Approve Life Event

Use this page to approve the enrollments an employee makes during a life event. When an employee selects a life event and submits benefit plan changes as a result of that event, you receive a notification in your Message Center. The changes to the employee's benefit plans remain pending until you approve or reject them. After approval, the employee's enrollment records are updated in Sage Employee Self Service, using the Benefits Effective DateEvent Date or First Day of Month Following as set up for the particular life event. If you reject the changes, they are not updated in Sage Employee Self Service.

When you approve or reject an employee's benefit plan changes, the system sends the employee an appropriate notification to their Message Center.

When an employee makes a qualifying life event change to their information outside of Life Events (for example, makes a change to their marital status on the Personal Profile page), you may want to notify them that the change qualifies as a life event and they probably will be able to make benefit plan changes. One way you can do this is reject the change with a note directing them to the Life Events page.

Employees' enrollments during a life event are validated by the system to make sure they are correct and complete. If there are errors or omissions, the Benefit Enrollment Checklist page provides information about how to complete their enrollment. Refer to Validating Employee Enrollment for a complete list of validation messages.

Usually, you approve life events for one employee at a time, since all employees are not entering life events at the same time. The Approve Life Events process lets you approve benefit plan changes for one employee or multiple employees.

Before you begin

To approve life events

  1. Select System Administrator > Benefit Updates > Approve Life Events to open the Approve Life Events page.
  2. The Approve Life Events page opens and displays all employees in the selected employer who have pending (not yet approved) life events. This is the default search criteria, however, you can use any of the following search criteria to find employees who have entered a life event:
    • To find all employees who entered a life event, select All and enter a From and To date to indicate the period in which the employees entered the event.
    • To find a specific employee, select Employee Last Name and enter the last name.
    • To find employees with a specific enrollment status, select an Enrollment Status:
    • In Progress. The employee started making benefit plan changes but has not yet submitted the records for approval; or the records did not pass validation and are waiting for the employee to correct them.
    • Pending. The employee submitted changes for approval; or the employee made a change to enrollment records that were originally approved and then resubmitted them.
    • Rejected. The employee submitted benefit plan changes but they were rejected. The employee must make the required changes and resubmit for approval.
    • Updated The benefit administrator approved the benefit changes and the employee's enrollment records are updated in Sage HRMS).

      The Enrollment Status displays at the top of each page as an employee goes through the life event steps. However, the enrollment status the employee sees is slightly different than the statuses listed above, as illustrated below:

      For this administrator statusThe employee sees

      N/A

      Incomplete

      Pending

      Approval Pending

      In Progress

      Incomplete

      Updated (approved)

      Not visible because the event is immediately updated

    • To find specific employees who entered life events within a certain time period, enter a From and To date to indicate the period in which the employees entered the event.
  3. Click Go to start the search. The page shows life event records for all employees who matched the search criteria.
  4. Click an employee name link and review the details of their life event changes:
    • You can review the answers to required enrollment questions by clicking the Questions link.
    • The Status list displays the current status of the life event.
    • The Election column shows the current election; the Change From column shows the previous election (if there was no change, No Change will display).
    • If there were errors, Errors were detected displays at the top of the page and errors are marked in red. If you reject the changes, include a Note to the employee using the error information so they'll know how to correct it. You can also use the Enrollment Exceptions report to see which employees' enrollments have exceptions that need to be corrected.
  5. Select a status and add a note (will be added to the notification in the employee's Message Center) to the employee if applicable. Use the following information to select the status:
    • You cannot change the status for In Progress life events; the employee has not finished their benefit plan changes or submitted them for approval.
    • You cannot change the status for Updated life events; the benefit plan changes have already been updated in Sage Employee Self Service.
    • Change the status of Pending life events to Approved or Rejected. If you approve, the change is immediately updated in Sage Employee Self Service and the employee receives an approval notification. If you reject, the employee receives a reject notification (add a note so they know how to correct the error) and the life event status changes back to Pending.
    • Change the status of Rejected life events to Approved at which time the change is immediately updated in Sage Employee Self Service and the employee receives an approval notification.
  6. Click Save when you are finished. The benefit plan changes for the employee are updated to the selected status. When you approve the changes, the system sends an approve notification to the employee's Message Center and immediately updates the appropriate enrollment records in Sage Employee Self Service. When you reject the changes, the system sends a reject notification to the employee's Message Center and the changes are not updated in Sage HRMS.
  7. When the process is finished, log on to Sage Employee Self Service and run the Update Benefits process to calculate the new plan amounts. Linked payroll deductions will also be updated with the new plan amounts (only when the Plan Year Effective Date is the same as or later than the system date).