Offset Days for Retroactive Termination Triggers

When you define retro triggers on the Trigger Definitions-Field Values page, you can enter a positive or negative number in the Offset Days field to increase or decrease the retro trigger effective date in relation to the date of a field value change. For example, if you enter -1 in the Offset Days field for one of the values listed in the Field Values group box, and you retroactively enter that value into the database with an effective date of January 1, 2000, the system automatically adjusts the trigger effective date to December 31, 1999 (one day earlier). The system then processes pay periods going back to December 1999 rather than January 2000. Global Payroll for Australia uses the offset days feature to define the triggers for retroactive terminations entered in the JOB record using the Action field:

This example of the Trigger Definitions-Field Values page shows Australia JOB actions that trigger retroactive termination processing.

Note that the offset for the termination actions TER, RET, RWP, TWP, and TWB is -1.

The reason for this offset is that the PeopleSoft system considers the effective date of a termination entered in the Action field in JOB to be the first day that a payee is no longer working (in other words, the day before the termination is the last day the payee is considered active); however, the effective date of the trigger generated in response to this termination is identical to the termination date. This can create problems when the termination date in the JOB record is equal to the pay period begin date (meaning, the last day worked is the last day of the prior pay period). For example, assume that you enter a termination in JOB on February 1 after processing and closing the January calendar. In this situation, the system generates a trigger with an effective date of February 1, which is within the current period—a period in which the payee is "inactive" and is not picked up for processing. Because there is no trigger in the prior, closed period (January), this period will not be recalculated and any rules set up to generate termination payments will not be processed. To avoid this problem, Global Payroll for Australia sets the offset days for the TER (termination), RET (retirement), RWP (Retirement with Pay), TWP (termination with pay), and TWB (termination with benefits) action values in the JOB record equal to -1.