Oracle US Payroll enables you to determine the employee name that is archived and displayed on Employee W-2s (Online and Paper):

You can set these following profile options:

• HR:Archive Latest Name for W-2

• HR:Display Archived Name on W-2

Setting these profile options can help resolve any name reporting inconsistencies with the Employee W-2s and Employee Online W-2s. By default, the 'HR:Archive Latest Name for W-2' and 'HR:Display Archived Name on W-2' profile options are delivered with N (No) as the default value (which reflects the current system behavior).

HR:Archive Latest Name for W-2

The 'HR:Archive Latest Name for W-2' profile option determines which name is archived when the Year End Preprocessor (or YEPP) is run. When set to Y (Yes), this will result in the employee's latest name being archived when the Year End Preprocessor (YEPP) is run or retried. This will also result in the latest name being reported on the Federal W-2 Magnetic Media files as a "smart archive" call is made which archives and reports the current/latest name in the Federal W-2 Magnetic Media magnetic file (mf) output. When set to N (No), the YEPP will archive the employee name as of December 31st of the reporting year, and the same name will also then be reported in the Federal W-2 Magnetic Media output file.

HR:Display Archived Name on W-2

The 'HR:Display Archived Name on W-2' profile option determines which name is displayed on the online Employee W-2 or is printed on the Employee W-2 when the Employee W-2 PDF report is run. When set to Y, both the online Employee W-2 PDF and the printed Employee W-2 PDF will display the archived name (the name that was archived for that reporting year). When set to No, it will display the latest name which is the current behavior: the Employee W2 PDF will display the name in effect on the effective date the report was run, and the online employee W-2 PDF will display the current name on the date it is viewed.

For example, an employee named Jane Smith (as of December 31st, 2012) changes her name to Jane West on January 16th, 2013, and then on April 1st 2013, she changes it again to Jane Jones. If the 'HR:Display Archived Name on W-2' profile option is set to Y, when the employee W-2 PDF report is run for reporting year 2012 (by date tracking to the effective date of January 25th, 2013), the archived name (Jane Smith) is displayed in the report's W-2 PDF output. If she views her 2012 W-2 PDF online via self service on April 5th, 2013, the archived name (Jane Smith) will still be shown. However, with the profile option set to N (the default setting), when the Employee W2 PDF is run for reporting year 2012 (by date tracking to the effective date of January 25th, 2013), the current name in effect (Jane West) is printed in the W-2 PDF report output. If she were to view her W-2 PDF online via self service on April 5th, 2013 she will see her latest name (Jane Jones) on the W-2.

Important Notes

• When viewing the Employee W-2 PDF for years prior to 2013, as the Year End Preprocessor would have archived the name effective on 31st December of the applicable year (and the name change would have happened after this date), the employee name is fetched from the run date of the Federal W-2 Magnetic Media process run for that reporting year.

• When the two new profile options are set to Y, the changes apply to all parts of the employee's name (that are applicable) including 'First Name', 'Middle Name', 'Last Name', 'Prefix' and 'Suffix'. If the profile options are set to N, 'First Name', 'Middle Name', and 'Last Name' are reported based on the effective date that is set when the Employee W-2 PDF report is run or the system date when the Online Employee W-2 is viewed. However for the latter case, the fields 'Prefix' and 'Suffix' are still taken from data archived by running the Year End Preprocessor.

• Oracle recommends setting both options to Y or both options to N. When both options are set to N (the default provided option), this reflects the existing behavior. When both options are set to Y, this reflects the new behavior and keeps all the applicable Year End reports in sync for all the name corrections that may have occurred.

• If both the profile options are set to Y, Oracle recommends that payroll administrators retry the Year End Preprocess if there is a name correction. In scenarios where users skip running the Retry Year End Preprocess after a name correction, there will be a mismatch between the name reported on the Employee W-2 PDF and the name on Federal W-2 Magnetic Media output. However, this can be addressed if the payroll administrator re-prints W-2 for this employee after running the Federal W-2 Magnetic Media, as a smart archive call will update the archived name data as a part of the Federal W-2 Magnetic Media process.

• If both the profile options are set to Y, for those customers not using the Oracle-delivered Federal W-2 Magnetic Media (i.e. the data is sent to a third party to file such as ADP), Oracle Development strongly recommends running the Retry Year End Preprocess option after name corrections. This is required as the 'smart archiver' is only executed as part of the Federal W-2 Magnetic Media process so it is possible for the reports to go out of sync.

• The "smart archive" that is available with the Federal W-2 Magnetic Media process is not available with the State W-2 Magnetic Media process.

• The W-2c Pre-Process is a simple Year End Pre-process call, so if the W2-c Pre-Process is run with the profile 'HR:Archive Latest Name for W-2' set to Y, the employee's latest name is archived. If it is run with the profile option set to N, the name as of 31st December of the reporting year is archived.

Impact of the Profile Options

The following tables below summarize the effect of each of the profile options when set to Y or N on the applicable Year End reports:

HR:Archive Latest Name for W-2

HR:Display Archived Name for W-2