NYSDOL certified payroll · upload error
Upload rejected: DOB and SSN Last 4 Digits
Your file has to carry either a date of birth or the last four of the social security number for each employee. Never both, never neither.
The state's guidance is explicit: "The employee data must include a value in either dateOfBirth or ssnLast4; you cannot include a value in both elements."
Why your XML editor said the file was fine
The schema permits both. The portal does not.
In the published XSD, dateOfBirth and ssnLast4 are both optional elements. Nothing in the schema stops you supplying both, so validating against the XSD in an editor passes cleanly — and then the upload fails.
This is worth knowing generally: passing XSD validation is not the same as passing the portal. Several of the portal's rules exist only in its own logic.
The fix
Pick one identifier and strip the other.
Most payroll exports carry both fields, so whichever you choose, the other has to be removed during the export-to-XML step rather than left blank. An empty element still counts as present.
If you are using the last four digits, note the format is a four-digit string — a full SSN will fail, and so will a value that lost a leading zero on the way through a spreadsheet.
Want the file built for you?
Send one project's payroll export for one week and we'll send back a portal-ready XML file, plus a written list of anything else that would have been rejected. Free, no signup — we're building the tool that does this automatically and we would rather learn the edge cases on real payroll.