Elapsed Time Method

[Guest Jeannie Hagan]

We administer some plans that define a year of service as a plan year in which the employee works at least six months during the plan year. Quantech's elapsed time method requires that twelve months counted in order to receive a year of vested credit. This does not give credit for the first year of employment for those who worked six months or more. The only way to work around this is the manually enter in the years of vested credit each time eligibility is run, which is not very efficient. Any other thoughts or solutions with the elapsed time method. By the way, these are governmental plans.

[Tom Poje]

If takeover plan, answer 'credited years of service' as "half years credited"

This option only works if participant's years of service = 0 to start with.

when you run eligibility, system will give participant 1 yr of service if he worked at least 1/2 year. system will credited an additional year of service for every year following (excluding current year)

that sounds like what you want.

DO NOT USE this option for takeover employees who terminated in a prior year!

[Tom Poje]

My first fear was that system was messed up because of non calendar year. But I tried an experiment and it worked fine - the employee I entered receivbed 2 years of service for vesting. So, now you force me to use my brain - shame on you.

2 possible guesses, maybe even a third.

1. does ee have 1000 hours this year? or maybe I should word that, is ees current hours < hours in the grid for vesting. This would duplicate results you stated. (2 years participation, but only 1 for service.

2. Is exclude years of service for vesting before plan started? I wouldn't expect this unless you said everybody with 2 years was showing with only 1 year of service for vesting.

3. possibly valuaton date in specs is not set to end of year. I think you could actually run things this way, and it wouldn't be a problem, but when all else fails.

I am more concerned that someone in support said you have to work 12 months the first year to get credit. NO, they are wrong, and I will tell them so. Someone is sadly misimformed.

[Tom Poje]

One other thing.

For vesting, are you using Hours, elapsed time, or elapsed time (rounded).

If set to elapsed time, then 1 year of service for vesting is correct. Elapsed time is from date of hire to anniversary date of hire. thus, a person hired 1/20/97 would not get 2 years of vesting until 1/20/99. This does not sound like what you want, so don't use elapsed time. Elapsed time (rounded) should give 2 years of service for vesting as well.

[Guest Jeannie Hagan]

Thanks Tom! You are a genius. It was the elapsed time (rounded) that saved me. I was using elaped time. It works like a charm.

[Guest Jeannie Hagan]

This is the response I wrote to Tom on 09/02/98 and didn't know how to post to the message board correctly so our conversation can followed:

Thanks for responding. This is a takeover plan and I have tried what you have suggested and it still does not work. Maybe I am missing something. The years of participation and years of service are counting correctly (most of the time), but the years of service for vesting is short one year. Quantech support states that you must work twelve months to get credit for that first year. Have you had this work correctly?

One of my examples is: Plan year - 10/01 - 09/30. Date of hire: 01/20/97. Eligibility run effective 09/30/98. Year of Vested Service should be 2 - 01/20/97 - 09/30/97 = 1 (worked over six months)

10/01/97 - 09/30/98 = 1

Total 2

Quantech gave it two years for both years of participation & years of service, but only one year for years of service for vesting??

Any more suggestions?