Initial salary is: identifies the first salary to include in the Salary Definition.  You can choose to have the initial salary be either the First reported within the associated Salary History or the salary reported in a defined initial measurement period. By default, the first salary is the salary reported in the measurement period containing the date of hire. This initial measurement period can be refined, however, to be the later of the hire date and a specified Eligibility Definition (e.g., the later of hire and age 21).  Thus, the second option is Reported in the measurement period containing the later of Hire date, and the date defined by selecting an Eligibility Definition entry from the Eligibility Definition library. If an affirmative Eligibility Definition (i.e., something other than <none>) is selected, using Service Definition Set: must also be specified to identify the Service Definition Set library entry that should be used to evaluate any service requirements in the eligibility criteria.  The default Service Definition Set is the <Base Service Set>, which is defined in the Census Specifications under the Member Data topic.  If a measurement period for the initial salary is selected, its starting date can be further refined by selecting a Date adjustment entry from the Date Adjustment library (e.g., the first of the month coincident with or following 1 year of service).  

For each of the libraries referenced above (Eligibility Definition, Service Definition Set and Date Adjustment), the button accesses the library to its left to create and modify library entries.

If "first reported" is selected as the initial salary, all salaries reported after the plan year end before age 18 will be used in the salary calculation. For a PIA custom operator, only salaries thru "History starts at" can be used in the PIA calculation. Otherwise, any salaries from the plan year end before the adjusted date of hire can be used in a calculation (e.g., Salary and Final Average Salary custom operators).

If "first reported" is not selected as the initial salary (i.e., if an initial measurement period is defined), the Adjust initial salary checkbox becomes available.  If checked, click on the Params... button to set additional adjustment parameters to define or adjust the initial salary:

Initial salary adjustment:  allows you to  Use the next measurement period salary, Prorate  or Gross-up the initial salary. If the initial salary will be prorated, you have the option to Use salary from the next period as the basis for this proration.

If you have selected to either prorate or gross-up the salaries, you need to set additional Prorate/Gross-up in the partial measurement period parameters  (this text is dynamic based on the measurement period selected on the main Salary Definition dialog).   The Factor: section offers parameters to identify the portion (completed nearest, or next higher) and partial periods (years, quarters, months & frac12; month weeks, or days – equal to or more frequent than the measurement period identified for the salary definition) to be reflected in the proration or gross-up of the initial salary. Factor rounding selects an existing entry from the  Service Rounding library that will be applied to the factor prior to the proration or gross-up of the salary.  Salary rounding selects an existing entry from the Service Rounding library that will be applied to the adjusted salary. In each case,, the   button accesses the library to its left to create and modify library entries.

For example, suppose the measurement period is calendar year, the hire date is 3/17/2000 and the first reported salary is $40000 for the period [3/17/2000, 12/31/2000], and you want to gross up this partial year salary into a full calendar year  using nearest half-months. First, choose Gross-up as the Initial salary adjustment:. In the Prorate/Gross-up in the partial measurement period  section, for the Factor: choose nearest and 1/2 months. Since, 3/17/2000 rounded to the nearest half month is 3/15/2000, the grossed up salary is 40000 * (24 half months in [1/1/2000, 12/31/2000]) / (19 half months in [3/15/2000, 12/31/2000]), or 50526.31578947369. You could have rounded the calculated factor before the salary is grossed up, e.g., round to the nearest 7 decimal places, so 24/19 = 1.2631578, and the annualized salary is now 50526.316. And then, for example, truncate the final grossed up salary to 2 decimal places, or 50526.31.