What Training Costs Are Reimbursable by OFPPT? Ceilings and Cash Flow

On what basis does OFPPT calculate the reimbursement?

On the retained cost of each action, not on the amount invoiced. The CSF procedures manual defines it as the cost retained, according to the cost schedule, as the basis for calculating the financial participation granted to the company.

OFPPT, the Office de la formation professionnelle et de la promotion du travail, is Morocco’s public vocational training office. Through special training contracts (contrats spéciaux de formation, CSF), it reimburses part of what companies spend on their employees’ continuing training, under a procedures manual dated May 2006 and its Amendment No. 2 (avenant n° 2) of 2 June 2014.

The cost schedule (nomenclature des coûts) is a grid adopted by the regional CSF committees, by training field. The field is the one the company enters on the action sheet (form F2), from a list published by OFPPT. The regional cost schedules OFPPT published for 2019 distinguished intra-company and inter-company training, and reasoned in expert days for a group of at least five people, and in days per participant below that. Ask the CSF management unit in your region which schedule applies to your financial year.

Three consequences for the budget:

• The invoice can exceed the retained cost. The rate applies only to the retained cost; the share above it remains your cost.
• The choice of field matters. An action attached to the wrong training field is not assessed on the right line of the cost schedule.
• The basis excludes taxes. Under the manual, all amounts are deemed to exclude taxes and the company pays all of the VAT.

The May 2006 manual, amended by Amendment No. 2 of 2 June 2014, remains the reference in force.

Which costs are reimbursable, and which are not?

The CSF covers part of the cost of approved training actions that have been delivered. Whatever is not a training action, whatever exceeds the retained cost and whatever was not delivered in line with the contract is not reimbursed.

GIACs (groupements interprofessionnels à l’appui du conseil) are the inter-professional advisory groups set up by employers’ professional organisations, usually by sector, that fund training engineering: needs analysis, training strategy and the training plan.

The in-house training rule of the May 2006 manual still applies: the rate of the action is applied to a retained cost of MAD 800 per day per participant.

Employees keep their salary during training (Law No. 60-17, art. 5). Whatever OFPPT’s answer on the calculation basis, the working time involved is part of the full cost that management arbitrates.

Which rates and ceilings apply?

The rate depends on the regime of the action; the ceiling depends on the vocational training tax (taxe de formation professionnelle, TFP) the company has declared, the tax levied on employers for the benefit of OFPPT. The reference rules are 70% of the retained cost for planned training delivered by an external provider and 40% for unplanned training, under the CSF procedures manual of May 2006 and its Amendment No. 2 of 2 June 2014; any resulting amount is indicative, before ceilings, with no commitment.

The regime is decided early. Under the manual, a planned action is entered in an annual plan necessarily derived from a training engineering study, and a plan derived from engineering not approved by the GIAC is treated as a set of unplanned actions. The same quote can therefore lead to two different rates, depending on whether the engineering was approved in time.

The ceiling, for its part, is specific to each company. The manual sets it by bands of declared TFP, with a more favourable ceiling for some bands when the company has an approved strategic diagnostic study. It also provides for a document giving the indicative ceiling to accompany the certificate of access to the CSF. Ask OFPPT for the scale that applies to your financial year.

How to read the rule, step by step, is detailed in our article CSF reimbursement rates: reading the rule, the ceilings and the TFP.

What is the impact on the company’s cash flow?

The company advances the full expense, VAT included, and recovers the share covered after filing its financial file. The gap between the two depends mostly on when it files.

The financial file proves a payment: the invoice must therefore be paid before filing. The filing deadline is generous, since OFPPT’s CSF page sets it at 31 December of year N+1, but a company that waits for that date finances its own training for many months. Filing each file as soon as the action closes shortens that wait. Amendment No. 2 then sets thirty calendar days between the acknowledgement of receipt and the transfer order, any delay having to be justified: it is a procedural rule, not a guaranteed payment date. For a subsidiary that reports to a foreign parent, this means the expense and the reimbursement can fall in different financial years.

Third-party payment shifts part of the burden. Under Amendment No. 2, the company can ask for payment to be made directly to the training provider, the contract remaining between the company and the CSF management unit (Unité de gestion des CSF). This procedure (tiers payant) is open to public training operators, to institutes whose management is delegated to professional branches and to consulting and training providers holding a valid qualification label awarded by the Vocational Training department. The share the company then pays the provider itself should be confirmed with OFPPT before choosing this option.

How do you budget the remaining cost without promising an amount?

By showing two separate lines: the full cost, which is certain, and a forecast reimbursement, calculated prudently and dated. The second must never be presented as secured.

In the plans we build, the forecast line follows a simple rule: it starts from the estimated retained cost, not from the quote, applies the rate of the regime actually obtained, allows for a realistic attendance rate and stays “before ceiling” as long as the company’s indicative ceiling is not known. The reimbursement simulator gives that order of magnitude before ceiling. The file calendar is described in our OFPPT training reimbursement guide and the documents in CSF reimbursement file: supporting documents and checklist.

• The full cost of each action is costed: invoice including VAT, working time involved, logistics.
  
• The training field of each action is identified, to locate its retained cost.
  
• The gap between the quote and the estimated retained cost is entered as remaining cost.
  
• VAT is budgeted in full as a cost to the company.
  
• The regime of each action is confirmed: engineering approved by the GIAC or not.
  
• The reimbursement of planned in-house training is checked against the 30% limit on the total participation granted.
  
• The forecast reimbursement is dated according to the actual filing of the financial file.
  
• The budget presented to management carries the wording “before ceiling, not a commitment”.