Before you are able to begin scanning your employees, you will need to do some basic setup.
Company Settings is where you will define specific rules and codes used when determining an employee's full-time status. These need to be set up for each company, regardless if that company is in an Aggregated ALE Group or not.
You can access Company Settings by navigating to the settings screen for the Affordable Care Act Full-Time Status Tracker in Dynamics Payroll Inspector.
Configuring the Company Settings
Company Settings will have a few default values until you edit and configure your preferred settings.
Select Edit Company Settings to begin configuring your company-level settings.
Configuring Break-in-Service Rules
The first setting to configure will determine how you want to set your break-in-service rules.
When using the Measurement Period approach, as does the Dynamics Payroll Inspector, an employee that experiences a break-in-service (no hours worked) that is greater than the indicated 13-weeks (or 26-weeks for Educational Institutions) may be treated as an ongoing employee upon return.
This means that the employee will not be considered a new hire and forced through an initial measurement period to determine their full-time status, but will resume within their applicable measurement and stability period upon return.
Example: Teachers on summer break typically observe the 26-week break-in-service period to account for no hours worked during the summer months while school is out.
Storing Full-Time Status in Dynamics GP
Once you have decided which break-in-service rule fits your company's needs best, you can then decide whether or not you want to store the Full-Time or Non Full-Time status in Dynamics GP. Whether you store the decision in Dynamics GP or not, the decision will be stored in the Dynamics Payroll Inspector.
You may choose to store this determination for their most recent measurement period in GP through designating a field in the drop-down list.
Options include:
- Payroll User Defined 1 & 2
- HR Alpha/Numeric 1 - 5
- HR Checkbox 1 - 5
Auto-Full-Time Employee Classification
The Affordable Care Act has special rules for employees who are consider to be full-time on hire and ongoing, regardless of hours worked within a measurement period.
You can classify an employee as automatically having Full-Time status based on the employees assigned Class, Type, Department, or Position. You can select the desired classification and then choose the appropriate values populated based on selection.
Initial Measurement Period Start Rule
After configuring the auto full-time status, you will define when you want the initial measurement period can be set to begin for variable-hour new hires.
Options include:
- Date of Hire
- Nearest First of Month
- Date of Hire (Adjusted)
- Nearest First of Month (Adjusted)
Configuring Hours of Service
Lastly, employee full-time status is determined by using their hours of service. This setting allows you to tell us which of your pay codes should be considered as hours of service. Dynamics Payroll Inspector will automatically attempt to determine the relevant pay codes in your system. It will automatically check the boxes it thinks are correct, but you may wish to review these and select or unselect any pay codes you feel are correct or incorrect.
Also, Mileage/Piecework is a type of employment in which the employee is paid a fixed rate miles driven, units produced, or actions performed. If employees are compensated based on mileage or piecework, check this setting to enable additional columns within the pay code setup grid where “Pieces per Hour” can be defined by pay code.
After selecting the relevant pay codes, you can save your company settings. These settings can be modified at any time if you wish to make any changes or add new pay codes.
Note: If your company is a part of an Aggregated ALE Group, this will need to be done for each company separately as values may differ.