For the Data Effective Date, enter the date that the data is “as of”. Fields such as date of birth, salary, amount in a cash balance account and accrued benefits should be as of the Data Effective Date, just as they would be as of the valuation date when performing a valuation. You may select Beginning of year or End of year; typically, end of plan year data is used so that the nondiscrimination test will reflect the most accurate calculation of benefits as of the end of the plan year.

Choose the Database File that contains the records for the active participants whose accrual rates you wish to calculate. Note that “active participants” means only those records whose status field code is mapped to the ProVal “Active” status; thus accrual rates will not be calculated for any inactive records, whether or not processed as if they were active; thus accrual rates will not be calculated for records whose status field code is mapped to the ProVal “Vested valued through active” status.

Choose the set of Census Specifications that interprets the contents of the fields contained on the active records in the database file. Only truly active participants, as specified by the status code mapping status code mapping of the Census Specifications , will be included in the run; accrual rates will not be computed for participants whose ProVal status is “Vested valued through active”. A check in the Use data defaults box tells ProVal to apply any Data Defaults contained in the specified Census Specifications. If you apply Data Defaults, make sure that the defaults are appropriate for nondiscrimination testing.

Note about salaries: when End of year data is used, typically, you will enter the current plan year’s salary as the first historical salary (see the discussion of Salary Definitions for more information) and choose “<impute from prior year>” for the Current Salary field (i.e., the field containing salary for the year beginning on the Data Effective Date). (In the unlikely event that you use end of year data but enter a current salary field – which ProVal will consider the salary for the year after the current plan year – and do not enter historical salaries, ProVal will estimate the current plan year’s salary by projecting the Current Salary field value back a year at a 0% salary scale.)

You may enter a Selection Expression to pick the active participants to include in the run. If no expression is entered, all active records will be included in the run.

If you choose the annual method and use end of year data, ProVal needs the Prior Year Accrued Benefits (i.e., as of the beginning of the year) for Cash Balance & Career Average Components included in your plan. If any cash balance or career average Benefit Formula Components are referenced in your Plan Definition, the component names will appear in the list. Click the component’s name to access its Accrued Benefit topic, where you may select a database field that contains the beginning-of-year value of the cash balance account or accrued benefit. If this information is not available, you may choose the “expected value” option and ProVal will calculate the component value at the beginning of the year according to the parameters of the component’s Accrual Basis and Accrual Rates topics.