Hours- What to tell client

[Guest raleightpa]

So, we've had this client for years and always have the same problem every year. They do not know how to report hours to us. They get paid by the job. Example, the employees are paid $X to be on call, $X to go pick up a body, $X to bury a body (yes they are a funeral home). I'm at a loss every year of what to tell them. They keep saying "they are paid by the job not hourly." I tell them that they need to apply an in-house "hours schedule" per job and track it for each employee throughout the year for plan purposes. This is not my call, I see it as an internal issue with their company. What would you tell them? What would the DOL say?

[pmacduff]

we have a similar situation with a client that has truck drivers. The drivers are paid by the load and deliveries, not hourly. But the client knows who is "full-time" and who is part-time. They apply a consistant amount of hours based on the number of days worked for those who aren't full-time. The plan has never been audited, but I believe as long as the client is consistant and applys everything uniformly for each employee, they will be ok.

In your situation, perhaps they could assign an average number of hours for each task and apply it accordingly?? How specific is their plan doc with regard to eligibility and vesting?

[Guest raleightpa]

we have a similar situation with a client that has truck drivers. The drivers are paid by the load and deliveries, not hourly. But the client knows who is "full-time" and who is part-time. They apply a consistant amount of hours based on the number of days worked for those who aren't full-time. The plan has never been audited, but I believe as long as the client is consistant and applys everything uniformly for each employee, they will be ok.

In your situation, perhaps they could assign an average number of hours for each task and apply it accordingly?? How specific is their plan doc with regard to eligibility and vesting?

Right, I told them that they are the ones who will have to sit down and write down all of the "jobs" and decide how many hours to apply to each job. They're plan doc states 1 year of svc (1000 hr requirement) dual entry. Most of them don't aren't in the plan, but some could come in as of 7/1/07. It depends on how busy they are. As for the ps contribution, every active gets a contribution and terms that worked over 500 hrs gets one.

[J2D2]

What about switching to one of the approved equivalencies? For example, if employee does one "job" he automatically is credited with 45 hours for that week.

[Kimberly S]

Ask the client how they would respond to an IRS or DOL auditor who wanted them to come up with a number of hours. When they figure out the answer to that question, they will have an answer for you as well. Hopefully, when you put it to them that way it will get them to focus on an answer.