Q. The projected medical paycheck withholdings are being mis-calculated for some of my plan participants.   What is the reason and how can I fix it?

A.  In order to compute projected withholdings, Fast-Flex adds up the participant's actual year-to-date (YTD) dollar withholdings and adds this sum to the product of the fiscal year's remaining paydays multiplied by the "per pay day" scheduled paycheck withholding amount in the employee record (page 4 of 4).  The reason we do it this way is to make Fast-Flex, not you, figure the projected withholdings in the event someone starts mid-year, has a change in family status that results in a change in their scheduled paycheck withholding amounts, or takes a leave of absence, etc.

The first thing to verify is the FINAL PAY DAY (Main Menu/File/Company Setup).  While there, be certain to also verify all of the fiscal year dates.  If this is a short (less than 365 day) year, be certain that the dates reflect that!  Note that the Final Pay Day is frequently NOT the last day of the fiscal year.

Next, it is critical that the the date you enter in the "Next Pay Day" field (see Main Menu/Data Entry/Update Withholdings) always reflects an actual pay day.  It is permissible to "jump the gun" and post (update) scheduled paycheck withholdings a few days ahead of the actual pay day, but be certain that the "Next Pay Day" field always shows next true pay day.

Based on the date that appears in the "Last Pay Day" field on this same form, you can calculate how many year-to-date paydays should have occured so far in the plan fiscal year.  Verify that the plan participants do have paycheck withholdings on each year-to-date pay day.  However, it is also permissable to skip some individual payday withholdings and aggregate them together as long as the total year-to-date withholding amount equals what the individual payday withholdings would have summed to.  Review the dates of paycheck withholdings for one or more of the plan participants by using the Report Generator to create a transaction history report (Report Generator/Transaction Reports/Individual Employee).  If some or all of your plan participants are missing a pay day, or have extra ones, their projected fiscal year paycheck wihholdings will be incorrect. 

If necessary, you can make additional "special" withholdings (manual pages 57-60) or delete the extra withholding transactions (maunual page 61) if the miscalulation issue involves only a few employees.  

If most or all plan partcipants have withholding projections that are incorrect, you can "Batch Update" withholdings for any omitted pay days (Main Menu/Data Entry/Update Withholdings) or "Batch Remove" extra withholdings (Main Menu/Utility Programs/Batch Void Records).  Again, be certain that you "date" any additional paycheck withholding postings on a true pay day.

Updating withholdings only on a true pay day is particularly important for the Semi-Monthly pay frequency.  "Semi-monthly" means two times per month, period.  No more, no less!  EVER! Also, only one semi-monthly pay day is allowed on or before the 15th of the month and one after the 15th. Otherwise, projected fiscal year medical withholdings will be off .

If all of the above is correct, the system will calculate projected withholdings correctly.  Unfortunately, if your data has been wrong in the past and too much money (i.e., more than should have been withheld for the entire fiscal year) has already been reimbursed, there is no way to physically retrieve the reimbursement check(s).

If you have verified all of the above and the projected withholdings are still off, you can fax or email us the summary and detail pages for one or two of these employees at 801-544-2314 and we will find the problem with your data.