About Benefit Programs

A benefit program is any program to which an employee may elect that results in non-statutory deductions and/or contributions being applied to his/her paycheck.

Each benefit program may have a different configuration based on an effective date. Payrolls run after the effective date will assess employees who have elected into the program the appropriate contributions and deductions based on the configuration effective on the pay date.

Benefit program deductions: Deductions reduce the amount paid to employees, so they don't have associated expenses, and therefore there's no expense account mask on deductions.

Benefit program contributions: Since the district is paying for the contributions, they do have an expense account mask. The expense account mask is laid over the account(s) from which an employee is paid. So if the employee is paid from five different expense accounts, the journal would have five different expense transactions for this contribution.

Changing configurations

Once a benefit program has been used on a payroll, nothing in the configuration can be changed except the W-2 reporting method. As a result, when rates change, you'll create a new configuration.

Creating a new configuration copies the old values forward, so you just have to make changes, not re-create all the deductions and contributions.

When creating a new configuration, you can't back-date it into a payroll period that has been run. You'll be asked if you want to allow backdating to outstanding payrolls as of the last date a payroll was run. If you select that option, you'll be warned that the action WILL NOT automatically updated outstanding payrolls, and once you back-date into a locked period, you won't be able to change the configuration.

Three types of plans

Subscription-based

Subscribers to one of these plans are all treated exactly the same; there is no variation within the plan. Therefore when an employee is enrolled in one of these programs, no additional action is needed in the Staff Manager.

These programs include all TRS plans in which an employee is subscribed, not including TRS ActiveCare-health insurance. Examples are TRS Standard and TRS New Member.

When rates change, they're updated by creating a new configuration since configurations are driven by effective date. As a result, the employees' benefit elections don't need to be changed when rates change.

Click here for instructions on adding a subscription-based benefit program.

Election-based or Flat Amount

The plan or the employee's election into the plan is used to determine the amount of the deduction and/or contribution — for example, 403b Vanguard, AT-Allstate DI. Click here for instructions on adding an offering-based benefit program.

Offering-based

The plan itself is configured with several options, and the amount of the deduction and/or contribution is determined by the selected option. There are two types of offering-based benefits — fixed contribution and fixed deduction. In each case, the fixed element is calculated and the balance is applied to the remaining element. Examples are certain 403B, dental, and vision plans. Click here for instructions on adding an offering-based benefit program.

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