QUESTION: I want ProVal to use rounded service, as well as rounded age, when looking up benefit component table values. How do I code that?

ANSWER: ProVal uses rounded age at the valuation date in the year of decrement, based on the date of birth or attained age field of Input | Census Specifications | Active Data, but does not compute service as the rounded difference between exact ages at hire and at the valuation date. Instead, ProVal computes service as the difference between rounded attained age and rounded age at the hire date, as defined in your census specifications. Therefore, the result may differ by one year from rounded service.

Consider, for example, a 1/1/1999 valuation and a plan participant born on 5/1/1977 and hired on 10/1/1996. If these dates are in the fields specified as the dates of birth and hire, respectively, in the census specifications, then ProVal will compute a (rounded) hire age of 19, and age and service as follows:

Year	Age	Service
1996	19	0
1997	20	1
1998	21	2
1999	22	3
2000	23	4

but the rounded difference between 1/1/1999 and 10/1/1996, or rounded service at the valuation date in year 1999, is 2 years, not 3.

To do table lookups using rounded service, either refer to a service field that you’ve rounded appropriately or refer to a Service Definition with the appropriate rounding. If you don’t provide an integer service value, partial years will be ignored for the table lookup (i.e., service will be rounded down to the previous integer value).