In This Issue...

• New Final Payroll Details Online
• Employer Statements
• Remittance Advice
• ORS Begins ACH/Electronic Payment Project
• DTL2 Adjustment
• Saving Your Download Detail Report
• New Payroll Staff?
• Encourage Your Employees to Attend a PRIM
• Leaving School Employment and Not Retiring
• What About You?
• Supporting Your Employees Retirement-Related Needs

New Final Payroll Details Online

ORS is pleased to announce an enhancement to the retirement reporting site that you’ve all been waiting for. Paper final salary affidavit forms will be sent for the last time this week. Beginning June 6, 2009, authorized users will see a new link on the retirement reporting site where you can view all the applicants for retirement from your reporting unit and can enter final payroll details for your retiring employees.

The Final Payroll Details page will only reflect fields that pertain to each particular retiring employee. You will enter data that is missing or needs verification. In some cases, an ORS staff member will call you to confirm certain information.

Authorized users are those persons in the reporting unit who have been given a user id and password to the secure employer retirement reporting website, and have been given one of the following accesses: Employer Reporting 1-5, or Web Administrator. If you normally complete the final salary affidavit forms and are not an authorized user with one of those access types, you will need to request access to the Employer Reporting Website. Your reporting unit must make the decision as to which employee with one of those access types will perform the task of completing the Final Payroll Details page.

If you are not an authorized user with the appropriate access, please see your reporting unit web administrator.

Stay tuned for more information by checking the school employer website at www.michigan.gov/psru often. Step-by-step instructions will soon be available.      

Employer Statements

You should have received your March 2009 Employer Statement in the mail last week. If you have not received your statement or have any questions with the reconciliation of that statement, please contact Pat Jorae in DMB Finance at joraep@michigan.gov. You will receive your April statement in late May. Any amounts owed must be paid with your next contribution payment. Amounts that are past due are subject to late fees and interest.      

Remittance Advice

The Remittance Advice for Public School Contributions and TDP Deductions (R0669C) has recently been updated to make it fillable. You still have the option to print it out as a blank form. Use this form to remit monthly employer and MIP contributions, adjustments, and TDP payments.       

ORS Begins ACH/Electronic Payment Project

ORS is working on the next phase of on line services that will provide the functionality for electronic payment of retirement contributions from your reporting unit. Automated Clearing House (ACH) is a method of electronic payment very similar to what you currently use to pay Federal payroll withholding payments to the IRS. The ACH payment will be a debit to the bank account(s) you designate. Reporting units will electronically submit employer contributions, MIP, TDP, late fees, and interest payments.

The first step will be for your reporting unit to begin to make payments electronically on your current payment schedule. This functionality is scheduled to become available not sooner than August of 2010. All reporting units are expected to be using this functionality by the end of October 2010.

The second step will be for your reporting unit to make electronic payments on a pay cycle basis, due the day following the day you pay your employees. ORS understands that some reporting units will need the full 18 months from now until November 2010 to make this change. All reporting units are anticipated to be submitting payments on a pay cycle basis by November 2010.

To assist you with making these electronic payments, ORS will conduct another on line services phase to provide an online employer statement. This new functionality will allow your reporting unit to go online and see your current statement at any time.

Benefits of the online payment service include:

• The payment method will be electronic and can be done without the travel time required to send a payment through the postal service.
• The payment will also be more closely tied to a given pay period, which should ease reconciliation between what is owed and what has been paid.

Please watch for updates in the Reporting Instruction Manual when implementation occurs.

Timeline:

Quarterly email updates will be sent to keep you informed of the project status. ORS wishes to include the Chief Financial Officer (CFO) of each reporting unit in the project updates. Please provide the contact information for the CFO of your reporting unit.

Look for more updates in the August 2009 issue of the Retirement Times newsletter. 

DTL2 Adjustment 

Successfully posting a negative or positive adjustment DTL2 record is dependent upon using the correct begin and end dates, wage codes and/or class codes.

Negative adjustments:

The begin and end dates on a negative adjustment record must match the begin and end dates used for the originally posted regular wages. The class code on a negative adjustment record must match the class code used on the originally posted wage record. The wage code to use depends upon which wage code was used to post the original wages. Use the chart below to determine the correct wage code to use for your negative adjustment.

Positive adjustments for regular wages:

Positive adjustments for regular wages can be used to add wages to previously posted wages or to report regular wages that were not reported in error for an earlier time period.

