ODJFS Checklist

This document provides the steps to generate the ODJFS report for verification purposes, checking the report, post adjustments if needed, creating the submission file and submitting it to ODJFS.

ODJFS Facts

  • The ODJFS Report program generates a report of the number of weeks worked, wages, and ODJFS taxable wages for each employee for the quarter.
  • This information is required for unemployment wages reporting. 
  • Report uses Legal Name on Employee screen, if entered.  If no Legal Name is entered, it uses the Name fields.
  • 1. Generate the ODJFS Report for verification purposes.
    • Go to the Reports Tab and choose ODJFS Reporting/ODJFS Report
      • Select appropriate year
        • Select appropriate quarter

          1st Quarter (January - March)

          2nd Quarter (April - June)

          3rd Quarter (July - September)

          4th Quarter (October - December)

      • Select from sort options
        • Employee ID
        • Employee Name
    • Click Generate Report
    • Can be run as many times as necessary until all information is correct and before the submission file is generated.
  • 2. Verify Wages are Correct
    • QTD ODJFS Wages (second wage column) should equal the gross of all employees marked as ODJFS Reportable in their Employee screen.
      • To verify, run an Employee Earnings Register or Quarter Report for all employee for the quarter. 
        • The QTD Gross Wages on either of those reports should match your QTD ODJFS Wages. 
        • If you have employees that you don't report to ODJFS, example could be student workers, that could be your difference. 
        • To verify, if you have those employees in one pay group, go back and run the Employee Earnings Register for just that pay group, then subtract that amount from the QTD amount from either the total gross from the Employee Earnings Register or the Quarter Report you ran for all employees.  If you do not have these employees in one pay group, you can select them individually for the report and run the report for just those selected.
      • If you find that your amounts do not match, you may have employees not listed on your report because their ODJFS Reportable flag is not marked on their Employee screen, or it was marked after their first pay and the amounts on the report only include part of their gross.
        • To find these employees go to Core>Employee.
          • Use the More button to add ODJFS Reportable, ODJFS Hire Date, Last Paid Date and State.
          • In the Last Paid Date use the filter for the beginning and ending date of the quarter, for example 01/01/YY..03/31/YY, this will list just employee that were paid this quarter.
          • In the ODJFS Reportable filter enter the letter f.  This will pull up anyone that is marked False to not report.  If you do have employees that are marked false correctly you can ignore them, but look for employees that should be marked 'true'.
          • If you do not find any not marked, then look for employees that could have been marked late.  Enter the same date filter in the ODJFS Date field, example 01/01/YY..03/31/YY.
          • Look at each employee listed and make sure the total gross wages from the Employee Earnings Register or Quarter Report are reported on the ODJFS Report.  If no wages or only part of their wages are reported due to marking their ODJFS Reportable flag late in the quarter you will need to make an adjustment to their ODJFS Wages.
            • To make an adjustment to Wages go to Core/Adjustments.  
            • The Type of adjustment is ODJFS Total Gross.
            • The amount is what you want to add to the report.  
            • The Date needs to be a date within the quarter.


      • Generate the ODJFS Report again to check your adjustment.  
      • Repeat these steps until all employees are entered and the QTD ODJFS Wages reflect the correct total.


    • QTD Gross Wages Paid (first wage column) should equal the gross of all Ohio Resident employees marked as ODJFS Reportable in their Employee screen.
      • If your QTD Gross Wages Paid (first wage column) and QTD ODJFS Wages (second wage column) match you can move on to YTD Taxable Wages below.  
      • If you need to verify the difference between these two amounts for your employees that live out of the state of Ohio follow the next steps.
        • Go to Core>Employee.  
          • In the Last Paid Date use the filter for the beginning and ending date of the quarter, for example 01/01/YY..03/31/YY, this will list just employee that were paid this quarter.
          • In the State enter I (for Indiana) or M (for Michigan), or any other states you may have employee addresses listed for.
          • Once you have a list of those employees, go to the Employee Earnings Register or Quarter Report for the quarter to see that their total gross amount is the difference between QTD Gross Wages Paid (first wage column) and QTD ODJFS Wages (second wage column) on the ODJFS Report.


    • YTD Taxable Wages (third wage column) is a calculated value based on the YTD wages for ODJFS purposes.  The ODJFS taxable wage base is $9,000 currently and has been since 2020.

