Benefit A collection of benefit plans your company offers to a group of employees.

Program For example, you might have one benefit program for hourly employees, another for
salaried employees, and a third for executives.
Benefit Plan Any benefit category, such as health, life, or savings. A benefit plan option is a specific
benefit option within a plan type.
For example, you might set up three benefit plan options for a plan type: one times
salary, two times salary, and three times salary. Benefit plans are associated with benefit
programs and can be linked to any number of benefit programs.
Event Process you use to enroll new employees and to track and react to employee benefit
Maintenance changes during the plan year, such as those resulting from a marriage or termination of
employment

Bas Activity

The BenAdmin Activity page stores unprocessed events for the next run of Event Maintenance. You
can review the events currently on the BAS Activity page, insert events for processing, or delete
events if absolutely necessary.

As soon as Benefits Administration successfully processes an event, the system will delete the
corresponding BAS Activity. BAS Activity is only populated during Event Maintenance.

Benefits Administration monitors employee records for events, or changes in employee data, that
affect benefits. For most of these events, a record of the event is automatically written to the BAS
Activity Table so that the employee will be processed in the next Event Maintenance process

Changes in geographic location, job code, or union code can affect eligibility and are automatically
recorded on the BAS Activity Table. Certain events do not register on the BAS Activity Table, however,
and can only be included in Event Maintenance through manual insertion on the BenAdmin Activity
page.

Two types of event classes must be manually inserted on the BenAdmin Activity page for processing
in Event Maintenance: family status changes and some miscellaneous events (those not triggered
through ordinary data entry changes). The types of events requiring manual insertion can be
customized according to your company's needs.
Event triggers are employee activities that initiate a BAS process. Some event triggers, such as
changes to personal records and family status, initiate the Event Maintenance process
Understanding Benefits Administration Process Flow
Running Benefits Administration can be complex, because the events you process can follow a variety of
different paths. Some employees will have a number of events that require processing, others will have
events that don't change their benefits eligibility, and in the case of open enrollment, many employees
won't be picked up for event processing at all. In addition, you'll run into situations where events process
erroneously, which means that you'll need to reprocess them until you get the right result.
Remember that Benefits Administration processes events, not participants. At any given time, a
participant may be associated with several unprocessed events that are of different event classes on
different event dates. During a particular run of the Benefits Administration process, the system uses a set
of rules to decide which event to process first and then processes that event from scheduling to
finalization before continuing with the next one.
Ideally, you would run the Benefits Administration two to three times to complete the processing of a
participant event:
1. During the first run, the system assigns participant events to a Benefits Administration processing
schedule, and scheduled events are, in turn, assigned to a benefit program.
In addition, Benefits Administration determines benefit program eligibility, options, and defaults,
and calculates credits and rates for the participant associated with the event.
2. During the second run, after you've generated enrollment statements for your participants and
entered their election choices into the system through the data entry pages; the system validates
and loads updated participant plan, dependent, and investment election information.
3. During the final run, Benefits Administration finalizes elections for participants who did not return
their enrollment statements and for participants with errors in their records.
More realistically, errors will occur, resulting from incomplete rule setup, inconsistent HR data, or
invalid election entry by the employee. After you review and correct the errors and run Benefits
Administration again, the system moves the participants who had errors further along in the
process.
Each time you run Benefits Administration, the participant events you process are assigned a process
status designation, so you can determine status and correct errors.

The BAS process for Open Enrollment and Event Maintenance is started after you define the BAS
Group ID and Schedule IDs
The BAS Group ID determines the participants for an Event Maintenance or Open Enrollment
schedule. In the Open Enrollment process, you must define and associate an Open Enrollment
Definition ID with the schedule.

