The PeopleSoft Benefits Administration (Ben Admin or BA) module facilitates benefit eligibility and enrollment activity through manual and automated processes. Data in PeopleSoft that triggers benefits eligibility evaluation by the Benefits Administration System (BAS) is based on the Benefits Administration Start Date that is configured in the PeopleSoft Installation Table.

The Benefits Administration Start Date serves a specific purpose in four areas of processing benefit data and events:

• Event Qualification: The system will flag changes to job data, birthdate, service date, state, postal code, and union code if the job record that is being inserted, corrected, or deleted has an effective date greater than or equal to the Ben Admin Start Date.
• Event Maintenance Scheduling: When scheduling Event Maintenance, benefits administration only reviews BAS event records with an effective date equal to and greater than the Ben Admin Start Date. This review includes potentially flagging BAS event records for review and determining the proper events to leave open for processing.
• Event Maintenance Processing: Any transactions with effective dates prior to the Ben Admin Start Date are ignored by the system and BAS events are not created nor processed. If historical data needs to be changed, those changes must be made manually, directly into Base Benefit records.
• Pay Calendar Access: For Event Maintenance, while setting coverage and deduction begin dates, Ben Admin loads pay calendar data starting with pay period end dates equal to and later than the Ben Admin Start Date.

In short, the Benefits Administration Start Date defines the "look-back" window for benefits processing. This means that when an employee’s job or address data is added or modified in PeopleSoft, only effective dates equal to and after the Benefits Administration Start Date generate a Ben Admin benefit event (BAS event). This BAS event is used by the Ben Admin module to determine benefits eligibility and facilitate the employee’s benefits enrollment. For example, if the Benefits Administration Start Date is September 15, 2021, the system will review and process all BAS event data for an employee beginning at 9-15-21 and forward.

When the Benefits Administration Start Date is never changed in CHRS or in any PeopleSoft database, the amount of data reviewed by the delivered Ben Admin process PSPBARUN increases drastically which in turn slows down the CHRS BAS system performance due to the “look-back” processing of historic BAS events. The recommended approach to eliminate the potential slow-down of CHRS BAS processing is to annually change the CHRS Benefits Administration Start Date in early March of each calendar year after all campuses have finalized their prior Open Enrollment Schedule IDs and completed spring hiring. The strategy behind updating the benefits administration start date is

• for system maintenance
• to reduce the volume of data Ben Admin processes on a daily basis
• to reduce the size of the BAS_PARTIC staging tables
• to reduce and prevent errors encountered when the COBOL array size is exceeded when running PSPBARUN.

This guide is designed to help CSU Benefits Officers for CHRS campuses and CMS-Benefits staff develop and schedule a coordinated event to annually change the Benefits Administration Start Date in the CHRS Production database once CHRS is live.

In addition to this guide, users can review the following CHRS documents to assist with this process:

• Benefits Event Troubleshooting position paper
• Reprocessing a CHRS BAS Event checklist
• eBenefits OK to Reprocess Cheat Sheet
• CHRS Benefits Daily Review and Troubleshooting User Guide
• Quick Sights Benefits Scorecard Dashboard

The PeopleSoft Installation Table is a base foundation table that holds configurations used by multiple PeopleSoft modules, including the Benefits Administration module. Anytime the PeopleSoft Installation Table is updated in a PeopleSoft database, the database’s application server requires bouncing.

Example of the Product Specific Page in the PeopleSoft Installation Table

The Benefits Administration Start Date resides on the Product Specific page in the PeopleSoft Installation Table.

Follow the CHRS Change BAS Start Date Checklist and accompanying instructions at the beginning of early March each calendar year. Allow for two weeks for the CHRS campuses to complete steps 3, 4 and 5.

Be sure to test this process before doing the actual process in production using the approved CSU method. Test activities are built into the following checklist.

CMS-Benefits will provide Tech Services variations of the following SQLs to select, count and to also delete the BAS_PARTIC and BAS_PARTIC_XXXX records identified for removal. The date in yellow highlight is updated each calendar year to reflect the new Ben Admin Start Date by CMS-Benefits.

SELECT * FROM PS_BAS_PARTIC WHERE EVENT_DT < to_date('01/01/2022', 'MM/DD/YYYY')

SELECT * FROM PS_BAS_PARTIC_PLAN WHERE EVENT_DT < to_date('01/01/2022', 'MM/DD/YYYY')

SELECT * FROM PS_BAS_PARTIC_OPTN WHERE EVENT_DT < to_date('01/01/2022', 'MM/DD/YYYY')

SELECT * FROM PS_BAS_PARTIC_COST WHERE EVENT_DT < to_date('01/01/2022', 'MM/DD/YYYY')

SELECT * FROM PS_BAS_PARTIC_DPND WHERE EVENT_DT < to_date('01/01/2022', 'MM/DD/YYYY')

SELECT * FROM PS_BAS_ELIG_DBGVAL

SELECT COUNT(*) FROM PS_BAS_PARTIC WHERE EVENT_DT < to_date('01/01/2022', 'MM/DD/YYYY')

SELECT COUNT(*) FROM PS_BAS_PARTIC_PLAN WHERE EVENT_DT < to_date('01/01/2022', 'MM/DD/YYYY')

SELECT COUNT(*) FROM PS_ BAS_PARTIC_OPTN WHERE EVENT_DT < to_date('01/01/2022', 'MM/DD/YYYY')

SELECT COUNT(*) FROM PS_BAS_PARTIC_COST WHERE EVENT_DT < to_date('01/01/2022', 'MM/DD/YYYY')

SELECT COUNT(*) FROM PS_BAS_PARTIC_DPND WHERE EVENT_DT < to_date('01/01/2022', 'MM/DD/YYYY')

SELECT COUNT(*) FROM PS_BAS_ELIG_DBGVAL

DELETE FROM PS_BAS_PARTIC WHERE EVENT_DT < to_date('01/01/2022', 'MM/DD/YYYY')

DELETE FROM PS_BAS_PARTIC_PLAN WHERE EVENT_DT < to_date('01/01/2022', 'MM/DD/YYYY')

DELETE FROM PS_ BAS_PARTIC_OPTN WHERE EVENT_DT < to_date('01/01/2022', 'MM/DD/YYYY')

DELETE FROM PS_BAS_PARTIC_COST WHERE EVENT_DT < to_date('01/01/2022', 'MM/DD/YYYY')

DELETE FROM PS_BAS_PARTIC_DPND WHERE EVENT_DT < to_date('01/01/2022', 'MM/DD/YYYY')

*DELETE FROM PS_BAS_ELIG_DBGVAL

*Note - BAS_PARTIC_ELIG - requires different criteria;

DELETE FROM PS_BAS_PARTIC_ELIG A

WHERE (A.EMPLID NOT IN

(SELECT B.EMPLID FROM PS_BAS_PARTIC B WHERE A.SCHED_ID = B.SCHED_ID

AND A.EMPLID = B.EMPLID

AND A.BENEFIT_RCD_NBR = B.BENEFIT_RCD_NBR AND A.EVENT_ID = B.EVENT_ID ))