The standard regulatory period is defined by cycling the three ACA regulatory periods used to measure, enroll, and regulate your employees' hours of service and healthcare benefits. The cycle restarts for each new reporting year. Once you define the cycle (durations and start dates), you can use the online dashboards to monitor how your employees' will be reported at (and you can impact change prior to) the end of the cycle.
Defining your standard regulatory periods
Use the drop-down selections to define your standard regulatory period.
The three Affordable Care Act regulatory periods are:
- Measurement. (12 months) This ongoing period is used to measure and determine employees’ full-time or part-time status. New employees are placed in what's called an "initial measurement" period and existing employees are placed in "standard measurement" period before every administrative period.
- Administrative. (0 - 3 months) This period is used to enroll eligible employees in healthcare benefits, and update employee status (full-time or part-time). The administrative period is your time to make changes based on the prior measurement period results.
- Stability. (12 months) After every Administrative period, a stability period follows. Employees' full-time or part-time status is fixed during this period regardless of the number of hours of service.
Defining your variable hour regulatory periods
Use the drop-down selections to define your regulatory periods specific to variable hour employees. Once the periods are defined, you specify which employees qualify as variable hour on the Employee ACA Settings tab. You can update the employees at any time.
- Your variable hour employees are not part of the standard regulatory period initially. Measuring variable hour employees' hours of service is considered an "initial measurement period" separate from your existing employees and the measurement period for these employees begins on each individual's hire date.
- You can use a measurement period duration of up to 12 months, and an administrative period duration of up to 3 months, to determine if new variable hour employees are full-time employees without being subject to penalties. Once the variable hour employee measurement period is over, you must assign these employees to your standard regulatory period.
- The initial measurement period start date for these employees can be the hire date or it can begin on the first of the month following each individual employee’s hire date. For example, if the variable hour employee is hired on April 14, the measurement period can start May 1.
Designating and updating variable hour employees
After defining the variable hour regulatory periods, you can specify which employees qualify, and you can update the employees at any time that status changes. See Specifying Employee ACA Settings for more information.