Understanding the Available Plans Workfile for Self Service

When you use the Available Plans Work File Build program (R085520) to build the Available Plans and Plan Options by Employee Work Table (F085520W), the system searches each employee benefit group for all active benefit plans and benefit plan options that are offered. It also calculates the new cost, as of the effective date, for each plan and plan option. The system obtains age and salary from the Benefit Self Service Constant table (F08505) and uses this information as of the point-in-time date to determine the cost for applicable annuity benefit plans. If the plan requires the employee to enter an amount or rate, the system calculates the costs or credits dynamically after the employee enters the amount and requests the calculation.

If the workfile contains unprocessed records, these instances are printed to an exception report.

To determine whether the current employee enrollment elections can be reused for open enrollment, the Available Plans/Plan Options by Emp Work Table Report (R08320) tracks whether the current elections are different from the available benefit plans and benefit plan options. For the system to reuse current enrollment information, these conditions must exist:

• All current benefit plans and benefit plan options must be valid for the upcoming enrollment year.

• All current benefit plans and benefit plan options must be set to enable reuse (defaulting).

If the employee's current enrollment is available for open enrollment, and a processing option is set appropriately in the Available Plans Work File Build program (R085520), the system supplies the current enrollment as the default enrollment. However, if a current plan is no longer available (for example, if you are changing insurance carriers), defaulting of all enrollment plans is not allowed.

You can build the Available Plans and Plan Options by Employee Work Table (F085520W) for either open enrollment or current enrollment. In open enrollment, available plans and plan options, as well as their costs, might change. In current enrollment, which is typically associated with new hire, rehire, life event, or special enrollment, the available plans and plan options remain the same. The effective date processing option is used to obtain the active plans and plan options, with their associated costs and credits, for the event type. If you do not set up an effective date in the processing options, the system date will be used.

You can build the workfile twice; once for open enrollment and once for current enrollment. The workfile stores the records for both types of enrollment at the same time.

You can set processing options to specify:

• The effective date of the active benefit plans and benefit plan options

• The event type (open enrollment or current enrollment)

• Whether the system allows prior enrollment information to be automatically defaulted as the chosen benefit plans or benefit plan options