help with Relius Options

[stevena]

Hi, I am very new to Relius and was wondering if someone could just tell me how to make Relius calculate top heavy contributions and allocate them to the required employees. Right now I am running the ADP test and then manually posting the required top heavy contributions becasue I cant figure out how to get the system to do it.

I am not going to training for a month so have to struggle here for awhile. I went onto the help topics but I cant find it.

I've only used this for 3 days so please in "dummy" language. This is more complicated than I expected!

[clyde14]

in brief, you need to post a contribution transaction and check off the box that says "allocate top heavy minimums." Your BEST BET is to contact relius support:
1800 326 7325. also, the company website has support-www.corbel.com. you may need to register to use the support, though. give them a call first thing today!

[Tom Poje]

my guess is this is the first time plan has been run on the system, so in plan specs you need to tell the system that the plan is indeed top heavy. (set prior year history to 60%.
also, most of the time you probably want top heavy skim.
if plan is 401(k) you might want to set minimums are guaranteed to YES (if a key ee is deferring)

[stevena]

It is the first year, thank you for the help. If you dont mind, what is the difference between top heavy skim and top heavy?

i appreciate your help.

[Tom Poje]

probably in most cases it makes no difference, but I will attempt to explain.

in some cases you have to answer top heavy first (e.g. a document that says the integrated formula is: step 1 3% to all
step 2: if there is enough bucks, allocate 3% integrated
etc....


top heavy first basically says, before doing anything at all, give all eligible ees the 3% top heavy. (or I suppose 5% if it is a combo db/dc plan)

top heavy skim says run the allocation. then check and see if all ees have received the minimum. if not, 'skim' it from others. then redo the allocation ignoring the people you gave the top heavy to.

so in the case of an integrated plan, an ee with comp above the integration level might have received 2.8% comp plus 2.8% above the TWB.
the system will skim off some of his contribution to bring up another ee to 3%.
thus the ee might end up with 2.7% plus 2.7% above the wage base.

if you had run top heavy first the ee would be at 3% of comp plus 2.1% above the TWB (or whatever) . thus you will get different contribution results.

now that match can be used to satisfy top heavy I have no idea what the system would do if you run top heavy first.

if plan is age weighted I would never run top heavy first. I am not even sure if that would be a legitimate option.

[stevena]

thank you so much, that makes sense. I have never used a system before, I always have done everything by hand. I am finding it so frustrating.

[Tom Poje]

yes, there are lots of bells and whistles.
if you manage to learn a few key ones your frustration level will improve.

remember, on takeovers the system has no idea who was an hce in prior year unless you tell it. so that is a must code item for your ADP tests.

probably the best 'help' report would be found under

takeover plans - census.
in particular, ees who terminated in prior year.

the census item ' termination date' is NOT necessarily someones term date.
a better name would be Term Date if ee was a perticipant.

you should never have to enter this field. keepa your big grubby hands offa that item, unless it is an ee who quit in a prior year.

[stevena]

thanks for the help. a week later and i am still getting lost. its frustrating..i know what i want it to do, i just cant get it to do it!

There are so many different places to set up all the options...

guess i will get used to it.

what suprises me is that everyone in the office seems to know the basics...but no one really knows how to use this thing inside and out. it seems a lot of trial and error going on. lots of "lets try this". lots of time....

[Tom Poje]

I think I understand how you feel.
every once and awhile I do some training on Relius/cross testing/ etc - (actually I think the boss gets sick of me, so she rents me out)

One time I was going through data entry routine and was surprised that the office I was at never heard of using PAD in the routine.

good luck, it sounds like you are at least interested enough to make a big difference where you work.

[Annieruok]

Yikes, I've been using Relius since 1998 and I have no idea what PAD is. Could this have made my life easier???

[pmacduff]

I don't know either and I'm a user since 2000...Tom...can you enlighten us?!?!

[Tom Poje]

ah, a pearl of wisdom.
lets say you have an excel sheet to download as follows (the headers are for illustration but of course you can't download those)
comp bonus total soc sec #
20000 1000 (comp + bonus) xxxxxxxxx

you want to download total comp.
if you delete the column comp and bonus, then total wont be correct since it is a sum.
you could copy total column and paste values and that wouldwork.
(oh PAD is found under FILLER)
or your DER could be
PAD
PAD
salary
soc sec #

Pad simply ignores the particular column when performing the download. therefore you can save a lot time by not having to modify the download.

does that help or make your life easier?

[pmacduff]

ah ha! ..."filler" would have done the trick for me...

just semantics, however so thanks Tom!!

Happy Turkey Day!

[Annieruok]

Yay!! No more "copy, paste specials" for me!!

You know what amazes me...all the time we've spent over the years looking for ways to work around something, when, all this time, Relius probably already has a quick way to handle it. Sometimes I feel like my office needs to go to a basic training course.

Thanks!

[Ken Simons]

Thanks Tom for your help.
re: training - It's always amazing about the number of people using Relius who have:
1. never gone to training
2. Were trained by someone in the office who was trained by someone in the office who never went to training who was trained by the person who did go to training but no longer works there.

For those who have never gone to training, you might want to look at the on-line training, particularly the on demand courses. For a very small amount, you can get all you can eat, whenever you want. Better than renting Tom when his boss wants to get him out of the office!