Social Insurance Agency – setting up authorised access electronically

DIGITAL ACCOUNTING

In this article we describe in detail how to handle communication with the Social Insurance Agency (Sociálna poisťovňa) electronically and simply, from the comfort of your home. Electronic communication with the Social Insurance Agency works on the basis of a power of attorney. You, as the company’s managing director, authorise BJ Accounting Services, which will send all the necessary statements and forms on your behalf. This method of communication has long been the most reliable and is not changing.

What is changing, however, is the way this communication is set up. Until now it required a personal visit to a branch of the Social Insurance Agency. We had to go to the branch, and you had to deliver a power of attorney to us with your signature certified by a notary. This caused unnecessary costs and lost time on both sides. From now on, all of this communication can be arranged electronically and conveniently via the www.slovensko.sk portal.

To start with, check that you have everything you will need:

• an identity card with a chip,
• a card reader for the identity card,
• an activated qualified electronic signature (KEP),
• a few applications, which you can find here https://www.slovensko.sk/sk/na-stiahnutie,
• the Disig Web Signer browser plugin,
• and last but not least, steady nerves and enough luck for the most expensive portal, slovensko.sk, to work properly.

In this article I will take you through the whole procedure, using the Chrome browser (version 97.0.4692.99), the Chrome plugin called Disig Web Signer 1.0.7 and the D.Suite/eIDAS application package, version 1.0.29.

First you need to establish whether you are a new employer that has not yet come into contact with the Social Insurance Agency, or whether you are already an employer and are perhaps just changing your accounting firm or payroll accountant. This will determine the documents we send you, which will need to be attached to the application.

The procedure for sending the documents is then the same. We will deliver the documents to you in PDF format, and you will not need to make any changes to them. If you wish, you can – but do not have to – sign the power of attorney “with a pen” and scan the document to PDF. You will sign this document later with your KEP using your identity card anyway, so you can skip this step.

1. Now go to the www.slovensko.sk portal, with your identity card in the reader and logged in to the eID application using your 6-digit security personal code (BOK) (https://www.slovensko.sk/sk/navody/postup-pri-prihlaseni-portal).
2. From the side menu, select General agenda (Všeobecná agenda).

3. Search for the service provider “Sociálna poisťovňa”.
4. Log in with your Slovak identity card. You will again need your 6-digit BOK code.
5. Select the entity you are representing. In this case, select the entity for which you are arranging electronic communication.
6. Once you have selected the entity, you will be redirected to an electronic form. This form has no particular structure. It is free text that you send to the Social Insurance Agency. You do not need to fill in anything in the message details fields. Move straight on to the Electronic document (Elektronický dokument) section.
7. In the subject and text fields, enter the text we will send you by e-mail together with the attachments needed to arrange this communication.

8. In the Attachments (Prílohy) section, select the option Upload an attachment from your computer (Nahrať prílohu z počítača). There, attach all the PDF attachments we send you by e-mail (2 or 3 files, depending on the situation described above).

(The attachments in the image are for illustration only. The main purpose is to illustrate the signature status on the slovensko.sk portal.)

9. A very important next step is to sign these attachments. As you may notice, the Signatures (Podpisy) column says No (Nie). This means that these documents are not signed with a qualified electronic signature.
10. So click on the text Sign (Podpísať) next to each document. If you have everything installed and working, the D.Signer/XAdES.NET application will open automatically.

11. After you click Sign, a window will open with a choice of certificates. Select the certificate with your name whose issuer is SVK eID ACA. If you cannot see it there, try removing your identity card from the reader and inserting it again. If the certificate is there and you press OK, you will be asked to enter your KEP PIN.

12. If you have signed everything successfully, you will see Yes (Áno) in the Signatures column next to each document. That is correct, and you can repeat this for every uploaded document.

(The attachments in the image are for illustration only. The main purpose is to illustrate the signature status on the slovensko.sk portal.)

13. After signing all the attachments, go back up a little to where the subject and text are. Click Sign there as well. This signs the whole submission. Once the whole document has been signed, a green bar will appear on the page informing you that the document is signed. After this signature you can no longer change the submission in any way. If you wanted to change the text of the submission, you would have to remove the signature, change the text and then sign it again.
14. The last step is to send all these signed attachments together with the submission. The button is at the bottom of the page, below the attachments section.

And that is all. You have just successfully sent the signed documents from the comfort of your home. In this way we have replaced the whole procedure, from having a signature certified by a notary to a personal visit to a branch of the Social Insurance Agency.