Configuring and Using Allowances

To configure an allowance, perform the following steps.

1. Use the Action Search and search for Benefits Admin Overview.

2. Select Create New → Benefit.

3. In the Step 1: Specify Benefit Type section, set the Benefit Type to Allowance.

   

4. In the Step 2: General Information section, enter the following:

   • Benefit ID: The Benefit ID field must be populated when a benefit object is created.

   • Benefit Name: Specify the name of the new benefit.

   • Effective From: Select the date from when the benefit is effective in the organization. Based on this date, all employees for whom the benefit is applicable can see it on their Employee Overview page. Benefit eligibility rules are evaluated as of the enrollment effective from date.

   • Benefit Program: Select the relevant benefit program.

   • Status: Select the relevant status for the benefit. Options are active or inactive.

   • Benefit Short Description: Specify a short description for the benefit.

   • Currency: Select the currency.

   • Under the Eligibility Criteria section, enter the following:

     • Entitlement Amount: Specify the maximum amount that an employee can claim for the selected benefit.

     • Eligibility Rule: Select the benefit rule used to define eligibility criteria for the allowance.

     • Dependent specific Rule.

   • Under the Payroll Integration section, enter the following information:

     Integration Mode: Select Pay Components if you want the system to replicate the payment information to either compensation portlet or deduction portlet. Based on the Benefit Type that you select, the system creates payment information entries in one of the portlets.

   

5. In Step 3: Associate Legal Entities, populate the Legal Entity field with the name of the legal entity or company for which you want the allowance to be active.

   

6. In Step 4: Specify Enrollment and Claim Date, enter the following:

   

   • Benefit Schedule: Select the schedule. Based on the period that you maintain in the schedule, the system determines the validity of enrollment and claim. If you want to create a benefit schedule, select Add. The Benefit Schedule pop-up screen appears. Enter the following data:

     

     • Schedule ID.

     • Schedule Name: Specify the name of the schedule the allowance.

     • Schedule Periods: To create a new period, select Add. The Benefit Schedule Period pop-up screen appears. Enter the following data:

       

       • Period ID.

       • Period Name.

       • Enrollment Opens: Enter the start date for enrolling in a benefit. The employee can enroll for a particular benefit from this date.

       • Enrollment Closes: Enter the end date for enrolling in a benefit. The employee can enroll for a particular benefit until this date.

       • Enrollment Effective From: Enter the date from which the enrollment is valid.

       • Enrollment Valid Until: Enter the date until which the enrollment is valid. After this date, the employee must renew the enrollment to continue being eligible for a benefit.

       • Claim Starts: Enter the start date for claiming a benefit.

       • Claim Ends: Enter the end date for claiming a benefit. Until this date, the employee can claim for a particular benefit.

       • Balance carry Forward Upto Date: Enter the date up to which an employee can carry forward any unclaimed balances.

   • Frequency: Specify the frequency of occurrence of the benefit.

   • Maximum Claims Per Schedule: Specify the maximum number of claims that you can make in a given schedule.

   • Maximum Claims Per Frequency: Specify the maximum number of claims that you can make in a given frequency that is annual, or monthly, and so on.

   • Days Remaining to Claim Benefit: Specify whether or not to show or hide the number of days remaining to claim for a benefit.

7. In Step 5: Define Enrollment Details, specify the following:

   • Enrollment Required: Select Yes or No.

     • If you selectYes, it means that an employee must enroll, to avail themselves of the benefit.

     • If you selectNo, the employee is not required to enroll in a benefit to avail themselves of the benefit. If the employee is eligible, they automatically see the benefit in the Employee Overview page.

   • Days Remaining to Enroll in Benefit: Specify whether or not to show or hide the number of days remaining to enroll in a benefit.

   • In the Enrollment Type and Workflow section, information such as:

     • Enrollment Type: Select either Automatic or Manual. This field is displayed on the screen only if you select Yes in Enrollment Required field.

       • If the employee chooses Manual, the employee must go to the Enrollment Page and enroll for a benefit.

       • If you select Automatic in the Enrollment Type field, you must create a job for auto enrollment of benefit.

     • Enrollment Workflow: Associate the workflow that the system must trigger when an employee enrolls for a benefit.

     • E-mail Notification for Enrollment: Select Yes if you want an employee to receive an e-mail notification once an employee enrolls for a benefit and the enrollment is approved.

   • In the Settings for Employee Edit and Opt-out of Enrollments section, information such as:

     • Enrollment Edit Allowed: Select either Yes or No.

       • In case you select Yes, the system displays the Allow Edit of Enrollment field. Select one of the following values:

         • Only during Open Enrollment Period

           If you choose Yes, then the employees can edit their enrollment details only when the enrollment window is open.

         • Only while Enrollment is Active

           If you choose Yes, then the employees can edit their enrollment details during benefit validity period and enrollment window is open.

         • Throughout Open and Active Enrollment

           If you choose Yes, then the employees can edit their enrollment details anytime during benefit validity period, enrollment period, and including the gap period between enrollment period and validity period.

           To edit the enrollment details, an edit link appears against each relevant benefit. Employees can use this link to edit the enrollment of the particular benefit in Employee Overview page.

       • In case you select Yes, the system displays the Allow Opt Out of Enrollment and Opt-out Workflow fields.

         • Allow Opt Out of Enrollment

           If you choose Yes, Read-only Effective Date, then the employee can opt out of manually or automatically enrolled benefits during the active enrollment period due to a life event with a benefit exception which allows edit and opt out, and the effective date appears as read-only.

           If you choose Yes, Editable Effective Date, then the employee can opt out of manually or automatically enrolled benefits during the active enrollment period due to a life event with a benefit exception which allows edit and opt out, and the effective date appears editable and can be set in the past, or in the future other than the enrollment date. Even if an employee chooses to opt out they can also re-enroll as per their eligibility and as per the enrollment schedule.

