Friday Feature – Districts and Counties Working Together on PERS

When a new employee is hired, whose responsibility is it to enter the CalPERS Id into the new Employee record? Well, the short answer is the county because legally counties are responsible for retirement reporting unless a district is fiscally independent.

But, the longer answer is that HR is already entering the employee’s name, address, social security, and everything else on the planet. Why not allow them to enter the CalPERS Id too (if they have it) and save the county personnel the extra step of entering the data?

Escape encourages and supports this type of cooperation with some special logic for the PERS Member ID field in the Employee record.

The look of the Employee record when entering a NEW employee. (Note, the Social Security Number will be “masked” once this record is saved.)

See the red arrow pointing to the PERS Member ID field in the Employee record. Normally, this is a read-only field (marked with the lock icon like you see in the field above), but this is a new employee, not just a new employee for the district but a new employee for the county, so the field is unlocked and available for editing.

How does Escape Online know whether or not to make the field editable? Excellent question. In a county-wide system, Escape Online tracks retirement at both the county and district level, ensuring that all earnings at all district locations are tied together in one easy county record.

So, when the HR technician enters the employee’s Social Security Number, Escape Online checks the database to see if that employee already exists. AND, if that employee does exist, Escape Online loads information for that employee, saving the district data entry effort.

And, that’s the point!

By using special logic, the district can save the county time by entering the PERS Member ID, and the county can save the district time by automatically pre-filling fields for employees that are already in the system.

Now that’s some automatic and purposeful cooperation.  Go team!

If you want to know more about how Escape Online connects district employees to county retirement, see the Friday Feature – Managing Your People.

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Friday Feature – Supplemental STRS Files

As the auntie of an uncountable number of nieces and nephews, I can tell you that getting them all to stick to a deadline is an almost impossible task. It seems to be one of life’s little quirks that whenever you try to get everyone to do something by a certain time, there are always one or two stragglers. Certainly, this can be the case when a county with numerous districts tries to gather data for retirement reporting.

That is why Escape Online gives counties the ability to create a supplemental STRS file, holding back an organization (or two!) from the regular file and submitting to STRS as a supplemental. (While this Friday Feature focuses on moving an entire month for a single organization, the ability to “move forward” also works for pay cycles — using a flag — and for retiree line items — from the STRS editor.)

Check it out!

To move an organization’s retire info forward one month, is as easy as selecting the Move Forward task from the STRS Processing activity. You will be prompted for the organization to create a supplemental file.

Once you process the month, there are two ways to see quickly that a supplemental file has been created. We show an asterisk next to the month.

If you want a more detailed look, you can open the year and see the list of organizations. The org you moved forward (or created a supplemental file for) is also marked with an asterisk.

Nice!

This feature is great for keeping the county on track for reporting retirement, saving time and money, and reducing penalties!

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Friday Feature – Retirement Matrix Errors

Retirement is one of the most complex parts of a school business employee’s pay. Both STRS and PERS had major changes recently and both are undergoing even more changes with the signing into law of AB340.

When Escape Technology first implemented retirement processing into our payroll system (way back in the mid-90s), we knew users were going to need help staying in the game, keeping on top of all these rule changes, so we built in the Error Matrix released by STRS and the Payroll Reporting Element Relationships chart from PERS.

This is an awesome strategy! Check it out.

This is the PERS Editor where you can see the error and all of the information you need to fix it. Of course, we have this same type of functionality in the STRS Editor.

Both the STRS/PERS Editors also have the ability to find ONLY those employees with errors. Sweet!

AND, Escape Online regularly checks for errors: when you are processing payroll, when you are importing persons, and of course when you are editing retirement lines.

Now that’s keeping you ahead of the game!

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STRS Address File Changes Coming in 12.03

Several customers have checked in with us recently to find out about the status of the upcoming changes to the STRS Address File.  We have been in contact with STRS and they are working on the format, which they expect to announce sometime in July.

When we receive the new format from STRS, we will begin the programming process.  STRS does not require the new format until November 2012, so we will include our changes in the 12.03 release, giving you plenty of time to be up-to-speed on these changes.