You conduct Event Maintenance daily or weekly, and you conduct Open Enrollment annually or semi-
annually. These processes help you to administer benefits for the upcoming year or term

Events are processed within the BAS process. These events are employee record changes that affect
employee benefit options. An employee may be associated with several unprocessed events, each
following a different path. The number of events that require processing may vary from employee to
employee.
You may need to run the BAS process several times to process a particular event. During the first run
of this process:
• The application assigns events to a BAS processing schedule.
• The scheduled events are then assigned to benefit programs.

Next, the benefits administrator prints enrollment statements and distributes them to participants for
updating and making changes. When a participant's enrollment statement is printed, the process
status is updated from PR to Notified (NT).
During the second run, the system validates the changes and loads the updated participant election
information. If the process runs successfully, its status changes to Finalized/Enrolled (FE). Next,
confirmation statements are printed and mailed to participants assigned an FE status

During the third run, the BAS process finalizes investment elections for participants who submitted
incomplete or incorrect enrollment statements. In case of any errors, the Election Error (EE) process
status is displayed. Errors may occur due to an incomplete rule setup, inconsistent HR data, or an
invalid election entry by the employee. Events are assigned a process status for each run, which
enables you to determine the status and correct the errors. Run the BAS process again after reviewing
and correcting any errors.
Eligibility Rules to Determine Benefit Program and Option Eligibility
To prepare for open enrollment and event maintenance, first define the eligibility rules that drive benefit
determination. These eligibility rules can be based on job information (such as pay group or department)
and geographic location (such as home or work address).

Event Rules Setup to Determine What an Employee Can Choose

While eligibility rules determine what programs and plan options employees are eligible for, you also need
event rules and coverage codes to determine what your employees can choose, based on the type of
event that has triggered the change in eligibility. For example, when an employee divorces, that act does
not enable them to change all of their benefits elections. That's an opportunity most employees should
only receive during open enrollment

Example of Passive Event Definition

You might set up a passive event to determine which employees are eligible for certain benefits once
they've worked for your organization for a year. To do this, you define a passive event with the service
date event type and an event limit - months value of 12. The event classification for this example could be
MSC, or it could be a new event classification created specifically to manage this passive event.
After you set up the passive event, the system calculates the difference between your employees' service
dates and the process date, and it triggers the event for any employees with a difference of twelve
months within the date range that you specify on the Benefits Administration process run control page.
The system processes the passive event as an MSC event.
Internally, when the Benefits Administration process runs, it processes passive
events by inserting a BAS Activity record for each individual who meets the passive
event criteria. From this point, the activity record is processed like any other event,
which means that you can extend the passive event concept beyond that which is
delivered. Do this by creating your own modified processes that insert the required
BAS Activity rows
 Event Rules page

To ignore the plan type associated with the event rule, select the Ignore Plan check box for event
classification

If you select the Pre-enter check box, PeopleSoft Benefits Administration populates the employee's
benefits administration data with the current elections for the plan type associated with the event.

If you select the Elect Required check box, PeopleSoft Benefits Administration records errors for the
plan type associated with the event rule. Select to note the absence of elections for this plan type as an
error in the Benefits Administration Messages table.

If you select the Ignore Dep/Ben Edits check box, PeopleSoft Benefits Administration skips the
checks made for the presence of dependents or beneficiaries for the plan type associated with the
event rule.

If you select the Ignore Investment Edits check box, PeopleSoft Benefits Administration skips the
checks made for the presence of investments on the savings plans associated with the event rule.
Select the Provide FlexCR Upon Default check box if you want participants that default into a plan
type to still receive credits that are tied to the default plan type.

Select the Use History check box to review the benefit plan eligibility history and current benefit plan
option eligibility for the participant to determine if she or he can change an election.

Use the Default Method drop-dow to select the method to be used by the BAS process for assigning
defaults to participants flagged for finalizing.

Assign Cur Covrg Else None:

The system assigns the participant's current coverage. If the participant loses eligibility for the current
plan, the system terminates the current plan election.

