Setting up life events

Life Event setup is the final step in preparing your Sage Benefits Enrollment system to enable employees to record life changes that may also require benefit plan changes.  

Qualified life event

A qualified life event is a personal event (such as marriage or birth of a child) that allows an employee to change their benefit plans outside of the normal open enrollment period. Based on IRS guidelines, the employee has a limited period of time from the date of the qualified event to notify the employer of the event in order to change their benefits.

Before you begin

First, see Preparing for open enrollment and life events to make sure you have set up all other required information for life events.

As you go through the life event setup process, be prepared to specify the following information:

• A clear description of the life event
• The period of time from the date of the event that the employee has to change their benefits
• The date on which the benefit changes are effective
• The types of changes the employee can make due to the life event
• The plan groups (benefit plan categories) in which the employee can make changes
• Text for the Welcome page
• Links to external information (file links or web links that were already set up), such as a Benefits Handbook or the Benefit Provider Network website

Using the Life Events setup wizard

1. On the Administrator menu, select Benefit Setup > Life Events.

2. The table on the Life Events page shows all life events set up for your employees. The table includes the life event name and the event type.

   • To add another life event, click New.

     Note: If there no employers available for a new enrollment period because they are already in an existing enrollment period that has not yet been updated, you will receive the "No Employers are available." message.

   • To edit a life event, click (the Edit icon) in the row of the life event you want to change.

   • To delete a life event, click (the Delete icon) and confirm that you want to delete it.

     Note: You cannot delete a life event that is in used by any employee. To find out which employees are using a life event, use the Approve Life Events page.

3. The Life Event wizard opens.

   Click Next to move through the pages. (You can click Back to move back to the previous page—or click Cancel to discard your changes and return to the table.)

   The wizard includes the following pages:

   • Life Events - Event page
   • Life Events - Pages page
   • Life Events - Plan Groups page
   • Life Events - Welcome Page page
   • Life Events - Links page
4. When you reach the last page of the wizard, click Finish to finalize your changes and return to the table on the Life Events page. If you added a new life event, it is now in the table.