We appreciate the heads up from customers.  We added CR 11993 to our Regulatory Changes page to help you keep track of our progress. If you want to watch the progress yourself through your OnTime Portal, contact your Escape Customer Care representative to add your organization to the CR.

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Setup for Furlough Days for STRS Employees

Welcome to Roseville CSI, where a member of Escape Customer Care presents the solution to a particularly difficult customer service incident. This blog post will be the first in this occasional series.

One of my customers devised a creative way to deal with furlough days for STRS employees in the coming fiscal year, and  I thought you would like to hear about it!

They were looking for ideas on how to setup an addon (pay not associated with a position) for STRS employees that would dock furlough days, but keep the retirement pay rate in proportion so the correct credit service ratio is maintained.

Additionally, they wanted the addon to work for employees with partial FTE and/or who worked multiple assignments. The below setup accommodated the request so I thought I’d pass it along in case anyone else is looking for a similar setup.

Here is the customer’s request:

Currently the only way that we are aware of for districts to handle furlough days to meet STRS reporting requirements (maintain service credit and reduce pay rate) is to cancel an assignment and start a new assignment with fewer (or more in case of reversing furlough days) days(?) with a modified calendar and salary schedule. Lots of work for districts especially large districts. We have at least one, possibly more, districts planning to give back some of their furlough days – this take-them-away-then-give-them-back kind of machination is likely to go on for at least another year.

STRS will also accept another approach. If the furlough days are introduced, as is the case for one of our districts right now, they will have four furlough days between now and the end of the school year. STRS will accept reducing the pay in the remaining months as long as the pay rate reported to STRS maintains the correct service credit ratio. So for a person who is working 1 FTE (100%), if the furlough dock reduces their pay from, say $4,000/month to $3800/month, the pay rate on the retirement line would have to be reported at $3800 so the person would receive a full month of service credit.

Here is how Escape Customer Care suggested they address the situation.

Set up the dock addon with the Set Rate equal to Y, the Rate 1 Opt set to ‘H’ or ‘D’ (allowing the employee’s hourly or daily rate to default in), and the Rate 2 Amount locked at -1 (to cause the rate to be negative so it will reduce the retirement pay rate).

When the dock occurs in specific months but not all months, setting the Override Periods in the employee setup of the addon will affect the pay rate for only the months in which the dock for the furlough day is taken.

Check it out!

The month of May has the dock and shows the reduced pay rate.

The month of June does not have the dock and shows the full or regular pay rate.

The customer was very happy with the setup.  However, there are a couple of caveats. This setup is for STRS employees with regular assignments. This setup should not be used for PERS employees or employees with TIMECARD assignments.

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CalSTRS Address File Change

I have just been informed of another update for our customers concerning retirement.

As stated in the CalSTRS e-bulletin on April 24, CalSTRS is changing the format of the address file to improve the process. One of the changes to the address file will be to increase the record length for the street address. This will allow for longer street addresses to be accepted by STRS and reduce returned mail by the Post Office.

The new layout will be implemented in November 2012 and will require changes to the Escape Online software.

We will work with CalSTRS and our customers to make sure that the CalSTRS address files are in the appropriate format at the time of the change.

Watch our Regulatory Changes page and the CalSTRS web site for updates.

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Reduction of CalPERS Discount Rate

To make sure I know what is going on, I signed up for the CalPERS News Feed. This gives me CalPERS information in a very timely manner, including alerts and newsletters.

I wanted to share with you the latest information about the reduction of the CalPERS discount rate. This is from their newsletter:

The Board approved a plan to phase in the impact of increased employer contributions as the result of a reduction of CalPERS discount rate to 7.5 percent over 2 years. The employer rate increases are about 1 to 2 percent for most miscellaneous retirement plans and 2 to 3 percent for most safety plans. The plan adopted by the Board this week will see about half of the projected rate increase in the first year and the rest of the increase in the second year.

For more information, go to the CalPERS article.

This change from CalPERS should not require any changes to Escape Online software, but customers will have to change their PERS contribution setup. I’ll keep you posted if I hear anymore updates.