Assign Cur Covrg Else Option:

The system assigns the participant's current coverage. If the participant has no current coverage or
has lost eligibility to current coverage, the system assigns the option defined as the default for the
plan type.

Default to Lowest Eligible Option:

The system assigns the lowest level option for which the participant is eligible. This default method is
not recommended for Savings, FSA, and Vacation Buy/Sell plan types.

Default to Option and Coverage:

The system assigns the option marked for default on the Benefit Program Definition page. This default
method is not recommended for Savings, FSA, and Vacation Buy/Sell plan types.

Terminate Coverage:
The system inserts a termination entry for the plan type. This default method is commonly used for
FSA and Vacation Buy/Sell plan types.

Indicates what happens when an employee does not select an election for a particular plan type. Values
are:
• Assign Cur Covrg Else Option (assign current coverage else option): Select to assign and
continue the participant’s current coverage.
If participants do not have current coverage, or have lost eligibility to current coverage, they are
assigned to the default for the specific plan type, as defined in the Benefit/Deduction Program
table. The participant must be eligible for the current election for it to be used as the default.
• Assign Cur Covrg Else None (assign current coverage else none): If the employee loses eligibility
for the current plan, another plan is not set up to replace the old one.
• Assign Cur Covrg Else Low Opt (assign current coverage else low option): Select to assign and
continue the participant’s current coverage.
If there is no current coverage, or if the participant has lost eligibility to current coverage, the
system assigns the lowest-level option available, as defined in the Benefit/Deduction Program
table. Not recommended for Savings, FSA, and Vacation Buy/Sell plan types.
• Default to Lowest Elig Option (default to lowest eligible option): Select to assign the lowest-level
option for which the employee is eligible.
Not recommended for Savings, FSA, and Vacation Buy/Sell plan types.
 • Default to Option and Coverage: Select to assign the option marked for default on the Benefit
Program Definition page.
The participant must be eligible for the option for it to be used as the default. Not recommended
for Savings, FSA, and Vacation Buy/Sell plan types.
• Default Option for Exc Credit: (default option for excess credit) Applicable only to FSA plan types.
If the employee has indicated that excess credits should be directed to an FSA enrollment, this
rule assigns the option marked for default on the Benefit Program Definition page and sets the
annual pledge to the amount of the excess credits. The participant must be eligible for the option
for it to be used as the default, and excess credits must exist.
Note. During enrollment, the system does not create a zero-dollar annual pledge enrollment
when excess credits do not exist, and any current FSA enrollment is terminated if not reelected
by the employee.
• Terminate Coverage: Inserts a termination entry for the plan type covered by this event rule.
Commonly used for FSA and Vacation Buy/Sell plan types, as employees are usually required to
reenroll in them each year or lose coverage.

Use the Select Allowed drop-down to select which options an employee may elect from among all
available eligible options.

Next, specify the coverage, the deduction, and the flex credits start and end dates on the Date Rules
page

Use the Date Rules page to define the coverage, deduction, and flex credits start and end dates for
each event rule classification.

Use the Billing Rules page to add customized billing parameters for each event classification for the
event

The BenAdmin Event Status Update page enables you to view a summary of all events for a
particular participant and benefit record number combination, as well as update an event's status and
process indicator to reprocess or finalize.

PeopleSoft Benefits Administration only processes events with an event status of Open and allows only
one event to be open for a participant at any time. To change an event status to Open, first close any
other open event

As you near the end of the Event Maintenance process, you may discover election errors for some of
your participants, or you may discover that you have not received completed enrollment statements
from all participants. The system will not complete the Event Maintenance process for participants with
missing elections or elections in error.

If you have not received the correct information from the participants, you can still choose to
complete the process for them by finalizing their elections. Finalizing occurs during the next BAS
process run when the defined benefit program defaults are applied to any missing elections or
elections errors. After finalization, the Event Maintenance process is complete for those participants.

