Setting Up Hours Consolidations

Accumulation Period

The consolidation process produces periodic hours totals, which provide a period-by-period hours history. Enter the appropriate accumulation period:

• Calendar Month: Select this option to use the calendar month.

• Calendar Year: Select this option to use the calendar year.

• Employee's Anniversary Year. Select this option to use an employee's anniversary year.

• Plan Year: Select this option to use the plan year.

• Other Year: Select this option to use a year for which you indicate the start and end dates. Specify these in the Start Month and Start Day fields. Use a number (1-12) to represent the month. The day is usually the first of the month.

The accumulation period must align with the accumulation period for the Hours Counting Service definition where you use your consolidated hours. Because the service definition does not support the Other Year option, you do not use that option in your consolidated hours definition—unless you make modifications.

First Period is Anniv. Year

For computation periods other than an anniversary year, an employee's first period is usually a short period. If your service definition gives employees the benefit of a full year for the first period, selectFirst Period is Anniv. Year. If you do this, your adjusted first period overlaps the second period.

For example, if the usual computation period is a calendar year, an employee hired on March 5, 2000 has the following computation periods: The first period is March 5, 2000 to March 4, 2001, and the second period is January 1, 2001 to December 31, 2001.

Hours Based On

The hours used for consolidation are based on information from your payroll system. Specify which hours to use in the Type field:

• Pension Consolidated Earnings: If you select this option, enter the earnings consolidation name in the Consolidated Earnings field. Be sure the earnings period is the same as the hours consolidation period.

• Payroll Hours: If you select this option, you need to indicate how to allocate hours to the accumulation periods. You also specify the types of hours to include: regular, overtime, and others.

• Payroll Special Accumulator: If you select this option, use the Special Accum field to indicate which payroll accumulator holds the pensionable hours.

• Earnings Balance Tables: If you select this option, you access hours that have already been subtotaled to produce month-, quarter-, and year-to-date balances. As long as you allocate earnings based on Earned Date, the system prorates these amounts to find hours for the consolidation period. The results are the same as if you select Payroll Hours and allocate earnings based on the Pay Check Date, but the payroll system does much of the work for you. If your consolidation period is a month or calendar year, it is more efficient to use earnings balance tables.

• Payroll W2: If you select this option, the system gets the data from the appropriate payroll table. Again, as long as you allocate hours based on Earned Date, the system prorates these amounts to get hours for the consolidation period.

Accumulate Based On

If you base your hours on Pension Consolidated Earnings, Earnings Balance Table, or Payroll W2, your hours data is already aligned with your consolidation period and you can ignore the Accumulate Based On field.

If you base your hours on pay period data—that is, you base hours on Payroll Hours or Payroll Special Accumulator—you need to align your payroll dates with your consolidation dates. Select the period into which earnings fall by selecting a value for Accumulate Based On:

• Earned puts hours into the period containing the day that the hours were worked. Because payroll data does not include an hours-by-day breakdown, total hours for the pay period are divided evenly among days to produce daily hours amounts. For example, a weekly pay period from June 26 to July 2 includes hours from both June and July. If you consolidate monthly, 5/7 of the hours fall into the June period and 2/7 of the hours fall into the July period.

  Note: Proration by day always includes all days in the accumulation period, not just work days.

• Pay Run puts hours into the period containing the last day of the pay period.

• Pay Check puts hours into the period containing the date printed on the paycheck.

Payroll Hours

If you base your hours on actual payroll hours, complete the Payroll Hours section of this page. Select one of the following:

• Including: If you select this option, you need to specify the hours types to include.

• Total Bal/Pay Minus: If you select this option, you need to specify the hours types to exclude. You select them in the Exclude Categories grid.

Earn Code

Enter the earnings codes associated with the pensionable hours. You can insert additional rows as necessary.

Pct of Hours

You can adjust the number of hours for an earnings code by entering an adjustment percentage. For example, you can use 100 percent of regular hours and 50 percent of overtime hours. If you select Total Bal/Pay Minus to list excluded hours, you can specify 50 here to exclude 50 percent of the overtime hours.

Limit Hours To

If you specify a number here, the number of hours for the associated earnings code cannot exceed that number.

Earnings to Hours Divisor

If you base your hours consolidation on any of the earnings options, you can convert the earnings to hours with simple division. Select one of these options to indicate the divisor:

• Compensation Rate Select this option to use the compensation rate that is effective at the beginning of the consolidation period.

• Constant: Select this option to use a constant value, and enter either a fixed amount in the Hours Constant field or an alias in the Alias field.

• Table Lookup Select this option to look up the divisor in the table that you select in the Table Use Name field.

