The insurance options for school employees are changing October 2007; therefore, Arkansas Public School Computer Network (APSCN) is taking this opportunity to assign a range of health insurance deduction codes for the Pentamation software deduction table. Although use of the codes will be optional for the 2007-2008 school year, it is highly recommended that districts and cooperatives adopt the codes beginning with September 2007 payroll deductions (October premiums) since many employees will likely require a change to health insurance codes at that time. These standard codes will be required for the 2008-2009 school year.
Employee Benefits Division (EBD) has confirmed that districts will be required to send only one check, payable to EBD, for all insurance deductions. Attached to this memo is a list of codes that has been established for each separate health insurance plan so that districts can reconcile to the plan sub-totals shown on the EBD billing.
An “extra set of match codes” in each vendor range has been set up for districts choosing to pay an amount above the required minimum match to the Teacher Salary Fund. There are a few vocational schools that are not required to pay any match at the district level for vocational school employees, but choose to pay an amount above the minimum paid by the state. Therefore, additional match codes are provided for these types of situations.
This brings the total number of general reserved codes to 60. These codes will be downloaded and inserted into the district deduction tables for all districts on the Arkansas Department of Education (ADE) servers no later than the second week in June.
In the event a district has a monthly payroll and a semi-monthly or bi-weekly payroll, another entire range of codes are reserved. For information on the codes, please contact the district’s APSCN field support representative or the help desk so that the extra set of codes for the second payroll frequency can be added to the deduction table.
Included in the attached code list is a section entitled 'Benefit and Health Risk Assessment Codes for All Vendors.' If a district chooses to use the same set of codes for Health Risk Assessment and Benefit for all vendors, use the codes in this list.
Some maintenance of these codes will be required by districts for the following fields:
• Deduction Frequency (will be loaded with “I” frequency)
• Withholding Account (will load all codes with 04725)
• Vendor Number
• Vendor Payment Frequency
The codes used by all districts were reviewed and there was no available 4-digit numeric range that could be reserved for statewide use. After much consideration, it was decided to RESERVE the entire range of two-digit alpha/two-digit numeric codes for state use. These codes will sort by vendor with the leading alpha characters and will be the last deduction taken before Direct Deposit and the last deduction listed on the pay check stub.
Districts must NEVER add a 4-digit code combined with two leading alpha characters followed by two numeric characters. This entire range of codes is reserved for STATE USE ONLY.
It will be necessary for districts to re-assign new codes to employees per new insurance choices for the September payroll. The codes will be downloaded with the monthly rates and minimum required match amount. Districts must maintenance the table to change deduction amounts for semi-monthly or bi-weekly payrolls and the benefit amount IF more than the minimum required match is paid by the district.
This change is recommended to be in place by September 2007, for September payrolls (October insurance premium deductions); however, this will not be required until the beginning of the next fiscal year, July 1, 2008.