Establishing Pension Payees

This chapter provides overviews of payee types, pension payee tracking with PeopleSoft Enterprise Human Resources, and pension payee usage in other PeopleSoft Enterprise HRMS applications. The section discusses how to:

Click to jump to parent topicUnderstanding Payee Types

Three possible types of people can receive pension payments: retirees, beneficiaries, and QDRO alternate payees. They are all pension payees. Beneficiaries and QDRO alternate payees are non-employee payees.

Retirees are former employees who earned their benefits through their own service within the organization. Retirees who leave the organization after vesting but before retirement are also known as “terminated deferred-vested employees.”

Beneficiaries and QDRO alternate payees, on the other hand, collect a benefit that was earned by someone else. A beneficiary collects survivor benefits after the death of a retiree. A QDRO alternate payee is an employee’s former spouse who, as part of a divorce settlement, is entitled to a portion of the employee’s pension benefit. QDRO alternate payees are subject to a plan’s rules governing when employees may begin receiving benefits.

Click to jump to parent topicUnderstanding Pension Payee Tracking with Human Resources

This section provides overviews of:

Click to jump to top of pageClick to jump to parent topicHuman Resources Payee Data

Human Resources tracks essential data about your employees. It tracks all kinds of employee information to help you manage everything from competencies to career planning. The most basic information is stored in two records: personal data and job data. You use these records to track your pension payees, including both employees (retirees) and non-employees (beneficiaries and QDRO alternate payees).

Very few changes are required to establish a retiree personal data record that is based on an employee record. One field, person type, is changed. Beneficiaries and QDRO alternate payees, on the other hand, may not have a personal data record until you create one.

Click to jump to top of pageClick to jump to parent topicPayee Data Access

Although payee data is available on the PeopleSoft Enterprise Administer Workforce pages, Pension Administration also provides separate personal data and job data pages for pension payees (the Create Payee and Payee Maintenance pages). Although the payee pages display fewer fields than their counterparts in Administer Workforce, they reference the same records. This means that the payee personal data and job data records have exactly the same fields as the employee personal data and job data records.

If fields have default values, the payee records use those defaults, even though you do not see the fields. Conversely, if a field is required, you must provide a value even if the information does not apply to payee records (for example, standard hours).

Click to jump to top of pageClick to jump to parent topicSecurity Setup

You can use PeopleSoft security trees to set up security, based on an employee’s department in the job record. When you set up a retiree job record, you enter a department code. Depending on your organization’s security requirements, this may be one department (or more) just for pension payees or the same department that housed the person as an employee. If your organization uses a separate department for payees, you can use security trees to prevent certain users from accessing payee data.

PeopleSoft permission list security, on the other hand, enables you to restrict users from accessing certain pages. However, because payee records are really the same as employee records, you cannot use permission list security to prevent users from accessing payee records; you can only prevent them from accessing only payee-specific pages.

See Also

Setting Up and Administering HRMS Security

Click to jump to top of pageClick to jump to parent topicPersonal and Job Data Usage

Personal data includes a payee’s name and address, as well as demographic information, such as birth date, sex, and marital status. This is data that does not change based on a person’s role in the organization. Most importantly, the personal data record is where you assign people their employee IDs, which are their permanent and unique identifiers.

When you use Human Resources to track retired employees, you continue to use the same personal data record. This makes sense because the data does not change just because an employee retires. This means that you track retirees using the same employee IDs they had as employees.

When you set up beneficiaries and QDRO alternate payees, an employee ID may not exist. In this case, you have to create a personal data record as part of the process of setting up the payee.

Important! You cannot use Human Resources to change the personal data for beneficiaries and QDRO alternate payees. Instead, you must use Pension Administration to change their data.

Job data describes an employee’s role in the organization. In addition to the actual job code, the job record contains information on the employee’s company, department, location, salary, benefit program, and other similar information. The job record is effective-dated so that you can track this information over time. Employees can even have multiple concurrent jobs for the same company. In this case, the employee is said to have multiple job records. For example, if Barbara is simultaneously a professor of engineering and dean of the engineering school, she has two jobs and two job records. PeopleSoft uses the Rcd# (record number or job number) field to identify the separate jobs.