      • If the district is a contributing employer they are charged a fee.  If an employee has reached $9,000.00 in wages for the year, the contributing employer no longer has to pay the fee that is associated with ODJFS. Therefore the 0 in the YTD Taxable column would be correct.
      • You may also see partial amounts after the 1st quarter when the last part of the $9,000 is being reported.  For example, in the first quarter $8,000 was reported.  The second quarter would only report $1,000 to total for the year $9,000
  • 3. Verify Weeks are Correct

    What are ODJFS Weeks?

    • A qualifying week is any week in which an employee has worked at least part of a day.
    • For ODJFS purposes, a week is counted if the Saturday ending the week falls within the reporting quarter.  Example, April 6th is a Saturday, that week, March 31- April 6, is the first week count in the 2nd Quarter.
    • The maximum number of weeks for any quarter is the number of Saturdays contained within it. This maximum may vary for each quarter of the year.
    • Generally, the count is 13, however if there are 14 Saturdays in the Quarter, the maximum weeks would be 14.  If there are only 12 Saturdays the max would be 12.
    • The count of weeks looks at all of these for each employee to count weeks.

      • Calendars - Work days, Holidays, Calamity Days, Make-Up Days.

      • Attendance/Substituting Days with in the current quarter

      • Core/Adjustments to ODJFS Weeks.

    • Important!

      • ODJFS Report does NOT look at the Archive Status of an employee.  This means employees that are archived could still show up on your report.
      • Calendar Start Dates and Calendar Stop Dates in the Compensations tell the software when to start and stop ODJFS weeks count. 
        • If you don't have a Start Date to start the count you will have zero weeks!
        • If you don't have a Stop Date to stop the count you will have too many weeks!
      • Weeks are only counted once even with a combination of Calendar Work Days and Attendance Days.
    •  If weeks need adjusted you can use Core/Adjustments to add or subtract weeks.
      • To make an adjustment to Wages go to Core/Adjustments.  

      • The Type of adjustment is ODJFS Weeks.
      • The amount is the number of weeks you want to add on or subtract (use negative) off the report.  
      • The Date needs to be a date within the quarter.

Weeks with no Wages, and Wages with no Weeks

  • The week count is not checking that the employee was paid in the quarter just that they had a work day in the quarter. This means you could have a week count but no wages.
  • Wages could also be paid without a week count. For example, a sub works the last count week of March but does not get paid until the first pay in April.  This would depend on your pay periods and pay dates. 
    • Paid in month 1, 2, 3 - to get this we first determine if the ODJFS reportable employee was paid in the quarter. This is done by searching the history to find the payrolls the employee paid in the quarter. We then use the period beginning and ending dates of the payrolls to determine if a payroll they were paid in included the 12th of the given month. If it did then they are flagged as being paid in that month.  Also, check Pay Group date ranges, these can be different for different Pay Groups, view Payroll Reports to see this detail.

    • Total employees paid 12th of Month 1, 2, 3 looks at what the current 'ODJFS Reportable' flag is set at for the employee's paid during those months.  If this flag was changed during those months, this would affect the count and make a difference between the Pay Report ODJFS count and the ODJFS Report count. An Audit Report can be ran to determine if flag was changed.  Also, looks to include an employee if their ' number of weeks' is greater than 0 or their 'QTD ODJFS wages' is greater than zero.

  • 4. Run the report one last time to verify that all data is correct before moving on.


  • 5. Create Submission File.
    • Select appropriate year
    • Select appropriate quarter

      1st Quarter (January - March)

      2nd Quarter (April - June)

      3rd Quarter (July - September)

      4th Quarter (October - December)

    • Select from sort options
      • Employee ID
      • Employee Name
    • Transmitter's Name - will automatically populate from System/Configuration/ODJFS Configuration
    • Transmitter's Phone Number - will automatically populate from System/Configuration/ODJFS Configuration
    • Transmitter's Phone Extension -  will automatically populate from System/Configuration/ODJFS Configuration
    • Transmitter's Email - will automatically populate from System/Configuration/ODJFS Configuration
    • Click Generate Submission File
    • Save file to your computer


  • 6. Submit File
    • The Source (Ohio Department of Job and Family Services)
    • Use the file type of ICESA.