How do I roll over extra flex credits in Benefits?

Many companies offer pools of credit, or flex credits, to help their employees pay for benefits. Some employees may not use all of the available credits, and companies may allow participants to collect some or all of these credits, either by applying them to a different plan such as a flexible spending account, or by allowing participants to directly cash out unused credits.

Configuring flex plans and rollover credits is a four-step process. You must first create programs that use flex credits, then create a flex credit shell plan and add those programs to it. Part of this process is to create flex credit rates and credit pools for the program. For brevity, we assume that you know how to do this and these steps are omitted.

To enable rollover, you need to create a rollover rate for unused credits, and you then need to associate the rate with your program in the flex plan and configure what to do with those excess credits.

In this video, we’ll show you how to do this.

First, let’s examine the default behavior if there is no credit rollover. We start signed in as a Benefits Administrator who is also part of the Choice Program, a program that includes 500 flex credits. If we navigate to review Curtis’ benefits, we find that he forfeited 232 credits because there was no rollover configured. This can lead to employee dissatisfaction, so we’re going to set up rollover for this program.

We start signed in as Curtis Feitty, on the application Home page with the Me tab selected.

Click Benefits.

Click Your Benefits.

Click Choice Program.

Your first step is to create a rollover rate. Navigate to the standard rates page and create a rollover rate.

Click the Home icon.

Click My Client Groups.

In the Quick Actions section, click Show More.

In the Benefits section, click Benefit Rates.

In the Effective As-of Date field, enter January 1 of the current year.

Click Search.

In the Create menu, select Create Rollover Rate.

Fill out the required fields; in particular, the Plan Name is where excess credits should go; for example, to a flexible spending account plan.

If the plan has options, select one. Otherwise, leave it blank. Even if you don’t plan to roll over into a plan, you must specify a plan name here.

Another important field is Rate for Limits Enforcement. If a plan, such as a Health Savings Account, has a limit as to how much money you can put into it, you should specify that rate here so that excess credits don’t cause the participant to exceed the annual maximum contribution for the plan.

In the Rate Name field, enter Choice Program Rollover.

In the Plan Name drop-down list, select Health Care FSA.

Be sure to set the payroll information correctly.

In the Legal Employer drop-down list, select US1 Legal Entity.

In the Activity Type drop-down list, select Employee payroll distribution.

In the Tax Type Code drop-down list, select Pretax.

Click Save and Close.

Now it’s time to configure your flex credit shell plan.

Click the Home icon.

Click My Client Groups.

In the Quick Actions section, click Show More.

In the Benefits section, click Flex Credits Configuration.

In the Effective As-of Date field, enter January 1 of the current year.

Click Search.

In the Search Results section, click Flex Shell Plan for Life Events.

Click the Credit Pools train stop.

In the Program section, select Choice Program.

In the Legal Employer drop-down list, select US1 Legal Entity.

Next you will edit the credit pool.

In the Actions menu, select Update.

Select the Excess Credits tab.

First, select an Excess Treatment rule. You can either first roll over then disburse, or first disburse then roll over, forfeit it all, or use a formula. I configure the credits to first disburse, then roll over.

In the Excess Treatment Rule drop-down list, select Rollover maximum, disburse maximum, then forfeit.

In the Cash Disbursement Limit drop-down list, select Amount.

If you’re going to disburse, you likely want to set a limit, either as a raw amount or as a percentage of the excess or total credits. I set the maximum to 200. Since Curtis had 232 credits, $200 will be disbursed and 32 credits are available for rollover.

In the Minimum field, enter 0.

In the Maximum field, enter 200.

Once you’ve set your disbursement behavior, in the Rollover Rates section, click Select and Add. Select your rate and a sequence number; it’s possible to have multiple rollover rates and they will apply sequentially.

In the Rollover Rates section, click Select and Add.

In the Rate drop-down list, select Choice Program Rollover.

In the Sequence field, enter 10.

You have three options for how to roll over credits; either total excess credit amount, a percentage of that amount, or a percentage of total credits. You can also set a minimum and maximum for rolled over credits using this rule. Since Curtis has 32 credits available and that is within this range, all of Curtis' credits will be rolled over to the HSA.

In the Rollover Limit Rule drop-down list, select Amount.

In the Minimum field, enter 20.

In the Maximum field, enter 200.

Click OK.

Click Save and Close.

It’s time to test the results.

Let’s have Curtis perform an enrollment and verify the flex credits are working as expected. I've already created an Add a Child event for this demo, so we can have Curtis enroll.

Enroll and accept the defaults. However, since we're rolling credits over to the HSA plan, I'm going to make sure that Curtis is enrolled in it. Personally, I like to also put in a small amount to avoid any business logic that might trigger if the amount is 0, but this isn't technically necessary.

Click the Home icon.

Click Benefits Administration.

Click Enrollment.

Search for and select Curtis Feitty.

Scroll down to Potential Life Events to back out the existing Add a Child event.

In the Actions menu, select Evaluate Life Events.

Click the Back icon.

Scroll down to Evaluated Life Events section, click Enroll.

Scroll down to the Other section.

Scroll down to Health Care FSA, click Edit.

In the Coverage field, enter 1.

Click OK.

Click Continue.

Once you're done, notice that Curtis still has 232 unused credits. Submit the enrollment and review the results.

Click Submit.

Scroll down to the Other section.

First, notice that the numbers are what you expected: 200 credits were disbursed as cash, and 32 credits were rolled over. If you scroll down to the HSA plan, you can see that under Other the 32 credits are shown.

The configuration is complete and working as expected.

For more information on this topic, you can view the Configure Benefits course on Oracle University. Thanks for watching!