When you use Human Resources to track pension payees—that is retirees, beneficiaries, and QDRO alternate payees—you give a payee a “job” as a retiree. The retiree job is a concurrent job. For example, if Earl retires from his job assembling widgets, he has two job records: one as a widget assembler, another as a retiree.

Warning! You must turn on the Human Resources multijob setting in order to administer pension payees.

Click to jump to parent topicUnderstanding Pension Payee Usage in Other HRMS Applications

This section provides overviews of pension payee recognition and pension usage with other PeopleSoft applications.

Click to jump to top of pageClick to jump to parent topicPension Payee Recognition

The system uses the same records for employees, retirees, and non-employee payees, and it needs to distinguish among these types of payees. This is important when Human Resources, Payroll for North America, and the Manage Base Benefits business process need to handle payees differently from employees.

When the system needs to distinguish pension payees from other employees, it uses these fields:

The system also uses these fields to identify processes that apply only to active employees.

Note. Other HRMS applications contain logic to filter pension job records from processes that do not apply to them.

Click to jump to top of pageClick to jump to parent topicPension Usage with Other PeopleSoft Applications

The following are points to keep in mind when you use Pension Administration with other PeopleSoft applications.

Click to jump to parent topicEstablishing Multiple Payee Records for One Person

In Human Resources, companies are entities with their own employer identification numbers (EINs) and thus their own tax reporting identities. Under this paradigm, each pension plan is its own company and requires its own entry in the company table.

When you create a retiree job record, you specify a single company that pays the pension benefits. You can see, then, that if you use one company per plan and one company per job, you need multiple jobs for individuals who retire with pension benefits from multiple pension plans. The same principle applies to beneficiaries and QDRO alternate payees.

Setting up retirees with multiple jobs, and thus multiple companies, also enables you to set up separate tax withholding and direct deposit elections for the same payee under different plans.

Click to jump to parent topicDetermining When to Set Up Payee Records

You set up retiree records at the time that an employee retires. By setting up the retiree job at the beginning of the retirement process, you ensure that a record is in place to use as you track retirement activities and record optional form selections, tax elections, and other payee information.

You set up terminated deferred-vested records when an employee terminates. You complete the setup all the way through setting up payments, based on the default optional form. Of course, you do not actually start paying the person; you indicate that the payments are in deferred status so that the payment process cannot inadvertently pick up the payment instructions. However, setting up the payments ahead of time provides liability information for the actuarial valuation.

You set up beneficiary records after a retiree dies. It is then that you can be sure that the beneficiary will outlive the retiree and receive survivor benefits. Because you do not set up a beneficiary record until the retiree’s death, you can also be sure that the retiree record already exists. This is important, since you associate each beneficiary record with the retiree record for the benefit. Complete the setup all the way through the payment schedule, as with terminated deferred-vested employees. If there is an administrative delay before you start payments, give the schedule a deferred status. This way the information is available for the actuarial valuation even if you have not started payments.

You set up QDRO alternate payee records at the time that you determine that the court order is qualified and you record the amount due to the alternate payee. This is necessary because you record the amount due under the QDRO alternate payee’s ID. You do not need to set up the alternate payee’s job record until you are ready to run the QDRO calculation, which does require a job record.

In all cases, you should update the pension status at the same time you that set up a payee record.

Click to jump to parent topicCreating Payees

This section provides an overview of payee record creation, lists the pages used to create payees, and discusses how to:

Click to jump to top of pageClick to jump to parent topicUnderstanding Payee Record Creation

You create a payee record based on an “originating employee.” For a retiree, you base the payee record on the retiree’s employee record. For a beneficiary or QDRO alternate payee, you base the payee record on the employee record of the person who actually earned the benefit.

To create retirees and terminated vested deferred payees, you start on the Create Payee page and from there access the Personal Data and Job Data pages to update personal and job data about a payee. After you complete the fields on each page and save the page, the system returns you to the Create Payee page, and the links are replaced by messages indicating that the personal and job data is complete.

