Open Enroll ESS Help plz!

While employee groups are not effective date driven, benefits are. I believe you will need additional employee groups, but not benefits plans or deductions. You can set-up all the 2013 rates with the new EE groups to run your benefits enrollment.

Karen

I agree with Karen. You will need to create new groups and contribution records using the new plan year start date, but you don't need to create new deductions.

1. Create new groups that use the 0.4 FTE criteria.
2. Create new Contribution records using the new plan year start date and the new group names. (Go to BN15, inquire on the plan, click the Contribution button at the bottom of the screen.)

The only thing that could make this tricky is if you end up with overlapping Contribution records. I recommend that you create a matrix showing all the employee groups for the new plan year and compare them to the groups on the current plan year contribution records to verify that there are no "surprises". Very often, over time, special groups are created to handle grandfathered clauses or one-off agreements. If you're not careful, your new groups will include some of these special cases and will result in duplicate contribution records, causing an error when trying to enroll them for the new year.

Hope that helps. Let me know if you have questions.
Karen Ploof

Great idea ladies!

I did that but I'm having an issue when I try to change the BN15.1 screen with a new date of 01/01/2013 and the new employee group. It keeps giving me "Plan start date cannot be > than premium start dates."

I have gone to Contrib button, BN18 and updated the employee groups (new ones) with 01/01/2013 dates and new premium amounts. All that saved fine; I've updated my BN16 entry rules because I had an entry rule employee group that I had to create new there too.
Ran the HR155 so employees can correctly populate in the new employee groups. The system still will not allow me to change the bn15 with a 01/01/2013 row and new employee group. Any ideas as to why?

TIA,

Sarah

The new plan start date should not be entered on BN15.1, it should be something like BN17 or BN18 (depending on the contribution type). You get to those forms by clicking the Contribution button at the bottom of BN15.1

Unfortunately, this won't work because the BN15 eligibility employee group has to change too and since the system will not allow me to add a new date there even if I change it with the new employee group:
1. Employee with existing coverage that have a qualifying event now can not make a change on BN32 because they are "no longer eligible"
2. This changes our entire history which we do not want to do.
Creating all new benefit plans is not feasible either so I am back to square one on this.

Ah... now I get it. I think that you still go ahead and add the new groups to Contribution (and Eligibility) tabs now (again, making sure that none of them include the 0.2 FTE). Then you will change the eligibility group on BN15 after the new effective date.

Since new hires are eligible at the 0.2 FTE for now, adding the new groups (0.4 FTE) with a future date will not affect them. If a 0.2 FTE person tries to enroll in benefits with an effective date after your new plan starts, they will get an error because there will be no Elilgibility/Contribution group that includes them.

Are you using ESS for open enrollment? If so, I believe you can enforce the 0.4 FTE group in the set up screens.

Hope that helps, Karen