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In this issue

Keeping Your PERS Account Healthy • Actuarial Update •
Reporting Military Leave • EDX Tip: Do Not 'Save' a Suspended Record Unless You Correct It

For employer reporters

Keeping your PERS account healthy

Like you, your PERS account needs regular checkups. The best way to check for hidden problems in your account — like inactive employment or employees needing position changes — is to run reports in Employer Data Exchange (EDX).

Running EDX reports on a regular basis helps you:

1. Prevent and correct suspended records.
2. Achieve timely reporting.
   BONUS: If you submit all wage records by year-end, your employees will receive prior year earnings paid by PERS. (You can find a definition of prior year earnings in the employer glossary under PYE.)
3. Ensure employee records are secure, organized, and accurate.

Reports you should run

Inactive Employment report

What it does

Lists employees who are no longer actively working for you and may need to be reported as terminated to PERS.

Generates a downloadable file that lists the last pay date, hire date, and contribution start date for employees who have had no wages reported in the last 90 days.

Who should run it and when

All employers should run this report every quarter. Then, submit termination records for inactive employees on the list (except employees who are on leave).

Notes

The report does not include working PERS retirees.

It includes employees who have been on a leave of absence for 90 days or more.

It shows data for the current calendar year. Therefore, it will not list any inactive employees until at least 90 days into the year.  

Eligibility Exception reports

What they do

There are two types of Eligibility Exception reports. They list employees whose eligibility for PERS benefits may have changed because they worked more or fewer hours than expected.

• The Members Approaching Qualifying Hours report lists employees who had two or more non-qualifying wages reported and reached 550 or more hours with all their employers in the year queried.
• The Members With Contributions Who May Not Qualify report lists employees who had contributions reported and may not reach 600 hours with all their employers in the year queried.

Who should run them and when

All employers should run these reports every quarter.

Notes

The report does not include partial-year exceptions (i.e., employees who did not work a full year because they were hired or termed that year). To learn more about partial-year exceptions, read employer quick reference guide Determining Qualification for a Partial Year.

If the reports reveal employees who need their position type changed to active service or non-qualifying service, submit a Demographic Change Request (DCR) and ask PERS to make this change.

Instructions

Steps for running each report are listed in employer reporting guide 24, Running Reports.

For financial and budgeting professionals

Actuarial update

We are entering a new fiscal year on July 1, 2024. For most employers, there will be no change in contribution rates until July 1, 2025. An exception to this is employers who established a side account in 2022 without an actuarial calculation; these employers will see the advisory side account rate offset that was calculated in the December 31, 2022, valuation take effect on July 1, 2024. Employers can find their valuation on the Actuarial Valuations webpage.  

PERS Actuarial Activities Section is in the process of providing actuarial data to Milliman, our consulting actuary, that they will use to complete 2023 actuarial valuations. These valuations will determine new employer contribution rates for the 2025-27 biennium. Individual employer valuations containing rates for the next biennium will be available this fall.

As always, feel free to email any questions to the actuarial team at Actuarial.Services@pers.oregon.gov.

For employers of military personnel

Reporting military leave

Members of the uniformed services have the right to take a leave from their job to perform military service and return to their job (or an equivalent one) if they come back within five years.

They are also entitled to earn the benefits they would have earned had they not left for military service, including raises, promotions, and retirement benefits, if their leave meets the guidelines of the Uniformed Services Employment and Reemployment Rights Act (USERRA).

New employer reporting guide 12, Military Leave, explains how to report an employee’s military leave to PERS. It explains how to:

• Qualify for USERRA.
• Place an employee on military leave.
• Report pay received during military leave.
• Ensure they earn retirement benefits for their USERRA-qualifying leave.

Note: An employee must be in a PERS-qualifying position to earn retirement benefits; therefore, only qualifying employees can earn PERS benefits for their military leave.

For employer reporters

EDX tip: Do not ‘save’ a suspended record unless you correct it

Situation: You are working on correcting a suspended report. You open a suspended record in the report, but you need to close out of it and come back to it later. There are two buttons at the bottom of the screen:

You don’t want to delete the record, so you click Save. When you come back to the record later, the error message is no longer there. You don’t remember what the error was.

What happened: When you open a record and click Save, even if you didn’t make any changes, EDX treats the record as though you did. It changes the record status from Suspended to Edited, removes all error messages, and includes the record in that night’s batch run to go back through the validation process.

Solution: When you’re editing a suspended record and you need to close it without making changes, do not click Save. Instead, do either of the following options:

In the future, if you accidentally click Save, just make sure to reopen the record and fix the error while you still remember what it is.

Need help?

Contact the Employer Service Center to ask questions and get one-on-one reporting help.