To create beneficiaries and QDRO payees, you use the Create Payee page, which includes fields from the Personal Data (PERSONAL_DATA) and Job Data (JOB_DATA) components.

Click to jump to top of pageClick to jump to parent topicPages Used to Create Payees

Page Name

Object Name

Navigation

Usage

Create Payee

PA_RT_EMP_SETUP

Pension, Payments, Create Payee, Create Payee

Create payee records.

Payee Name

PERSONAL_DATA1

Click the Personal Data link on the Create Payee page, and then access the Payee Name page.

Set up a payee’s personal data, including date of birth, gender, marital status and national identification.

Edit Name

NAME_DFT_SEC

Click the Edit Name link on the Payee Name page.

Change a payee’s name.

Biographical Data

PERSONAL_DATA2

Click the Personal Data link on the Create Payee page, and then access the Biographical Data page.

Add and view payee name, addresses, phone information, and email addresses.

Address History

ADDR_HISTORY_SEC

Click the Add Address Detail link on the Biographical Data page.

View a payee’s address history.

Edit Address

EO_ADDR_USA_SEC

Click the Update/View Address link on the Address History page.

Change a payee’s address.

Personal Data Pa

PERSONAL_DATA_PA

Click the Personal Data link on the Create Payee page, and then access the Personal Data Pa page.

View original dependent beneficiary.

Job Data

PA_RA_JOB_DATA1

Click the Job Data link on the Create Payee page.

Set up a payee’s new job data.

Benefit Program Data

PA_JOB_DATA_BENPRG

Click the Job Data link on the Create Payee page, and then access the Benefit Program Data page.

  • Set up a payee’s new job data.

  • Record information that a plan uses to determine eligibility for retiree benefits.

Click to jump to top of pageClick to jump to parent topicCreating a Payee

Access the Create Payee page.

Note. If there are already payee rows on the page—for example, for an employee’s own payee records—insert a new payee row.

Payee Detail

Benefit Plan

Enter the pension plan that is the source of the pension benefit.

If a payee will receive pension benefits from more than one plan, you have to create separate payee records for each plan.

You can set up additional retiree and QDRO alternate payee records by simply inserting additional rows under the same payee ID and record number (Rcd# Payee).

If a beneficiary requires multiple payee records, you have to access the page using different record numbers in order to correctly associate each beneficiary record with the corresponding retiree record.

Payee Type

Select one of the following values:

  • Retiree: An employee retiring from active employment.

    The personnel status for the payee record should be employee.

  • Terminated Deferred Vested: A payee who leaves active employment before retirement but will eventually collect a pension benefit. Even after the person retires, the payee type remains terminated deferred vested. This enables you to report on this value to determine eligibility for retiree medical benefits. The value does not impact the pension payment process, but is important for your actuarial valuation.

    The personnel status for the payee record should be employee.

  • Beneficiary.

    The personnel status for the payee record should be non-employee.

  • QDRO Alternate Payee.

    The personnel status for the payee record should be non-employee.

Dep/Benef (dependent or beneficiary)

If the payee type is Beneficiary or QDRO Alternate Payee, the payee record is based on an existing dependent/beneficiary record, rather than an existing employee record. In this case, the Dep/Benef field appears. You use it to identify the existing dependent/beneficiary record for a non-employee.

Click the Table Lookup button to see a list of the existing dependents and beneficiaries.

Note. You can establish a payee record only for the beneficiaries or QDRO alternate payees who already exist as dependents or beneficiaries of the original employee. If you need to add a beneficiary or QDRO alternate payee, access the Perform Election Entry (BAS_ELECTION_ENTRY) - Dependents/Beneficiaries, using the employee ID of the original employee. You can give a QDRO alternate payee the dependent or beneficiary type QDRO Rec (QDRO recipient).

Payee ID

This is the payee's employee ID. Retirees and terminated deferred-vested employees use the same IDs that they used as employees. For this reason, the value that appears in the EmplID field also appears by default in the Payee ID field.