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STRS Changes – Penalties and Interest

Like there’s not enough going on with PERS changes, now changes are coming from STRS too!  Beginning in July 2012, STRS will be introducing new regulations on assessing penalties and interest for late reporting.  Based on a request from Anne Castleberg at the Ventura County Office of Education, Escape held a conference call yesterday for all of our customers to discuss how they will be handling these new requirements.  I was amazed at the turnout; we had a combination of county office and district staff attend: Ventura, Sonoma, Shasta, Tehama, Alameda and San Joaquin County Offices and Fairfield and Sacramento City Unified districts. 

During the call we addressed some specific questions from Ventura and also discussed if any changes would need to be made to Escape Online 5.  The software changes discussed would make our STRS reporting more dynamic which would in turn allow districts more time to submit preliminary files and correct errors more quickly, thereby reducing any penalties they may be charged.  Escape will be discussing the suggestions internally in order to come up with a final solution.  Stay tuned for more on that!

During the call there definitely seemed to be many different interpretations about the regulations so we all found the attached FAQ from STRS to be helpful, and both Fairfield and Tehama County indicated that STRS will be doing onsite training for them.  You can contact STRS directly if you’d like to schedule something similar for your office.

STRS Penalties_FAQs

Keeping everyone on the same page about upcoming changes is a great way to start the year.  Thanks for the suggestion Anne!

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PERS Web Conferences

PERS is holding web conferences every Tuesday and Thursday from 1:30 – 2:30.  This week I have attended both and think they are great.  They are fielding questions from the group and reviewing common errors that users are encountering. 

Some information that we gathered from the meetings were:

• When does current testing end?   Originally was ending 9/2/11, now there is no ending date.
• When will we get updated SEED data?  A couple days prior to going live customers can pick up the latest SEED data from ACES.
• Retired annuitants: Customers are having problems reporting them and PERS is working on it.  They suggested if you are getting errors to take them out of the file.  They are discussing internally on whether they will be required to be in the July and August files.

The information on the meetings is on the following page under general information.  For audio use the 888 number in the below screenshot.  And for visual click on Web Conference Links then the appropriate day.

http://www.calpers.ca.gov/index.jsp?bc=/employer/pert/file-readiness/home.xml

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PERS Changes

As most of you probably already know, PERS is planning to launch their new my|CalPERS system in September, 2011.  In preparation for this new reporting process, Escape sent out an 11.02 patch at the end of June with some important software changes.

One of the biggest changes to the PERS reporting process is how addons for special compensation (Contribution Codes 6 or 16) are coded.  Two new fields were  added to the addon setup record, PERS Special Comp Category and PERS Special Comp Type.  It is critical that your Production system is updated with this patch and that all addons with PERS Contribution Codes 6 and 16 are coded with these new Special Comp Category and Type and pay is initiated  BEFORE you submit a July payroll that has special comp addons that will be reported in the July 2011 PERS report.  The new PERS system won’t be ready to accept files until September, but the new changes go into effect for the July reporting period.

Other changes in the software include 3 new fields in the Organization setup record for new PERS and Division Id’s as well as the addition of the Special Comp Category and Type fields to the Employee Addon setup, Adjust Payroll and the PERS Editor.  When a PERS file is generated for a reporting month, we now produce both the old PERS file and the new XML file formats.  A new task has been added to the PERS Processing activity to generate a Test File for PERS in the new XML format.  Currently this task must be granted to a user in the User record as a permission.

Hopefully you are already well aware of these new changes and are in the process of coding all of your special comp addons.  There are several PERS resources that I encourage you to take a look at; the PERS File Testing Overview for Employers document  https://www.calpers.ca.gov/eip-docs/employer/pert/resource-library/file-testing-overview.pdf and the Get Ready for my|CalPERS with PERT page on the CalPERS website  http://www.calpers.ca.gov/index.jsp?bc=/employer/pert/home.xml.  This page has links with information about Training, Technical Resources, System Access Administration and System Conversion.

As always, if you have any questions about the new PERS changes, feel free to contact your Escape Customer Care Support Representative.

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