Benefits: Optional enrollment

Overview

A benefit can be set up so that individual enrollments are not (necessarily) required — yet still have the net pay apply the deduction when needed.

An example can make this clearer.

Situation:

You have blue-collar workers and office and management staff.
Your union contract is for blue collar workers.
But, whenever any employee performs a blue collar job, he must pay union dues.

In fact, any benefit that automatically applies to all employee, under specific conditions, is a candidate for optional enrollments.

Of course, you can only use the Enrollments optional feature for benefits which are payroll-calculated.

Enroll ALL employees, from the CEO down, in the DUES benefit. (Kind of a mess)
Enroll NO employees in DUES benefit, and let the net pay apply it in all cases.
Enroll your BLUE-COLLAR workers only, and let the net pay apply it as needed. (PARTIAL enrollment)

Any benefit plan can be configured for Enrollment optional

Just ensure that all employees meet your eligibility selection. (Eligibiity tab of the benefit plan window).

This is exactly how you handle other benefits.
You may want to turn on automatic enrollment in the automation tab. It only applies to employees meeting your eligibility selection.
When you click the Enroll Employees, this is the selection that is applied.

First, be sure that automatic enrollment (automation tab) is turned off.
Click the Enrollment optional box. This will open a context menu. Check the first option.
Your Eligibility... selection will still apply to the net pay calculation. Only employees meeting your selection with have the benefit applied.

First, click the Enrollment optional box and check the first option shown. This specifies that enrollments are optional

Now you need to specify two different employee eligibility selections:

One selection for employee enrollment. This one is used for automatic enrollment, and by the Enroll Eligible Employees wizard, to determine whom to enroll.

You do this in the usual Eligibility... on the Benefit Plan / Enrollment tab.
The second selection is for payroll deductions without enrollment. It is used during the net pay calculation.

To access this one, click the Enrollment optional box to open a context menu.
In that menu click the 2^nd option Employee selection (if different).
This opens a different selection window for employees without enrollment that may need deductions.

Above we talk about the two Selections. Two Additional criteria... expressions are also available to refine those filters.

Let's go back to the union dues example above, and see how that might be configured.

First of all, you will probably need a counter for the DUE benefit which only counts blue-collar jobs.

Let's enroll the blue-collar employees normally in the DUES benefit, but deduct dues for anyone (even office workers) who perform a blue-collar job.

Eligbility selection: Only blue-collar employees, based on their union.

These employees we be enrolled in the DUES benefit.
Enrollment-optional selection: Employees of any JSTAT: no union selection.

You need to make some (non-empty) selection here. If you select employees in all your other unions, you will miss employees in no union at all. You can also use the enrollment-optional additional criteria expression.

It is OK if this selection includes some or all employees in the eligibility selection.

In the benefits tab of the Net Pay window, you see the benefits deducted for an employee during the current period.

If a deduction is made for a benefit which the employee is not enrolled in, the row is shown with a brown background (unless you have selected that row, because the selected benefit is always shown in blue).