Understanding Validation and Loading

When the Benefits Administration process validates and loads elections associated with participant events, it reevaluates the events in much the same way that it did during the option preparation phase. The difference is that the participants have had a chance to update their benefit election information and their choices have been entered into the system.

The system evaluates the updated benefits information using the same set of eligibility rules and event rules that it used to determine options. It also recalculates benefit election defaults where appropriate. This is important because these defaults may possibly have changed if events are processed out of sequence, or if changes are made to Base Benefit tables in the interim between runs of the Benefits Administration process. In this case, the recalculated defaults may not match the defaults shown on enrollment forms or inquiry pages.

During finalization, the system also assigns excess credits to plans in which the participant is enrolled. If the participant event processes correctly, it loads the new option elections and related information to the Base Benefits tables that store benefits information for the associated participant. It creates rows for new, changed, or terminated benefit option enrollments, but only if the new enrollment is different from the existing enrollment. (That is, simply reelecting an existing coverage does not generally cause a new row to be inserted into Base Benefit tables if all election-related data is the same).

Processing errors during validation and loading might be caused by:

• Problems with the new election information that was entered into the system during data entry.

• HR information linked to the participant event.

• The design of the related eligibility rules, the event rules, or benefit program associated with the event.

You need to evaluate the error to determine whether anything needs to be fixed. If only the employee's election data needs to be corrected, then an event in EE status will be picked up for further processing during the next run of the schedule. However, if you need to correct the employee's HR data (which could affect his benefits eligibility), or if you need to correct the underlying benefits rules or setup, then the event must be specifically reprocessed back to the first phase of benefits processing (scheduling, event assignment, or option preparation).

Note:

Event Maintenance and Open Enrollment schedules are processed the same way during validation and loading.