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.

20 comments:

അനിൽ കൃഷ്ണൻ (Anil Krishnan) said...

Hi

Can you give your contact information(email or chat), I want to clarify few doubts in OAB?

thanks
Anil

Gaurav Sehgal said...

Anil
you can post your questions here. Others will also be benefited. If still you want to email me you can email @ sehgal.best@gmail.com

അനിൽ കൃഷ്ണൻ (Anil Krishnan) said...

Thanks Gaurav.. I will contact you..

അനിൽ കൃഷ്ണൻ (Anil Krishnan) said...

Hi Gaurav,

How are you?

I have few questions on how to configure Life Events for situations like

1. Based on data change in more than one column in a table(Both condition should be Met- AND operations. For Example:-Add a dependent with relationship as 'Spouse' and choose Start Reason 'Married'

2 Based on data change in more than one colun in a table but the new value of the column can be one among many. For Example:-. Add Dependent ='Child and Star Reason 'Gain Dependent Child' or 'Marriage' or 'Gain SSDP/Family'

Please advice

thanks
Anil

Gaurav Sehgal said...

Anil
I think I answered the same questions on the forum. Let me know if you still have doubts

Unknown said...

Hi Gaurav,
Excellent explanation on OAB.

Ramya Laxman said...

Gaurav,

Can you please help me understand the difference between the deduction information stored in the elements and rates table. I can see the employee contribution and the employer contribution being stored in the rates table for an employee/plan. Why are elements again being used to capture the deduction information?

Thanks for your help, it was a very informative article.
Ramya Laxman

Gaurav Sehgal said...

Hi Ramya
Rates entity is the link between Benefits Module and Payroll Module.

Whatever benefits employees select from Self Service or what ever benefits employees have in Benefits, amounts for those stored in Rates Table. When a rates is created and an element entry is also created if element is attached with the Rate.

When you process payroll those element entries are processed.

Ramya Laxman said...

Thanks Gaurav. That answers my question. So the only way to link the enrollments and elements is to use the element entry value information and link with the rates information for an enrollment.

Thanks a lot for your help!
Ramya

Unknown said...

Hi Gaurav,
How can you create mass life events in a particular month to update rates due to age for imputed income

thanks,
krishna

Gaurav Sehgal said...

Kumar
There is a process named Recalculate Rates and Coverages. Run this process it will calculate the coverages and rates again according to eligibility.

Other way is, if you have defined temporal life events and derived factor properly and your eligibility is dependent on those factors, you can run temporal life events.

Let me know if you need more information regarding this

Unknown said...

I have situation where I have employees that are hired prior to the new benefits period but eligibility occurs after the new period begins. All these employees are being charge the plan rates at the the time of hire instead of at the time of eligibility 90 days later.

Example: John Smith's new hire date is Jan 1. The new plan year with new cost starts Feb 1. John won't be eligible for benefits until April 1. On April 1, John's plan rate is what it was in Jan. It needs to be the rates as of April. Is there a way to automate this? We currently have to manually go in, when we find them, and change the plan rates.

Thanks for any suggestions

Anonymous said...

Hi Gaurav, can u plz tell me the relation between ben_pgm_f, ben_pl_f, ben_pl_typ_f and ben_opt_f tables.
Thx in advance....

Kelly said...

Hi Gaurav, Timbo,
We have the same situation "I have situation where I have employees that are hired prior to the new benefits period but eligibility occurs after the new period begins. All these employees are being charge the plan rates at the the time of hire instead of at the time of eligibility 90 days later."
The product drives Coverage and Rates based on the Life Event Occured Date. Do either of you have suggestions on how to handle the above situation in an automated way. Thanks for your assistance.
Kelly

Gaurav Sehgal said...

@Vibaha
These tables are master tables.

Like Plan (ben_pl_f) is a master table say like an insurance plan like Blue Cross Blue Sheild Medical Insurance, and have plan type associated with it (ben_pl_typ_f), like Medical. ben_opt_f is master for options. Options will be associated with the Plan like Employee Only Insurance or Employee + Family Insurance.

Program (ben_pgm_f) is way to group set of plans which have similar rules in on set.

Let me know if you want more details.


@Kelly
System will assign Coverage and rate start date whatever is defined in program enrollment rules or plan enrollment rules. Lot of organizations enroll the employees as of First of Next Month like if say employee is hired on 14 of any month the insurance will start on 1st of next month. Looks like you do not want to enroll on Next month but on Next Plan Year Period. So you might have to write a rule that when coverage and rate should start and define eligibility accordingly.

Anonymous said...

Thx a lot Gaurav... That info was of great help!

Renu Gupta said...

Hi Gaurav,

First of all thanks for writing nice articles on OAB to educate the newbie people like me for OAB. I have to Create "Summer Termination" Life Event that ends coverage the end of the plan year when leave reason is Summer Term. Can u help me here, how to proceed on it..
Any kind of help would be highly appreciated.

Thanks
Renu

jhon apps said...

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i am new that is y i am unable to understand this advance stage of query.
but i am trying my best.

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Lady T said...

Hello Gaurav,
After requirements gathering stage, please what do I do next in an OAB implementation?

Thank you.

Inside Out said...

Hi Gaurav,
We have a plan XX Medical plan .There are options like
Grade1 employee only, Grade 1 Employee+dependent,
Grade2 employee only, Grade 2 Employee+dependent,
Grade3 employee only, Grade 3 Employee+dependent,

For Employee only option, the employer contributions is fixed at a flat rate e.g 100,150,200 etc

However for Employee + dependent options , the rate is dependent on number of dependents.
For 1 to 3 dependents, it is say 50* number of dependents. For more than 4 dependents, it is fixed at 200. This is for Grade 1 Employee+Dependent.

Is it possible to change rates based on number of covered dependents?

I tried Standard rates with Post Enrollment calculation rule and attached a formula .In formula, I get the count of records in ben_elig_cvrd_dpnt_f. But this does not seem to work. If we have 4 contacts and I go to Benefit ENrollment through Benfit Service Center to deenroll 2 of the contacts, the rate does not change. In fact on logging, I can see that the formula logic is fired even before I click on designee form. It does not fire aftr I denroll contacts.We are on 12.1.3 HRMS RUP8
Thanks,
Lalitha