         • Opt-out Workflow

           The admin is able to select an approval workflow for the opt-out event.

         • Allow Opt Out of Enrollment

           If you choose Yes, Read-only Effective Date, then the employee can opt out of manually or automatically enrolled benefits during the active enrollment period due to a life event with a benefit exception which allows edit and opt out, and the effective date appears as read-only.

           If you choose Yes, Editable Effective Date, then the employee can opt out of manually or automatically enrolled benefits during the active enrollment period due to a life event with a benefit exception which allows edit and opt out, and the effective date appears editable and can be set in the past, or in the future other than the enrollment date. Even if an employee chooses to opt out, they can also re-enroll as per their eligibility and as per the enrollment schedule.

         • Opt-Out Workflow

           The admin is able to select an approval workflow for the opt-out event.

       • If you choose No, employees are not allowed to change enrollment details.

     • Allow Automatic Updates of Enrollment. This field is displayed when the Enrollment Type is set to Automatic.

       If you select Yes in this field, the system allows the job to edit the enrollment details.

       Note

       In the current release, the automatic edit of enrollment is possible only for Pensions.

   • Under the Associate Any Additional Enrollment Fields And Config UI Screen Specific to this Benefit (Optional) section, information such as:

     • Enrollment Screen ID.

     • Additional Enrollment Fields: Select the relevant enrollment object. You use this field when you want the employee(s) to enter more details while enrolling. For example, for company car benefit enrollment, you may want to capture information like route number, home address, emergency contact number and so on. They are not standard fields. You can add these fields to the claim object and then associate them here.

     • Carry Forward Enrollment: Select either Yes or No.

       When configuring a benefit where the requirement is to carry forward the enrollment from one schedule period to the next, an admin must do the following:

       • If you select Yes, you can carry forward the enrollment from the previous periods to the subsequent schedule period.

       • Ensure that all the schedule periods that are added to this benefit has the same enrollment validity end date. This end date must be the same for all the Schedule Periods configured in the schedule associated to the benefit.

       Example of enrollment validity end dates that must be the same: Benefit schedule period 1 will be 1/1/2024 – 12/1/9999 and period 2 will be 1/1/2024–12/1/9999.

   

8. In Step 6: Add Useful Contacts, enter the details of the contact person for the relevant benefit in the Contacts field. You can see this data on the Enrollment and Claim screen.

   

9. In Step 7: Add Hyperlinks, Policy Documents and Forms, you can specify the related benefit documents using the following fields.

   

   Under the Hyperlinks section, enter information such as:

   • URL: Enter the target URL.

   • Label: Enter the label for the hyperlink.

   • Policy Documents: Enter the policy description and attach the relevant policy document.

   • Forms: Attach the relevant form which the employee has to fill in.

   • Links: Enter the related web links, if any.

   Note

   To upload, you must save the documents. You can see this data on the Enrollment and Claim screen.

Your organization has initiated a new car allowance for certain employees. In this exercise, you will create a new allowance benefit which allows these employees to enroll in this new benefit in their People Profile. The first step is to create a new benefit schedule and schedule period specifically for the car allowance.

1. Create a new benefit schedule using the data in the following table:

   Field	Value
   Schedule Period	Period ID: 2025PERIOD Period Name: 2025 Car Allowance Period Enrollment Opens: 01/01/2025 Enrollment Closes: 12/01/2025 Enrollment Effective From:01/01/2025 Enrollment Effective Until: 12/31/2025
   Schedule Name	2025 Car Allowance Schedule
   Schedule Period	2025 Car Allowance Period
   Schedule ID	2025CAR

   1. Use the Action Search and navigate to Benefits Admin Overview.

   2. Select Create New: Benefit Schedule.

   3. In the Schedule Period field, select +.

   4. Enter the data from the table.

   5. Choose Save and close the Schedule Period screen.

2. Create a pay component called Car Allowance using the following data:

   Field	Value
   Effective as of	01/01/2024
   Pay Component ID	CarAllowance
   Name	Car Allowance
   Status	Active
   Pay Component Type	Amount
   Is Earning	Yes
   Currency	USD
   Frequency	Monthly (pay frequency of employee)
   Recurring	Yes
   Can Override	Yes

   1. Use the Action Search to open Manage Organization, Pay, and Job Structures.

   2. Select Create New → Pay Component.

   3. Enter the data given in the above table.

   4. Select Save.

3. Create a new benefit called Car Allowance using the data in the below table. Use the schedule period, benefit schedule, and pay component we just created:

   Field	Value
   Benefit Type	Allowance
   Benefit ID	CAR
   Benefit Name	Car Allowance
   Benefit Short Description	Car Allowance
   Effective From	01/01/2025
   Currency	US Dollar
   Integration Mode	Benefit Objects
   Legal Entity	Ace USA
   Benefit Schedule	2025 Car Allowance Schedule
   Frequency	Monthly
   Enrollment Required	Yes
   Days Remaining to Enroll	Show
   Enrollment Type	Manual
   Entitlement Amount	800
   Pay Component	Car Allowance
   Payment Mode	Payroll
   Is Default	Yes

   1. Use the Action Search and navigate to Benefits Admin Overview.

   2. Choose Create New → Benefit.

   3. Enter the data given in the above table.

4. Confirm if the benefit allowance is showing up in thePeople Profile → Benefitstab under the Allowance tab.

   1. From the Home menu, select My Employee File.

   2. Select the Benefits tab.

   3. Under My Active Enrollments, select Go To Benefits.

   4. Verify the Car Allowance is visible in Open Enrollments.