ASW Payroll Processing Best Practices

Payroll Processing

I. Full Census Data:

Transmit full census data for all employees receiving W-2 compensation – not just those who are contributing.

Any exceptions to this should be coordinated through Pinnacle – contributions@pfslink-e.com

II. Changes with an Employee’s Status:

1. When an Employee is terminated, please include his/her termination date in the Termination Date column “DOT”.

2. When an Employee is terminated and then returns to the company:

A termination date should have been provided when the employee originally left the company in the Termination Date column “DOT”

If an employee is re-hired, do not remove the original termination date, but add a re-hire date in the Re-Hire column “DOR”.

Transamerica does not automatically re-calculate eligibility when an employee rehires. It is necessary to contact Transamerica to advise them of any new eligibility date for the re-hired employee as well as to indicate whether Transamerica needs to send out a new enrollment kit.

Coordinate changes with Theresa.Mackey@transamerica.com

If the employee is terminated and rehired multiple times, as is common with seasonal employees, the most recent termination and rehire dates should be included on the payroll file

3. If an employee moves/transfers from one employer to another employer within a controlled group:

Do not add a termination date on the employer/payroll file that the employee is leaving. Just add the employee on the other employer/payroll file that the employee is moving/transferring to, with the original hire date.

If the employee leaves the controlled group – that is, not employed at any of the employers within the controlled group – then, a termination date must be added.

4. Removing a termination date that was included on a payroll file, in error.

Information on both Pinnacle and Transamerica’s systems are overwritten when payroll files are uploaded/transmitted, except for termination dates.

Termination dates can only be removed from our systems manually.

Written communication should be sent to Pinnacle via email to contributions@pfslink-e.com and to Transamerica Theresa.Mackey@transamerica.com to remove a termination date that was added erroneously so that we may update our systems.

Payroll should ensure that the erroneous termination date is not included on future file uploads.

III. SSN Issues:

If an incorrect SSN is noted in our system:

Do NOT send a file in with the correct one as this will create 2 accounts and make the correction process take longer.

Provide Transamerica Theresa.Mackey@transamerica.com and Pinnacle contributions@pfslink-e.com with both the Incorrect and Correct SSN in a secure way and we will have the incorrect one updated.

IV. Force-Out Distributions/Contract Clean-Ups:

Transamerica processes force-out distributions twice per year of terminated participants with small account balances. To ensure that no force-out distributions are processed for active participants:

Transamerica will send email notifications to the Primary Contacts within the Plan, as noted below.

“Your action is required. Important information has been delivered to your Transamerica Message Center Inbox concerning your plan's force out distributions. Please login to your account www.TA-Retirement.com right away to review.

If you wish to comment on the information sent, your reply is required within 5 business days of receipt of this email. “

It is important that you review the spreadsheet, immediately, to verify that the information is accurate.

If active participants are included, please promptly notify Transamerica and Pinnacle to remove those names from the force-out list, as well as remove their termination dates from our systems.