Wednesday, January 21, 2009

Basic Definition of Oracle Advanced Benefits (OAB)Terminology

Hi Guys
I have received lot of questions regarding Benefits module. So I thought I will go through some basics terminology used in Benefits following with some details and queries.

Life Event:: Life event is any change in the life of an employee. that may be new hire, marriage, child, or even termination. All these events, in one or other organization, effect benefits given to employee. Any life event that can be processed is a Potential Life Event. Once we Process a potential Life event it is called Person in Life Event. Person in Life event is stored in BEN_PER_IN_LER. All Benefits data is stored with Primary key of this table (i.e. PER_IN_LER_ID), like eligibility records for each processed life events, enrollments, rate values, etc.


Plan: Any Benefit given to employee is defined as a Plan. It may be Medical Insurance, Vision/ Dental Insurance, 401 K Saving Plan, Car Insurance etc. A Program is a group of plans that have similar properties, like when to enroll, how to enroll etc.

Enrollment Requirements: For each Program or Plan we define Enrollment Requirements. These definitions tells the processes, when to start the coverage or rates (deductions), what all plans will be automatically enrolled, what all will be defaulted. Setting up these are mandatory. We can defined these properties at different levels, Program, Plan, Life event for Program, Life event for Plan, Option. Lowest level always takes precedence.

Standard Rate: We can attach a monetary value or any numeric value to a plan, this may be deduction or a bonus. We define this using a standard rate. Elements are also attached to a standard rate. This is the link where payroll and Benefits are integrated.

Coverage: Coverage is basically a kind of benefit that is given to an employee, like medical insurance, dental insurance etc.
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Now I will try to use all above terms to be used in a benefit, say XX_Medical_Insurance. Say customer requirement is to give medical insurance once a person joins.

1. As setup a new life event will be setup, which will be triggered when a new employee is cretaed.
2. XX_Medical_Insurance Plan should be created. Then we will define enrollment requirements such that when a life event is processed person is enrolled as first date of next pay-period and deductions are also starting on first date of next payperiod.
3. Coverage is enterable such that employee will tell, I need $50,000 coverage on my medical insurance
4. Standard Rate is dependent on coverage, so whatever coverage employee chooses accordingly amount will be deducted. Deduction amount is attached with a element.
5. Now when person is hired, life event will trigger. This will be potential life event.
6. Now once this life event is processed, Person in Life event record will be created. At this time eligibility will be calculated.
7. Now once the person enrolls into benefit, benefits will stored again Person in Life event record.


I will be coming up with various queries to find enrollments, enrollment rates, eligibility etc.