Special Requirements for Plan Design

Certain types of plans have special requirements that you should know about before you begin to record your plan design in the system. These special plans include flex credit plans, flexible spending accounts, life insurance plans, and imputed income plans.

Flex Credits Plans (Advanced Benefits)

If you are offering a flex credit plan, you must set up a flex credits program, even if there is only one plan for which you offer flex credits.

Flexible Spending Account Plans (Advanced Benefits)

If you want to identify reimbursable goods and services for FSAs, you must set up these accounts as separate plans, rather than as separate options within an FSA plan. You cannot associate goods and services at the option level. Examples of FSAs include US health care and dependent care plans.

Imputed Income Plans (US)

When you administer a plan that is subject to imputed income there are certain requirements that you need to follow during your plan design.

You must create two plans, one that is subject to imputed income and a second plan, called a placeholder plan, that you use to record the imputed income calculation. You can have only one placeholder plan per program, or a placeholder plan can be linked to multiple programs.

Note: By default, the imputed income calculation assumes that the employer pays 100% of the benefit, and the benefits system does not subtract employee contributions from the calculation. However, you can set the BEN:Imputed Income Post Tax Deduction profile to Y so that the imputed income process deducts the sum of all standard rates defined as Subject to Imputed Income with a Tax Type of After Tax and an Activity Type of either Employee Payroll Contribution, Employee Individual Contribution, or Employee Plan Contribution.

Life Insurance Plans

If you offer dependent and spousal life insurance, and you limit the level of dependent or spousal coverage as a percentage of the employee's life insurance coverage, system processing requires that you set up three plans (Employee Life Insurance, Spousal Life Insurance, and Dependent Life Insurance) and associate them with corresponding plan types (Employee Life Insurance, Spousal Life Insurance, and Dependent Life Insurance).

Considerations for Associating a Plan with a Program

When you define a benefits plan, it is not necessary that the plan be placed in a program. However, there are advantages to associating a plan with a program. In general, a plan belongs in a program when:

In general, a plan does not belong in a program (termed a "not in program plan") when:

Currency Definition for Multinational Organizations

You define currency types at the program level. A plan in program must inherit the program's currency definition. You cannot associate a plan with more than one program if those programs use different currency types.

For example, let's say your organization defines two programs, a US Benefits Program and a Canadian Benefits Program. You must define different currency types for these two programs.

Accordingly, you must define two employee stock purchase plans: the US Employee Stock Purchase Plan and the Canadian Employee Stock Purchase Plan to accommodate the different currency types of the programs with which they are associated.