Late in 2014, MERS introduced a new plan called MERS Defined Contribution. In Pro Fund Accounting, there were some changes that had to be made in order to support this new MERS Defined Contribution plan.
One of the biggest changes that was made introduces a new requirement for those employees that are eligible for MERS but do not contribute to it. The steps below will outline what you need to do to correct the setup for these employees:
- Go to Payroll>Payroll Constants>Deduction Types
- Find the deduction for the MERS Defined Benefit plan. There may be more than one deduction depending on if you have both post tax and pre tax deductions setup
- Make sure that the Description field on the deduction(s) does NOT have either the word Contribution or the word Payment in it. If it does, then you will need to change the description to something else. A good example could be MERS Def Ben Post Tax or MERS Def Ben Pre Tax
- Now we need to go to each employee that does NOT contribute to MERS and add the MERS deduction to their employee deduction list and make sure it is active. Note: It is important that you DO NOT enter a dollar amount or percentage for this deduction
- The next thing we need to do is go to the Employment tab for each employee that is on MERS and make sure the Retirement box is checked. If the Retirement box is not checked then Payroll will not add that employee to the MERS E-PASS file
You should now see those employees that are on MERS but don’t contribute, showing up in your MERS E-PASS file and on your Pro Fund Accounting MERS reports.
If you are using the “new” MERS Defined Contribution plan, but don’t have it setup in Payroll yet, please follow the steps at the following knowledge base article to get setup: How to Setup MERS Defined Contributions.
If your employees are already contributing to the MERS Defined Benefit plan, then there shouldn’t be any changes that you need to make for those employees.