• Custom Statement Select this option to use the custom statement that you select in the Custom Statement Name field.

Plus Additional Amount

If you want to add hours to the period total (subject to any maximum you set), enter these hours here. To subtract hours, enter a negative number.

Minimum Hours

To limit the total hours per period, enter the minimum number of hours. Also enter Maximum Hours.

Maximum Hours

To limit the total hours per period, enter the maximum number of hours. Also enter Minimum Hours.

Category

Use the Category field to identify the HR action and reason code categories that require generated hours. You can insert additional rows as necessary.

Custom Statement

To indicate other conditions for hours generation, you first have to set up a custom statement specifying these conditions. Enter the name of the custom statement in this field. If the custom statement conditions are met, the system generates hours for all periods that it processes. This means that during a delete-and-rebuild consolidation, which processes several periods at once, the system might generate hours for all periods.

If a single period contains multiple reasons for generation—for example, a military leave early in the year and a disability leave later that year—they are processed in chronological order. Hours generated for the final reason replace hours generated for earlier reasons.

Generation Method

For each hours generation condition that you set up, select a generation method:

• Replace With Fixed Amount: If you select this option, the system replaces hours with the fixed amount that you enter in the Replacement Hours field. You can set it up as either a constant or an alias that you create.

• Replace With Previous Complete: If you select this option, the system uses the most recent full ("complete") period hours from previous consolidated years. The partial period flag indicates which periods are partial periods and which are full periods.

• Uplift with a Factor: If you select this option, the system multiplies the actual hours by the uplift factor that you specify, giving the generated amount. For example, if disability hours are always half of normal hours, you might uplift the hours by a factor of two in order to make your consolidation reflect non-disability hours. Enter the factor in the Uplift Factor field. You can set it up as either a constant or an alias that you create.

  Note: When you choose Uplift with a Factor, all hours from the period are uplifted, not just those accumulated during a particular status. An alternative method of uplifting hours is on the Hours Parameters page, where you can specify the percentage of hours to include in the consolidation. For our disability example, you could enter 200 percent of disability hours. The hours would then be considered "actual" hours instead of generated hours.

• Replace With Previous Non-Zero: If you select this option, the system uses the hours from the most recent period—partial or full—that has non-zero hours.

• User Code: If you select this option, the system uses the specified custom statement to generate the hours.

All of these methods replace all the hours for the period. For example, consider Liam, who went on leave at the end of 2002 and returned at the beginning of 2004. If you generate hours during his leave, the system overwrites the actual hours from early 2002 and late 2004 with the generated hours for those periods.

HR Action/Reason Category

Enter an HR Action/Reason Category with all the action and reason codes that indicate a partial period. For example, you might include action and reason codes for leaves of absence and returns from leaves. This information is used to set a partial period flag for the period. There is only one field for single partial periods, so you have to create a single category with all the relevant action and reason combinations.

The single partial period category should not include action and reason codes that appear in any other action and reason categories in this definition, including generation categories, exclude categories, and hire and termination categories.

HR Action/Reason Category

Enter the HR action and reason categories that indicate hire and termination periods in the HR Action/Reason Category fields of the Termination and Hire/Rehire group boxes.

Adjustment Method

The consolidation process only adjusts a termination period after a subsequent rehire. For example, if Quentin terminates in 2004, the 2004 consolidation period is his last. If he is rehired in 2006, the system then adjusts the 2004 period, creates a zero-hours 2005 period, and creates a 2006 period. Because the 2006 period includes the rehire action, it incorporates the hire period adjustment method you specify.

For each action and reason category you enter, select an Adjustment Method for adjusting the hours for the resulting partial period:

• Ignore: Ignores this period altogether.

• Use As Is: Treats the existing hours as the total earnings for the period.

• Annualize: If you select this option, select a value in the Annualize Options field: Count Months or Count Days.

  If you count months, the system divides the hours by the number of whole months in the included portion of the period, then multiplies the result by twelve, the total number of months in the year. If you count days, the system divides the hours by the number of included days in the period, then multiplies the result by the number of days in the month.

  If your consolidation period is months, you must choose to count days. Regardless of your consolidation period, counting days will always yield a more accurate result because counting whole months understates the amount of time over which the hours are accumulated and therefore overstates total hours.

  For example, if you annualize 600 calendar year hours as of April 10 by counting months, you get this result:

  (600 / 3) * 12 = 200 * 12 = 2400

  If you annualize the same hours by counting days, you get this result:

  (600/ 100) * 365 = 6 * 365 = 2190

• User: If you select this option, the system uses your custom code to adjust hours.