Transcript:
In this video, I will demonstrate Sage’s new “My Workforce Analyzer”—or MWA. MWA provides employers with a quick and convenient way to meet the employer reporting requirements of the Affordable Care Act. Using the existing HRMS data—including ‘Payroll History,’ ‘HR Records,’ and ‘Benefits History’—MWA can analyze employer costs and quickly generate the required 10-94 and 10-95 C forms.Let’s take a look!
MWA is located within the HRMS application. It is easily accessible through the HRMS ‘Quick Launch’ toolbar. Navigating through the MWA program is a snap. There are four main sections, including: ‘Setup,’ ‘Analysis,’‘Forms,’ and ‘Resources.’ This ‘Help’ section includes resources on ‘Setup’ and use of My Workforce Analyzer, in addition to further information regarding the Affordable Care Act and the IRS regulations regarding reporting.
The first step to using My Workforce Analyzer is going through the ‘Setup.’ ‘Setup’ can be accessed from the ‘Setup’ section on your home screen, or through the ‘Setup’ link across the top of the screen. As with many of the sections in the program, you’ll notice the ‘Setup’ section has several subsections. We’ll begin with employer benefits. Initially, it asks for your company’s federal corporate tax rate. This is not used for the forms, but is used to assist in calculating potential costs, should you have penalties.Secondly, it asks you to certify that you are providing minimum essential coverage with minimum value, selecting ‘yes’ or ‘no’ here will assist the MWA in calculating potential penalties.
The next section asks you to identify the benefit plans you wish to consider in your analysis and reporting. It is important to note in this section that you should only see medical plans listed: dental, vision, AD&D,disability, or life plans should not be listed here. If you do not see your medical plans, check your benefits ‘Setup’ to ensure that your plans are set up as type ‘M’ or medical. Once you’ve selected those plans, you can select your offer of coverage code. The offer of coverage code you select here is merely a default value, as it may not apply to every situation or employee on whom you’ll be reporting. Further, in the program, you’ll have the opportunity to select specific codes that apply to different employees. Here we’ll select a default value of ‘1E’.
This next section is looking for information regarding the lowest cost stealth only or employee minimum value coverage. For the benefit plan, I’ve selected ‘HMO.’ For this data, the ‘HMO’ plan offers the lowest-cost employee-only coverage. Next, I’ve entered the employee contribution amount of the monthly premium for employee-only coverage. Finally, I’ve entered the employer contribution amount of the monthly premium for employee-only coverage.These two amounts together, total the employee-only coverage monthly premiums amount.
Next, I’ve entered section 49808 Safe Harbor code. Similar to the offer of coverage code, this is a default value that may not apply to all the reporting situations that you have. Later in the program, again, you’ll have the opportunity to customize that per employee. And finally, if the employer provides self-insurance coverage, you can select this box, this will affect the forms later in the program. Anytime changes are made on this screen,the ‘Save’ button will turn green—reminding you to save in order to apply those changes. Changes can be made at anytime and saved. Similar to the HRMS interface, My Workforce Analyzer offers two help sections; you have a broad Help section for the My Workforce Analyzer. In addition to a topic-specific Help section that will pull up help topics related to the task currently on the screen. Selecting data help topics on the ‘Setup’ screen will provide assistance with each field. Additionally, information regarding the offer of coverage code is listed as well as the section 49808 harbor code. Definitions of each code are listed in addition to links for accessing updated information directly from the IRS.
Returning to the My Workforce Analyzer interface, let’s move to the ‘Regulatory Periods’ tab. On the ‘Regulatory Periods’ tab, you’re able to specify the measurement periods you’ll use to measure, enroll, and regulate your employee’s hours of service and healthcare benefits—according to the ACA requirements. Here, for our standard regulatory periods, I’ve specified January to begin the measurement period and an admin duration of two months. In addition to your standard regulatory periods, you also have a section to specify your variable hour employee measurement periods.
Next, in your MWA ‘Setup,’ you have a tab for employee types and service hours. First, specify the hours of service earnings on your employees and the service hours tab. MWA allows you to specify earning types that would be considered hours of service earnings under the ACA. Here I’ll select the earning types that would apply. This would not include bonus or car allowance. In this situation, holiday and illness or accruals, and would not apply. However, regular pay types would apply. The next section on this tab allows you to specify any job titles for employees who are salaried, and who are paid a flat amount per pay period instead of an hourly amount. This will allow MWA to calculate hours of service based on these pay periods.
Finally, the last section on this tab allows you to specify which employee types in your system should be considered for ACA analysis and calculations and which not. You have a choice of three different types, full-time,part-time, and seasonal. Those employee types marked as seasonal in this section will not be considered in the ACA analysis. Here, I’ve marked several employee types as seasonal to keep them from calculating or being considered in my analysis. Those that are considered part-time have been marked as part-time,and those that are full-time have been marked as full-time.