Note. Do not change this value for retirees or terminated vested employees. If you do, you will not be able to complete the Create Payee process.

An individual who has multiple roles—for example, an employee and a beneficiary of another employee—needs a separate payee record number for each role.

Use a naming standard for Employee ID's that is suitable for your needs.

Devise a naming standard for beneficiaries and QDRO alternate payees. Adding a suffix to the originating employee’s ID clusters beneficiaries and QDRO alternate payees with the originating employee. Using prefixes, one for beneficiaries and one for QDRO alternate payees, clusters everyone with the same payee type.

When you set up a Beneficiary or a QDRO Alternate Payee, use an existing Employee ID if this Beneficiary or QDRO Alternate Payee already has an Employee ID. Enter a new Payee ID if this person does not have an Employee ID.

Rcd# Payee

Enter the record number for the payee record that you are creating. If a person retires under multiple plans and thus requires multiple record numbers, you can continue to number them sequentially.

You might set up a standard that associates certain record numbers with certain plans. For example, you might always use record number 1 for Plan A payees and record number 2 for Plan B payees.

For a Beneficiary or a QDRO Alternate Payee who already has an existing Employee ID and employee record number, enter a new employee record number. If a Beneficiary or a QDRO Alternate Payee does not already have an existing Employee ID and employee record number, you can use any record number that is suitable for your needs.

Pension Status

Personal Data and Job Data

Click the Personal Data or Job Data link to view a payee’s pension status on the personal and job data records.

When you complete the information on the Personal Data and Job Data pages and save the records, the system returns you to the Create Payee page. The links are replaced by messages indicating that the data is complete.

Note. The system automatically sets the Person Type field, displayed on Payee Personal Data 2, to Pension Payee. For non-employees, data from the dependent/beneficiary record is automatically transferred to the personal data record.

See Also

Defining Payee Cross-References

Click to jump to top of pageClick to jump to parent topicEntering Payee Records

Pension benefits are always associated with the employee who earned the pension. Therefore, when you establish payee records, you do so based on an existing employee ID.

You use the Create Payee page to create payee records. Because you establish a payee based on an existing employee, you enter this page with an Update/Display action using the existing employee ID.

Selecting a Record Number

When you set up a retiree record, enter the person’s existing employee ID and enter the record number of the active employment record.

When you set up a beneficiary or QDRO alternate payee record, enter the employee ID of the employee who earned the benefit that you are now distributing to a beneficiary or alternate payee.

Reviewing Examples of Record Numbers

Consider the case of an employee, Susan Martinez, her beneficiary, Salvatore Martinez, and her former husband, Carl Vega. Carl was granted part of her pension in their divorce settlement and is therefore a QDRO alternate payee.

When Susan retires, you set up her payee record as record number 1. When she dies, you will set up Salvatore’s record. You access the Create Payee page using Susan’s employee ID and record number 1.

If Susan receives benefits from two plans, she has two payee records, record number 1 and record number 2. When Susan dies, you set up two payee records for Salvatore, one under Susan’s record number 1 and one under her record number 2.

Because employees do not receive pension benefits under an active employment record, you would not set up a beneficiary under an employee’s active employment record except in cases of a preretirement survivor annuity, where the employee dies before retiring and pension benefits are due to the beneficiary.

When you set up a beneficiary record under the record number used to pay the original retiree, this provides a crucial link between the beneficiary and the benefit that the retiree receives. This link enables the system to maintain the appropriate beneficiary amounts as the retiree receives cost-of-living adjustments, and to automatically use the adjusted beneficiary amounts when you set up beneficiary payments.

Note. If a retiree has multiple payee job records corresponding to separate plans, you must set up beneficiaries separately for each plan.

On the other hand, payments to QDRO alternate payees do not depend on the original employees’ payments. The two are related, of course, since the original employee’s benefit is offset by the amount set aside for the alternate payee. However, you run a separate calculation to determine an alternate payee’s pension benefit, rather than basing it directly on the original employee’s calculation.

