Special Memo 289

To: Employers who submit electronic Wage Report Summary (Form 3.10e) via Employer Access
Re: Changes in electronic wage reporting under new Employer Access

April 20, 2005

Dear Authorized Agent:

As we advised you in General Memo 532, new Employer Access will go live on May 15, 2005. New Employer Access offers an enhanced Wage Reporting function.

The new Wage Reporting function automatically creates IMRF Form 3.10, “Monthly Deposit Summary.” You provide your member wage and contribution detail, and the Wage Reporting function computes your totals and creates the wage summary. Therefore, when you use new Employer Access to submit your wage detail, you do not complete the Monthly Deposit Summary (Form 3.10e) as a separate step.

What this means to you
Beginning May 15, 2005, your options for electronic wage reporting will change. Previously, IMRF would accept any combination of web, tape/diskette, and paper reporting. With the enhanced Employer Access Wage Reporting function, you either report the detail and summary via the web or you mail a tape/diskette and a paper Form 3.10.

• If you submit your wage detail via Employer Access, the enhanced Wage Reporting function will create the Monthly Deposit Summary for you. You do not complete Form 3.10e; that electronic form will no longer exist.
• If you mail your wage detail on a tape or diskette, you will have to complete a paper Form 3.10, “Monthly Deposit Summary,” and return it with your tape/diskette. The electronic Summary, Form 3.10e, will no longer exist. In addition, if you asked IMRF to stop mailing you the paper Monthly Deposit Summary because you completed it online, IMRF will again mail you the paper form until our records indicate you are submitting your wage detail via new Employer Access.

How to avoid having to complete a paper Form 3.10
To avoid having to complete and mail a paper Form 3.10, “Monthly Deposit Summary,” you should use new Employer Access either to import your wage detail file or to enter the wage and contribution detail directly online.

You can also create the wage and contribution detail file via Excel or your current payroll program and import that file. You can download an Excel spreadsheet pre-populated with your member information and formatted for IMRF wage reports.

Other advantages to the enhanced Wage Reporting function
By reporting wages and contributions via new Employer Access, your wage report will always balance, and you will be less likely to receive letters from IMRF about your report.

A new step (“validate”) makes sure your wage report is correct and in balance before you send it to IMRF:

• If you do not report wages for a member, the Wage Reporting function will prompt you to either enter wages or to confirm “no wages” for the member.
• If you report wages for an employee IMRF does not recognize as an active member, the Wage Reporting function will prompt you to confirm that the employee should be reported:
  • If a member is being reported under the wrong plan, you can easily report him or her under the correct plan.
  • If the employee should not be reported, you can remove the employee from the report.
  • If the employee should be reported, you can report the wages, and the Wage Reporting function will remind you to submit an enrollment form.
• If a member’s contributions do not match the percentage to be withheld for the member’s plan, that member will be identified. You can correct the wages or have the Wage Reporting function automatically correct the contribution amount.

The enhanced Wage Reporting function reviews your imported wage and contribution detail file for other errors, such as:

• Blank lines
• A record consisting of more or less than 80 characters
• A member reported more than once under the same plan
• More than one month of wages being reported on the same file

Previously, these errors were corrected manually after the file was received. This not only caused a delay in processing the wage report, in some cases it delayed payment of a member’s benefit. Some employers may discover that the wage detail file they import needs to be corrected before it can be submitted to IMRF. If this occurs, employers can view detailed online help to learn how to correct the errors.

Interactive demonstrations of new Employer Access Wage Reporting
IMRF’s 2005 Advanced Authorized Agent Wage Reporting Workshops will include an interactive demonstration of the enhanced Web Wage Reporting function. You will find the dates, locations, and registration information on the IMRF website, www.imrf.org.

To register for a workshop, visit www.imrf.org and click on the “Employer Workshops” button on the side navigation (menu) bar. Follow the steps to complete your secure online registration.

Questions
If you have any questions regarding the enhanced Wage Reporting function, please contact a Member Service Representative at 1-800-ASK-IMRF (1-800-275-4673) Monday through Friday, 7:30 A.M. to 5:30 P.M.