I’ll save these changes and move to my ‘Payroll History’ tab.The ‘Payroll History’ source, allows you to select whether to use your payroll history within HRMS or import your payroll history using a CSV file. A template has been provided to assist you in formatting this file for import. The final tab used in the ‘Setup’ of your end of your MWA program is your employee ACA settings. This will provide you with a list of your employees and their current benefit plan enrollment. In the event you’ve been notified by the IRS that an employee is receiving a health care premium subsidy, that can be noted here. In addition, you can mark this box for any employees who are being considered as variable hour employees.
The default view for employee lists is sorting by last name.You also have the option of searching by name or ID and using filters. This allows you to filter the employee list by employment status, as well as employer, range of hire date, and range of term date. Once the MWA ‘Setup’ has been completed and all the information for each ‘Setup’ tab has been reviewed,you’re ready for the analysis screen. Within the analyzer feature of MWA, you have three sections monitoring, pay or play, and employee information. On your monitoring tab, there’s a dashboard for large employer determination, your measurement period hours, and the current period. Large employer determination utilizes at least one year of payroll history to show your current determination is a large employer, as well as the forecast determination. This is based on your full-time employee and full-time equivalent employee count average per month.
This also provides a more detailed view. The measurement period hours dashboard calculates employee hours by average monthly hours worked—in accordance with ACA guidelines. Here you can see the average employee monthly hours, you can click on the graph to scroll through the employee list,or you can expand the graph by clicking the arrows button. This allows you to view a larger list of employees at a time. The ‘View Details’ button allows you to see the numbers behind the scenes that are used to create the bar graph. Here MWA shows you a list of employees in addition to their average hours worked per month. This table divides the list of employees by those who have had a status change and may need to be considered moving to part-time or full-time during the next administrative period.
Again, these hours are average monthly hours. To view the employee hours per pay period, you can click the employee’s name within the bar graph. This will show you a table of employee hours worked or pay period. The current period dashboard shows where you are within your measurement periods.
Next in the analysis section is ‘Pay or Play.’ ‘Pay or Play’shows your current cost and cost with potential penalties and allows you to optimize your costs by manipulating employee and employer contributions. When using the contribution optimizer, this section of your annual expenses will change to customize to reflect those numbers.
Finally, in the analyzer section, you have ‘Employee Information.’Within employee information, you have three sections: benefits, affordability,and subsidized. Within benefits, you’re able to see the employee enrollment, their annual contribution as well as employer contribution. Affordability lists your employees, states ‘yes’ or ‘no’ as to how you set them in ‘Setup’ with subsidized and reflect whether their coverage was considered affordable during each month of the period.
Here you can see My Workforce Analyzer uses safe harbor method box one of the Form W2 and premiums for the lowest cost employee-only benefit plan, which is specified in the initial ‘Setup’ screen. The subsidize section will show you a list of any employees who were marked as receiving an IRS subsidy for their health care premiums.
The final section of My Workforce Analyzer is ‘Forms.’ This section allows you to generate your employer required reporting on the 1094 C,and 1095 C forms. Here you’ll see the default values that were entered on the ‘Setup’screen. You have the opportunity to edit these here and also on the individual forms. If an employer offers self-insured coverage, this box can be selected so that form 1095 C will include covered dependence information. This section allows an employer to use-dependent and beneficiary information as set up in their Sage HRMS software. Employers also have the option to import this information from a CSV file. A CSV file template is available to assist in creating that format.
Here you can see the information that will feed into the 1094 C. These fields are prepopulated from the information within the Sage HRMS program; however, they can be edited as needed. Section 2 will use some information from your ‘Setup’ screen. We’ll also notate how many 1095 C forms will be filed with this 1094 C and allows you to specify any additional safe harbor methods used if necessary. Part three can also be completed manually if coverage was not offered all 12 months. Form 1095 C is also populated from information within HRMS, and—similar to the other form—can be edited as needed.
If an employee did not receive an offer of coverage all 12 months, their form can be edited. For self-insured plans, the employer can notate information regarding those covered under the plan, including: social,date of birth, and months in which the participant was enrolled.
The employee list can be filtered. You can search by name or ID. Choose to sort by employee ID or name. Use the arrows to move throughout the list or apply any filters, including employment status, a range of hire date, term date, forms with errors, without errors, forms notated to be excluded from filing, or only included in filing. These forms can be saved and can be edited at a later date or can be printed. Future releases of this program will include the ability for an employer to file electronically and will generate the necessary electronic media.
As you can see, here forms are available in the PDF format and can be edited further. And once that has been done, you can also view them from within editing in a PDF format. Again, with fillable form fields. And with that, we return to the home screen of My Workforce Analyzer. This has been an overview of the My Workforce Analyzer program within Sage HRMS. Thank you for joining me.