For this reason, you set up QDRO alternate payee records under the originating employee’s active service record. This is handy because you typically create an QDRO alternate payee’s record at the time of a divorce, while you do not necessarily create an employee’s payee record until the employee is ready to retire, which could be years later.

See Also

Defining Payee Cross-References

Click to jump to top of pageClick to jump to parent topicEntering Personal and Job Data

When you click the Personal Data and Job Data links on the Create Payee page, you access pages that are nearly identical to those found in the Personal Data (PERSONAL_DATA) and Job Data (JOB_DATA) components of Human Resources. This section discusses only the fields that affect Pension Administration.

Payee Name Page

Verify that this information is correct and enter new information if required. You must click the OK button to save the data, even if no changes are made.

Edit Name

Select this link to access the Edit Name page.

Biographical Data Page

Verify that this information is correct and enter new information if required. You must click the OK button to save the data, even if no changes are made.

Add Address Detail and Edit/View Address Detail

Select these links to access the Address History page. On the Address History page, select the Update/View Address or Add Address links to access the Edit Address page. Use the Edit Address page to add or edit addresses.

Personal Data Pa Page

The display-only fields at the top of the page are primarily to help you track the origins of non-employees in the system.

Originating Emplid

The Employee ID of the originating employee. For retirees, this will be the same ID. In fact, comparing the ID to the Originating Emplid is a quick way to ascertain whether the payee is a retiree or a non-employee.

Note. When you first enter a payee’s personal data, that is, when you come to this page from the Create Payee page, the page displays the personal data that already exists in the HR personal data record. Notice, however, that the Save toolbar button is active. None of this data is permanent until you Save. In particular, the newly assigned person type Pension Payee on the second page needs to be saved. Be sure to review this data and make appropriate corrections. For example, there may be a new address.

Original Dependent Beneficiary

For non-employees (beneficiaries and QDRO alternate payees), the Original Dependent Beneficiary tells you the person’s original ID from the dependent/beneficiary table. This is the value you put in the Dep/Benef field on the Create Payee page.

When you have completed this information for Retiree or Terminated Deferred Vested payee types on the Payee Name, Biographical Data and Personal Data Pa pages, click the OK button to save the record and return to the Create Payee page. The system will change the payee to a person type of Pension Payee.

Note. Be sure to save the Payee Name and Biographical Data pages even if you do not make any manual changes. If you do not save, the Person Type field does not get set to Pension Payee, and the record is not recognized as a payee record.

Job Data Page

Job Data, the first page in the Payee Job Data component, displays selected fields and data from the job record. This payee job is completely independent of the employee’s active employment job. Normally, your human resources staff is responsible for maintaining this record; it is not important to pension processing that the termination or retirement be entered into the active employment record.

Payroll Status

The system automatically sets the Payroll Status to Retired - Pension Administration based on the fact that you created this job using Pension Administration. If you change the Action to Termination, or if you add a new row with a termination action, the employee status for that row will automatically switch to Retired - Pension Paid Out. Because this is a payee record and not an employee record, the termination action does not kick off a termination workflow.

The payroll status does not affect pension processing, but it can matter to your other HRMS applications. Either of the two pension-related payroll statuses enables other HRMS applications to recognize that this is a payee job record. Therefore, those applications will filter this record from certain processes, such as COBRA processing, that apply to active employees only.

Effective Date

The Effective Date defaults to the current date. For retirees and terminated deferred-vested employees, you should change it to the termination or retirement date. For beneficiaries, use the day after the original employee died. For QDRO alternate employees, use the date on the court QDRO.

Action / Reason

The Action / Reason defaults to Retirement regardless of the payee type.

Company

This is a very important field because tax reporting is based on companies. Typically, there is a company for each retirement plan; the company you enter will correspond to the plan you entered on the Create Payee page. If an employee is getting benefits from more than one plan, you will have to create another retiree record after you return to the Create Payee page. You need a new job record.

Tax Loc (tax location)

This is required for Payroll for North America processing. Pension Administration assumes you pay retirees using a third-party trustee, rather than Payroll for North America, and therefore does not require this field.

