Approving 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 them.

Use the Approve Life Event page to review and either approve or reject the employee's benefit plan changes.

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

Tip: When an employee makes a qualifying life event change to their information outside of Life Events (such as changing their marital status on the Personal Profile page), you can notify them that the change qualifies as a life event and they may be able to make benefit plan changes. One way you can do this is reject the change with a note about submitting a life events by selecting Benefits > Life Events.

The system validates the employee's benefit plan enrollments during the life event process to make sure they are correct and complete. If there are errors or omissions, the Benefit Enrollment Checklist provides information about how to correct their enrollment. See Validations for employee enrollments for a list of validation messages.

Before you begin

• Set up the life events.
• Run the Enrollment Exceptions report and correct all exceptions before you approve life events.

To approve or reject life events

1. On the Administrator menu, select Benefit Updates > Approve Life Events.
2. The Approve Life Events page displays a table of all employees in the selected employer who have pending (not yet approved) life events. This is the default search criteria, but you can use any of the following search criteria:
   • To find all employees who entered a life event during a certain period, select All , enter a From date, (optional) enter a To date, and then click Go.
   • To find employees who entered life events within a certain time period, enter a From and To date, and then click Go.
   • To find a specific employee, select Employee Last Name, enter the first few characters of their last name, and then click Go.

   • To find employees with a specific enrollment status, select one of the following for Enrollment Status, and then click Go.

     • In Progress: The employee started entering a life event but has not yet submitted it for approval.
     • Pending: The employee submitted their life event for approval—or the employee made a change to a life event that was approved and then resubmitted it.
     • Rejected: The employee submitted a life event but it was rejected. The employee can make changes and resubmit the life event for approval.
     • Updated: The benefit administrator approved the life event's benefit changes and the employee's changes were updated in Sage HRMS.
     Note about display of the enrollment status

     The enrollment status displays near the top of each page as an employee goes through the life events wizard. However, the enrollment status the employee sees is slightly different from what the administrator sees, as shown in the following table.

     Status seen by administrators and employees

      

     Seen by administrator	Seen by employee
     In Progress	Incomplete
     Pending	Approval Pending
     Updated (approved)	{Not visible because the event is immediately updated}

3. Click the name for the employee.

4. Review details of their life event changes.

   • The Status displays the current status of the life event.
   • The Benefit Plan Additional/Changes area shows information about the benefit plan selections that the employee changed. The Election column shows the selected election; the Change From column shows the previous election; (if there was no change, No Change will display).
   • To review answers to required enrollment questions, click the Questions link.

   Note: If there are 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. If the current Status is Pending, approve or reject the life event by changing the Status to Approved or Rejected.

   • If you approve, benefit plan changes will be updated in HRMS Employee Self Service and the employee will receive an approval notification.
   • If you reject, the employee will receive a reject notification. We recommend adding a note so the employee knows how to change their life event submission.

   Note: You cannot change the status for an In Progress life event (because the employee has not submitted it for approval) or an Updated life event (because the benefit plan changes were already updated in HRMS Employee Self Service).

6.  If the current Status is Rejected, you can approve the life event by changing the Status to Approved. the change is immediately updated in HRMS Employee Self Service and the employee receives an approval notification.
7. (Optional) Click and enter a note to the employee. This is added to the notification sent to the employee's Message Center.

8. If you made changes, click Save.

   • If you approved the life event, the employee receives a approval notification (with any note you added) in their Message Center and benefit changes are immediately updated in HRMS Employee Self Service using the Benefits Effective Date (Event Date or First Day of Month Following) as set up for the particular life event.
   • If you rejected the life event, the employee receives a reject notification (with any note you added) in their Message Center.
9. If you approved the life event, run the Update Benefits process to calculate the new benefit plan amounts. This process will also update linked payroll deductions with the new plan amounts if the Plan Year Effective Date is the same as or later than the system date.