MyTRS—Employers adding and editing plan rates
It is that time of year again where January plans are changing prices.
It is critical that you review our instructions because in the past, when employers fail to follow the instructions, the following can happen:
- employers altering prior-year plan prices rather than adding a new row for a price (resulting in large inaccurate retroactive rebills for retirees),
- employers stopping deductions for their retirees by adding stop dates in error,
- adding plans with a final price of $0.01 (which will result in a deduction for $0.01 for retirees for January), and
- selecting plan options that are not needed (which will result in plan menu options packed with useless options).
Please visit our online training and guides page to view our comprehensive training videos and manuals including the Retiree Insurance in MyTRS guide – 2024 or if you would like a physical copy of our manual, email InsuranceUpdates@trb.state.ma.us to request a 2024 edition mailed to you. Prior editions of this guide are out of date.
Reminder: “Premium Holidays”
If your insurance carrier offers a premium “holiday,” we encourage you to coordinate directly with your carrier to facilitate the premium refund.
MyTRS cannot process short-term rate holidays with a price of $0.00. Employers can enter a rate of $0.01 for a month and then re-enter the correct rate for the following month the next day. Do not enter a series of months with different costs for every plan, as the billing complications may trigger unforeseen errors. If you want to add new rows to change any of your rates to $0.01 for a particular month, please wait 24 hours to add the new row with the restoration price.
If your premium “holiday” is equal to exactly one month’s premium, and $0.01 will not suffice, you can enter it manually for your retirees. To do this, perform a cancel function to enter a stop date on each retirees’ deduction, then immediately enter a change function to add a new rate line to each retiree to restart the deduction a month later. With this process, you have full control over the rate “holiday” and can avoid any complications that batch processing can present.
The process for entering rate holidays is thoroughly explained in Chapter 14 – Premium Rate Holidays.
Questions?
If you have any questions, please send them to InsuranceUpdates@trb.state.ma.us.