Configuring the Benefits Projections driver

The Benefits Projection driver table contains forecast monthly expense and percentage rates for benefits that use a Lookup Amount or Lookup Percent driver.

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These rates are defined in the Benefits driver table. All benefits that look up either monthly expense or percentage rates in this table must have rows in the Benefit Projections table for every plan name or other designation used to map employees to the benefit drivers.

Benefit plan names (for example, "Medical Plan"), should be included in the payroll file of existing employees for every benefit projected, and will be used to look up projected expense, or a driver rate, by month. Benefits are also mapped to new employees using job codes, and the benefit plans, or other benefit designation, must be included in this table for expense projections.

To configure the Benefit projections driver

  1. From the Command Center home page, click Payroll Planning.
  2. Open the budget, scenario, or forecast for which to edit the driver.
  3. Click the Drivers & Assumptions tab.
  4. Click the Benefits Projectionsdriver.

  5. Click the BenefitProjections sheet and populate the columns as described in the following table.

    Table column Description
    Benefit Name Select from the list of benefits sourced from the Benefits driver table.
    Benefit Driver Displayed for information purposes.
    Benefit Column

    Select from the list. If a value is not included in the list, you can add it here.
    Benefit Value This can be any value that can be used to tie an employee to a projection record, including rates and amounts. You will need to create mapping values for ranges of rates of expense amounts when you populate the Payroll table if they are needed.
    State Click on the ellipsis (...) to select a state for benefits that are state-specific. Otherwise, leave as ALL, which is the default.
    Annual Limits

    Limits can be set here by plan and state. Default limits from the Benefits driver table are retrieved by the utility as records are added. These are calculated fields, and the formulas will be overwritten when entries are made by the administrator.

    NOTE: Limits apply only to benefits. Although you can enter limits for bonuses, they will not be applied.
    Monthly columns

    Depending on the benefits driver, enter either the projected monthly expense or percentage rates for all available months (zeroes are valid values so the utilities do not carry forward values from one month to the next). The number of monthly columns is determined by the Terminal Year value. Although displayed as percentage rates, you must enter percentages as decimals.

    NOTE: The limits set in the Benefits driver will support benefits that do not need a Benefit Projection record. This is primarily true of expenses that use a fixed percentage, such as 401(k) plan expenses, to calculate benefit expenses. They only need a projection record when the rate is expected to change during the projection period.

  6. When all columns of the table are populated, click Save in the Main ribbon to create the driver table.

TIP: You must set up a separate lookup row for every value in the column you are mapping. If you want to use the same expense or percentage rate for multiple lookup values, combine them into one lookup value in your Payroll table.