An Eligibility Definition contains generic eligibility requirements that will be combined with an appropriate Service Definition Set when needed to define various plan rules including Service Definition start and stop adjustments, definition of the initial and last salary within Salary Definitions, Benefit Definitions eligibility, Calculated Dates and alternative eligibility for Payment Forms.

For example, the eligibility requirements for a terminated vested benefit might be 5 years of service with no age requirement even though the benefit does not start until age 65.  In this case, the eligibility for the termination benefit would be specified as an Eligibility Definition requiring 5 years of service (using an appropriate Service Definition Set), and the eligibility for the payment form would be an Eligibility Definition requiring age 65.

Name is a text field in which to enter a description of the eligibility requirements. This may be any descriptive phrase, including spaces.

Determine based on conditions: allows you to specify the conditions and exceptions for the eligibility definition. The Conditions (no less than) and Exceptions (no more than) determine when an employee becomes eligible and ineligible, respectively.  Each of the conditions and exceptions sections have the same grid and additional options to specify their respective parameters.

The grids allow you to specify Age, Service, and Points criteria as numeric values or Plan Constants for eligibility. Each row is interpreted as having “and” linking the requirements. For example, someone must both be 55 years old and have 10 years of service to be eligible if the row has 55 and 10 in it. An individual is considered eligible at the earliest satisfaction of two rows from the grid. For example, to be eligible, someone need be 65 years old or be 62 years old with 10 years of service if there are two rows, one row that specifies age 62 and 10 years of service and another row that specifies age 65. 

Exceptions are most often coded in the situation where there are multiple benefits for a single contingency. For example, suppose that two retirement benefits are included in a plan: a basic benefit with eligibility requirements of 55 and 10 and an enhanced benefit with requirements of 55 and 30. You must exclude people eligible for the second benefit from receiving the first benefit. In other words, the first benefit has conditions of 55 and 10 but exceptions of 55 and 30. The second benefit has conditions of 55 and 30, and no exceptions. 

Age requirements always refer to the member’s age, although you may be defining eligibility for a benefit payable to the spouse.

Satisfaction of eligibility requirements is determined with no rounding. For example, an individual 54.9 years old will not be considered to have met an age 55 requirement. If you wish to apply specific rounding requirements for service, you may code the age requirement as 54.5 or you may calculate and appropriately rounded the service that you later associate with the Eligibility Definition.

If eligibility requirements refer to more than one service field, or if more complex rounding rules apply, you may then refer to field(s) from the Data Dictionary by indicating if the comparison should be or earlier or and later of the selected field(s) in the Conditions or Exceptions sections, respectively. Only date fields are listed in the selection boxes. If the date field selected is a date dependent array field, the most recent value will be used in the evaluation of the eligibility criteria.

An individual is considered eligible at the earliest or latest satisfaction of the date field or of a row from the grid. 

Date Adjustment

Select an entry from the Date Adjustment library to change the eligibility date. For example, if a plan defines participation as the 04/15 following the attainment of age 18 and 1 year of service, use the date adjustment library entry to set up the rule to round the date to the 04/15 following. Note that the data adjustment can only adjust to a date after the eligibility criteria has otherwise been met. If it attempts to move the date forward, it will be ignored.  (Use the or earlier date option to move the date forward.) The Edit button allows you to access the Date Adjustment library and add a new entry or edit an existing one.

Selection Expression (blank means all potentially eligible)

The selection expression allows you to create logical expressions to limit the potential pool of eligible members based on the evaluation of data from your database. For example, if the plan has certain provisions that apply only to members of Electrical Engineers Local 185 and the field called UnionCode designates union affiliation with members of Electrical Engineers Local 185 having the value 185, the selection expression could be written as "UnionCode = 185". When you are within the selection expression box you can press the F1 key to see a summary of the available operators and Data Dictionary field names.  Note that if an array field is referenced in the selection expression other than as an argument to an array operator, only the last (most recent) value will be used.  For example, if the UnionCode field mentioned above was an array field, specifying "UnionCode =185" would return 1 if the member is most recently in local 185.  To test whether the member was ever in local 185, you can use the logic "185 #INARRAY UnionCode"

Clicking on the arrow after the box brings up the Selection Expression library, allowing you to choose from a previously saved selection expression criteria, or save the current criteria to the library for future reference in other areas of ProAdmin. Pick a selection expression to retrieve by clicking its name in the list of selection expressions. You will return to the preceding dialog box, and the selection expression will appear in the expression box. To edit a selection expression, click the Edit button to access the selection expression library. From there, you can create new expressions or modify existing ones.

Once a calculation has been processed, results for the referenced Eligibility Definitions can be reviewed within the Calculation Results.