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ACA Forms (1095s and 1096s)

Create ACA Report for ETC

This article outlines the process of generating Affordable Care Act (ACA) reports for the Eligibility Tracking Calculators (ETC) who will file your ACA forms for you.

The tool to create an ACA file for ETC assumes that an employee worked full-time for the month if they:

  • worked 130 hours or more,
  • Or have a deduction or benefit marked as health coverage for ACA reporting.

Employees who do not meet this criteria will need to be entered or modified manually in
the csv file using Excel after creating the file. Note that ETC provides Excel templates for reporting certain exceptions, such as part-time employees who purchase coverage through the school at a rate deemed unaffordable.

Review ACA Forms Options

  1. In Payroll, go to Options and select ACA Forms.
  2. When creating the report for ETC, the only option you need to enter is at the bottom right, Default $/Hr.
    If an employee is part time, and has a salary pay type, and there is no information in his/her Employee – Work History (see below), this value will be used to convert salary to hours.

Review Deduction and Benefit Code Options

Before printing 1095 forms, carefully review the settings for deduction and benefit codes.

  • In Payroll, go to Other Functions and select Deduction Codes to review your deduction code options.
  • In Payroll, go to Other Functions and select Benefit Codes to review your Benefit code options.

Key Settings:

  • ACA Health Insurance: Mark this option for deductions that qualify as ACA health coverage.
  • ACA Offer Code: Typically, this will be "1A," indicating that minimum essential coverage (MEC) is offered.
  • ACA Low Cost: Enter the lowest cost of employee-only coverage. This is essential for determining affordability. (Note: this option is only available for Deduction codes.)
  • Coverage Periods: Beg Mo: Beginning month of coverage. End Mo: Ending month of coverage.
    Use these fields to specify the duration of coverage for each type of plan or cost.
  • Coverage Type:
    • Fully-insured: Coverage provided by an insurance company.
    • Self-insured: Coverage provided directly by the employer.
    • Indicate the coverage type for each period.

Review Employee Work History

To ensure ACA compliance, ETC requires the hours worked by part-time employees. For salaried part-time employees, their salary needs to be converted into equivalent hours. To facilitate this, the Work History section has been added to the Employees - Retire/Misc tab. This section includes four lines to track how an employee's salary is calculated.

For ETC ACA reporting, use the first line to enter the employee's Dollars per Hour ($/Hr) for their salary pay. The system will then divide the salary amount by the entered $/Hr to approximate the hours worked. If the employee also receives hourly pay, these hours will be added to the calculated hours to determine the total hours worked for the pay period, which will then be reported to ETC.

Please note that a description is mandatory for each line of work history to ensure proper saving.

Line 1 needs to be completed for part-time employees (under 30 hours/week or 130 hours/month) that are paid on a salary basis and don't have benefits.

  1. In Payroll, go to Employees then select the Retirement/Misc/Work History tab.
  2. Use the Classified Work History section to enter a Description, Number of Days, Hourly Rate, and Hours Worked per day. The Amount Total is calculated automatically.
  3. After entering the required information, press the Save button.

Create the ACA File for ETC

  1. In Payroll, go to Reports and select ACA File for ETC.
  2. If this is the first time you've created a file for ETC, you'll need to enter dates for Pay Periods and Pay Checks.
    • The Beg/End Pay Period Dates specify the start and end dates of the actual pay period for which the paycheck was issued.
    • The Beg/End Pay Check Dates are used to associate each paycheck with its corresponding pay period based on the paycheck's issue date.
  3. If you've setup Pay Period and Pay Check dates previously, you can press the Add One Yr button to increase the year by one. (For example, the 01/01/24 will change to 01/01/25 after pressing the button.)
  4. Enter the Check Beg/End Dates to specify the date range for all paychecks issued during the year that should be included in the report file uploaded to ETC.
  5. Check the Print to csv file checkbox.
  6. Press the Print button.
  7. On the Print to csv File window, select a folder to save the file to and enter a name for the file. We recommend something like ACAForms2024.csv. Note: The filename must end with ".csv".
  8. Press the Save button to save the file.

You can open the generated CSV file in Excel to review the data and make any necessary changes.

For employees with exceptional circumstances, you may need to modify the CSV file in Excel before uploading it to ETC.

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