Selecting the Final check box indicates that you want to finalize and/or apply default benefit option
elections to a specific participant event on the next run of the PeopleSoft Benefits Administration
process for the schedule to which that the participant event is assigned.

Schedule and Chkpt Restart page to choose a Schedule ID for processing

If you selected an Event Maintenance schedule, the EM Process Mode field appears. You have the
following options:
• Schedule and Process Events: All BAS Activity entries are retrieved and events are created and
assigned to all appropriate schedules. Then, any events belonging to the current schedule are
processed further during this run.
• Schedule New Events Only: All BAS Activity entries are retrieved and events are created and
assigned to all appropriate schedules, but they are not processed further during this run.
• Process Existing Events Only: Only existing events belonging to the current schedule are
processed.

use the Record Eligibility Results feature. Using this feature enables you to troubleshoot eligibility
related benefit processing errors. In this case, PeopleSoft Benefits Administration checks participant
eligibility for all benefit programs and options. It records the results of these checks on the Eligibility
Debugging page.

Use the BenAdmin Schedule Summary page to validate and monitor errors that may have occurred
during the Event Maintenance process. This page also displays information about the total number of
participants and their current status for a specific Schedule ID.

For passive event processing, specify whether the events should be triggered or processed. If you
choose to trigger passive events, PeopleSoft Benefits Administration automatically records all such
events on the BAS Activity Table.

You have to run the Event Maintenance process for employees who have completed one year of
service. Specify the Event ID. In this exercise, the Event ID is 1YR.

.
Benefit Program:

The Plan Type and Option page enables you to link plan types to the benefit program and add
important information such as plan options, and deduction codes.

Enter the plan type in the Plan Type field. Plan types group individual plans or options that may be
elected by an employee for a particular type of benefit.

Enter an option type in the Option Type field. P (Program). This option type is required for automated
benefit programs. It is allowed for the Benefit Program Row (plan type 01) only, and only one is
allowed per benefit program.

Optn ID As you define options for each of the plan types that are offered, the system automatically
(option ID) enters the option ID.
Optn Type Each option row needs to have an option type designation. Base Benefits enables you to
(option type) select from the following list of valid values:
O: At least one option is required per plan type, except for plan type 01. Plan type 01 is
used only for Benefits Administration. It is also called the "Program" level of the benefit
program and is used only by programs that run in conjunction with Benefits Administration.
G: Designates that this option is a general credit and used only in Benefits Administration.
P: This is used only for plan type 01. It designates that this is a program and is required for
automated benefit programs. Only one P row is allowed per benefit program.
W: Designates that waiving coverage is an option and is used only in Benefits
Administration.
Benefit Plan Enter the code for a benefit plan that was defined on the Benefit Plan Table. If it is
something other than a health plan, provide added detail in one of the various benefit plan
detail pages.
Covrg Code This applies only to health plan types. Indicate the level of coverage for health plans. It is a
(coverage required field for those plan types. Coverage codes are defined on the Coverage Code
code) Table.
Deductn Cd Links the deduction code to the option.
(deduction
code)
Option Code This field is available if the COBRA Plan check box is selected, or if this is a Benefits
Administration (Automated) benefit program
Default Applies to Benefits Administration. Select this check box if you want this option to be used
Option as the default when the Benefits Administration process validates, loads, or finalizes
participant elections.
The default option is the benefit plan option that is given to employees who do not make
an election and is used if the associated event rule has a default method of Option or
Current Else Option.
Opt Level Applies to Benefits Administration. Option level refers to the level of benefits coverage
(option level) provided by the option. For example, suppose you're setting up a set of supplemental life
options that will give employees the ability to choose a coverage of 1, 2, 3, or 4 times their
annual salary. Set option level values for these options of 1, 2, 3, and 4, respectively
Enter the option sequence which indicates the order in which benefit options appear.

Use the Elig ID field to link an eligibility rule to this option. Eligibility rules allow you to specify
whether a particular parameter makes the employee eligible or ineligible for the plan option