Benefit Record Number, Service Date, Employee Classification, and Union Code

These fields are used by Benefits Administration. If you use Benefits Administration for retiree benefits, be sure you understand how the Benefit Record Number affects retiree benefit eligibility. Compensation rate, which does not appear on this page but which is relevant to Benefits Administration, is automatically set to zero.

Most of the other fields (for example, Standard Hours) are not relevant to a retirement job. Some of the fields are required for all jobs and therefore appear on the page. Others might be of interest if you were to access the active employee job for a pension payee, if for example, if you wanted to look at the union code history.

You can accept any defaults for these fields or, if there are no defaults, enter some standard value in these fields.

Note. Remember that this page uses the same table that stores active employee job data, and there are a number of fields that are not displayed. Although these fields are irrelevant to pension, be aware that they have the same default values as employee job records.

Benefit Program Data Page

The Benefit Program Data page includes information used for Benefits and Benefits Administration. If you are using either of these applications for retiree benefits, enter the appropriate benefit eligibility information here.

When you have completed this information, save the record to return to the Create Payee page.

See Also

Setting Up Benefit Plans

Click to jump to parent topicDefining Payee Cross-References

This section provides an overview of payee cross references, lists the page used to define payee cross-references, and discusses how to:

Click to jump to top of pageClick to jump to parent topicUnderstanding Payee Cross-References

The Payee Cross Reference page is used to display a list of all payee records associated with a selected Employee ID.

Click to jump to top of pageClick to jump to parent topicPage Used to Define Payee Cross-References

Page Name

Object Name

Navigation

Usage

Payee Cross Reference

PA_RT_EMP_XREF

Pension, Payments, Review Payee Cross Reference, Payee Cross Reference

View a list of all the payee records associated with a particular employee.

Click to jump to top of pageClick to jump to parent topicDefining a Payee Cross-Reference

Access the Payee Cross Reference page.

Originating Emplid (originating employee identification)

If the employee is a beneficiary or QDRO alternate payee, this field contains the id and name of the employee who originally earned the pension that the non-employee will collect.

If the employee is a retiree or is terminated deferred-vested, the originating employee is the same person as the retiree.

Other Payees

This section displays all the retiree job records for the employee. It also shows any beneficiaries or QDRO alternate payees who are entitled to a portion of the employee’s benefit.

Payee Type

For each payee listed, the payee type displays Retiree, Terminated Deferred Vested, Beneficiary, or QDRO Alternate Payee.

Payee EmplID (payee employee ID)

For retirees and terminated deferred-vested employees, the payee ID is the same as the employee ID.

Rcd# Payee (payee record number)

The payee record number is the job number, a sequential number that identifies each job you create. So, for example, if you create three retiree jobs for an employee, because the employee is collecting pension benefits from three plans, you see the three different job numbers here.

For a retiree or terminated deferred-vested employee, an active employment record represents a “real” job, not a retiree job. A record number for a beneficiary or QDRO alternate payee represents a payee record.

Name

This field displays the name of the payee.

Click to jump to top of pageClick to jump to parent topicMaintaining Cross-Reference Information

You create each payee record based on an existing record. Retiree and QDRO alternate payee records are based on employee records. Beneficiary records are based on retiree records except when the benefit comes from a preretirement survivor annuity, in which case the beneficiary record is based on an employee record. These relationships are preserved on the Create Payee page, where you can see all the payees created under a given record.

Once you create the records, there is no automatic link between the payee records you created and the data on the Create Payee page. So if you delete a beneficiary row on the Create Payee page, you lose the ability to look up the relationship between the retiree and the beneficiary on the Payee Cross Reference page. Conversely, if you delete the beneficiary’s personal and job data records without deleting the beneficiary from the Create Payee page, the cross-reference would still tell you that person existed.

If you delete payee records, be sure to also delete the row on the Create Payee page where you originally created the records. If you delete a row from the Create Payee page after completing the payee setup, you must also delete the records you created.