide for employers.

Block 18 comments deserve restraint. Service Canada says a comment takes the ROE out of its automated processing and sends it to an officer for manual review, which slows it down and can mean a phone call to you (ROE guide, Block 18). Use Block 18 only where the guide asks for it or the situation is exceptional.

For a disputed resignation or dismissal, document what happened before choosing E or M. Service Canada may seek information from both parties.

Penalties: Not a Bluff

The penalty comes from the Employment Insurance Act. Failing to issue an ROE is an offence under the general EI Act penalty: $100 to $2,000 or up to six months in jail, or both. That is a general offence provision with a fine range, not a fixed dollar amount stacked per ROE; confirm the current wording directly with the Employment Insurance Act or your Service Canada correspondence before budgeting around it.

The exposure is not only the fine. Service Canada uses the ROE to decide eligibility, the benefit amount and the number of weeks, so a late or inaccurate record delays a person who may be waiting on income support. Do not assume a warning will precede enforcement. Follow the filing obligation and respond to Service Canada requests using the facts of the case.

Five ROE Checks Before Filing

Use these checks alongside the official ROE guide before submitting.

1. Wrong Insurable Hours (Block 15A)

Insurable hours aren't always the same as hours worked. The last day for which the employee was paid can fall after the last day worked, because paid leave counts, and that later date goes in Block 11. Paid vacation leave, paid sick leave and paid statutory holidays can generate insurable hours under the applicable allocation rules. A vacation payout is not automatically equivalent to hours of leave taken. If your time tracking system only captures hours physically worked, your ROE will undercount, and your employee may not qualify for EI benefits they're entitled to.

2. Incorrect Final Pay Period Earnings

Report separation payments using the guide's Block 17 instructions and Annex 1. Vacation pay belongs in Block 17A, statutory holiday pay in 17B, and other separation amounts in 17C. Some payments also belong in insurable earnings in Blocks 15B and 15C. Determine insurability and allocation by payment type rather than excluding every separation payment from Block 15. A statutory holiday that falls after the last day for which the employee was paid goes in Block 17B with its date, and its pay is added to the final pay period in Blocks 15B and 15C.

3. Leaving Out Nil Pay Periods

A pay period in which the employee did not work and received no insurable earnings still counts toward the number of periods you report, and it is entered as 0.00 in Block 15C. Skipping it shifts every earlier period out of position and misstates the totals.

4. Counting Money Paid in Error

Blocks 15B and 15C should show what the employee actually earned. Do not include an amount you paid by mistake. If you later decide you cannot recover it, it becomes a taxable benefit and goes on the ROE in the pay period in which you make that decision (ROE guide).

5. Missing the Interruption Trigger

An employee on unpaid leave is still employed, so nobody files. Once the interruption-of-earnings test above is met, an ROE is required regardless. The gap usually sits between leave tracking and payroll.

Where HR and Payroll Data Meet the ROE

An ROE needs a last day worked, an interruption date, insurable hours and earnings by pay period, and a reason code. If those sit in two systems, someone re-keys them against a calendar-day clock. If one employee record holds them, payroll reviews a generated ROE and the Block 16 reason code is the only field that needs judgment. Record the departure reason on the day it happens, not the day you file. Multi-entity and seasonal employers should track each entity's interruptions and reconcile hours and earnings to its payroll records. If your current system cannot produce the ROE from the payroll record on the last day worked, that is worth a walkthrough.