To add wages to previously posted wages, use the begin and end dates for the pay period for which the correction is needed. Use the same class code that was used on the originally posted wages. The wage code for adding wages for previously posted regular wages depends on the wage code that was used for the originally posted wages. Use the chart below to determine the correct wage code to use.

To add wages that were not reported at all use the begin and end dates for the pay period that the wages should have been reported. Use the class code that best describes the job for which the wages are being reported. The correct wage code for adding regular wages that were not reported in the past may depend on the class code being used or the type of wages they are. Use the chart below to select the correct wage code.

Positive adjustments for retroactive wages:

To report positive adjustments to retroactive wages originally reported with wage code 04, use the same begin and end date and same class code used on the original retro wage record and wage code 45.

Note: Wage code 45 will NOT work unless retro wages were already posted with wage code 04 for the same begin and end dates and class code.  

Saving Your Download Detail Report

Posted download detail reports are available online for you for 12 months from the date of the report. We strongly advise you to save a copy of the download detail for each report before the 12 month period is up.

Here is how you can save a copy.

1. Log in to the retirement reporting website.
2. Click on the Work on Reports link.
3. Scroll down the page to the section titled Posted Reports.
4. Click on the View Totals link for the report you wish to save.
5. You are now on the View Report Totals page. Scroll down to section titled Report Totals for Regular and Adjustment Download Detail.
6. Click on the Download Detail link to open the report. This opens your report in a spreadsheet format similar to Microsoft Excel.
7. Click on File at the top of your screen and then select Save As.
8. Navigate to the location you want to save your report. Type in the report file name. In the Save as type box change the file type to Microsoft Excel Workbook (*.xls). (See example below.)
9. Click on the Save button. You have now successfully saved your report.
   

If you need a copy of the download detail report that is no longer accessible on the retirement reporting website, you may request a copy from ORS by contacting us at the information below.

If you have any questions, contact the Employer Reporting Call Center at (517) 636-0166 or ORS_Web_Reporting@michigan.gov.   

New Payroll Staff? 

Remember to notify ORS when you hire new payroll staff. Please forward their name an email address to ORS_Web_Reporting@michigan.gov. ORS will contact them when as payroll reporting training becomes available.      

Encourage Your Employees to Attend a PRIM

Your employees who are within four years of retirement will find great value in attending a Preretirement Information Meeting (PRIM). Tell them to go to www.michigan.gov/orsschools, click on Webinars and Seminars, and then click on Preretirement Seminars.

We have online webinars scheduled through May and will be adding more for June. We will post next year’s onsite PRIM schedule in September. Whether the meetings are online or onsite, your employees will hear an overview of their retirement benefits so they can make informed decisions about their retirement and their future. Topics include:

• Earning and purchasing service credit
• Eligibility requirements
• Calculating retirement benefits
• Insurance coverage
• Questions and answers

In order to provide great customer service and to assure adequate seating and materials, advance registration is required.       

Leaving School Employment and Not Retiring

It’s important that your employees know how termination effects their retirement when they leave for reasons other than retiring. We strongly encourage you to provide them with the Leaving Public School Employment? brochure while they’re still considered a member of the retirement system. This publication will provide them with important information about their status in the retirement system.

Additionally, several disciplines within some school districts, i.e., substitute teachers and bus drivers, have been privatized. As you are aware, whenever a person works for a third party organization he or she is no longer a public school employee and therefore is no longer an active member of the Michigan Public School Employees Retirement System. They are not always informed that this change in their member status has a direct effect on retirement eligibility.

For more information on who is not a member of the Michigan Public School Employees Retirement System, see Chapter 4, Section 4.5 Who is Not a Member in the Reporting Instruction Manual at www.michigan.gov/psru.   

What About You?

A shipment of the What About You? poster was sent to each reporting unit in April. Please post them in common areas frequented by your employees to encourage miAccount use. miAccount is a secure section of our website where members can view, print, change, and discuss personal account information.

If you need additional posters, please use the online order form to request more.   

Supporting Your Employees Retirement-Related Needs

Perhaps your employees are just entering the workforce, in the middle of their careers, or maybe they’re getting ready to retire. No matter what stage of life they’re in, ORS is here to support their retirement-related needs. That's why we’ve created the PROactive annual newsletter just for active members.

To access the online archive of this publication, tell your employees to go to www.michigan.gov/orsschools, click on PROactive Active Member Newsletter, and then click on the latest issue for a variety of preretirement opportunities to assist them in building their retirement nest egg.   

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How to Contact ORS

Email:
ORS_Web_Reporting@
michigan.gov
 

Telephone:
Employer Reporting Call Center
(517) 636-0166
 

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