Managing Validation Errors on Integrated Payroll Contributions – ProgramPay

In an effort to ensure that contribution & loan repayments are error-free, ProgramPay applies a number validation rules to each contribution.

In this article, you will learn about a variety of validation errors that could occur on contributions that are submitted via an integration from your payroll company. Even when bypassing the ProgramPay portal for contribution submission via a payroll integration, sponsors are still responsible for managing validation errors that occur.

From time to time, a contribution may cause a validation error when processing. If that occurs, you will receive an email from ProgramPay notifying you of the error. Please review the cause of the error in the portal and take the appropriate action to remedy the issue

Please read on to learn more about validation error handling and your responsibilities for remediating any errors. This article will review what happens when an error is detected in a contribution file and what steps the sponsor is responsible for taking to remedy the issue.

If you have payroll contributions integrated through your payroll provider:

When your contributions file gets automatically submitted from your payroll system, we do our best to ensure the quality of submitted data.
While our primary goal is to process everyone’s contributions, in some cases, when we encounter validation issues with some of the records, we are forced to remove those contribution or loan payment records and ask you to review and remedy the issue.
The good news is that these issues are rare, and the rest of the records are processed without delay.
Bad records are automatically dropped from the submission.
In some instances, you may be required to refund the payroll deduction to a participant.
In other instances, you may need to manually reprocess the contribution once the error is remedied.
Each time a validation error occurs, you will be notified via email from ProgramPay@notices.vestwell.com and redirected to the portal to view these validation errors. If you receive this email notification, take the required action immediately.

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Viewing Contribution Validations in the portal

When you receive an email noting that one or more contributions experienced a validation error, go to the ProgramPay portal and select the impacted contribution from the history section of the Contribution Dashboard. Click on the contribution date to see the contribution details.

Participant and Contribution Validation Types that Result in Contribution Removal

Certain validation errors will result in the impacted contribution being removed from the submission so that the rest of the contributions can process in a timely manner. Each of these require the sponsor to review and take action to remediate the issue and process an off-cycle or refund the deducted money to the employee.

Validation Description

Validation Logic

Systemic Action Taken

Sponsor Remediation Options

Missing SSN

Participant SSN is missing from a contribution submission

Contribution record(s) without SSN are automatically removed from the contribution submission

Reason: "Missing a valid SSN”

If there was no contribution associated with the record, you may:

Ignore the error OR
Correct the missing SSN on your payroll system so that it can get properly processed next time

If there was a contribution associated with the record, you may:

Update this employee’s SSN and resubmit their contribution via an off-cycle submission tool found under the ‘Other Options’ menu on the Contributions landing page OR
Return the funds to the impacted employee if the contribution was deducted in error. No other action is necessary.

**In case of duplicate Social Security Number error, all the duplicate records are dropped and should be reviewed, consolidated, corrected, and resubmitted, if appropriate.

Bad SSN format

Participant SSN is not properly formatted with 9 digits

Failing record(s) are automatically removed from the contribution submission

Reason: “Improperly formatted SSN”

Invalid SSN

Invalid SSN are identified as follows:

1) all same digits (ie. 111-11-1111)

2) Zeros (0) in positions 1-3 or 4-5 or 6-9 of the SSN.(ie. 00-352-1234)

3) 123-45-6789

4) 987-65-4321

Failing record(s) are automatically removed from the contribution submission

Reason: “Invalid SSN”

Duplicate SSN

More than 1 record with the same SSN.

(Prior to loading contributions, the system attempts to combine duplicates into a single record based on matching SSN, First Name, Last Name & DOB. If we cannot match the duplicate records, this validation will trigger)

Contribution record(s) are automatically removed from the contribution submission

Reason: “Duplicate SSNs”

Invalid DOB/DOH combination

Participant DOB is equal to or later than the DOH

Contribution record(s) are automatically removed from the contribution submission

Reason: “Date of Hire must be after Date of Birth”

If there was no contribution associated with the record, you may:

Ignore the error OR
Correct DOB and/or DOH on your payroll system so that it can get properly processed next time

If there was a contribution associated with the record, you may:

Update this employee’s DOB and/or DOH and resubmit their contribution via an off-cycle submission tool found under the ‘Other Options’ menu on the Contributions landing page OR
Return the funds to the impacted employee if the contribution was deducted in error. No other action is necessary.

Missing names

First name or last name is missing from submission (SSN and names are always required)

- Contribution record(s) are automatically removed from the contribution submission

- Reason: “Missing name”

If there was no contribution associated with the record, you may:

Ignore the error OR
Correct the missing name on your payroll system so that it can get properly processed next time

If there was a contribution associated with the record, you may:

Update this employee’s Name and resubmit their contribution via an off-cycle submission tool found under the ‘Other Options’ menu on the Contributions landing page OR
Return the funds to the impacted employee if the contribution was deducted in error. No other action is necessary.

Unrecognized Employee

When adding a new participant along with a contribution submission, all required data about that participant must be included. In this validation, any participant who does not match an existing participant in the plan and who has insufficient personal data to be setup are identified.

Contribution record(s) are automatically removed from the submission, if insufficient data is available to add the unrecognized participant.

Data is insufficient to add a new participant if:

1) Not all required fields are present with valid data. Required fields are: SSN, First Name, Last Name, Date of Birth, Date of Hire, Address 1, City, State, Zip

2) Optional fields, if present, are properly formatted

Error is displayed in the Contribution Detail screen.

If there was a contribution associated with the record, you may:

- Manually resubmit the contribution for an enrolled participant via the off-cycle submission tool found under the ‘Other Options’ menu on the Contributions landing page OR
- Return the funds to the employee if the contribution was deducted in error. No other action is necessary OR
- If this employee should be enrolled in the plan, add the person to the employee roster while manually resubmitting the contribution via the off-cycle submission tool under the 'Other Options' menu on the Contributions landing page

If there is no contribution for the unrecognized employee, no action is required. However, if you expect to contribute for that participant in the future, then update the required information in your payroll system to avoid future validation errors.

Mismatched loan payment

This validation detects a Participant who has active loans but where the loan payments do not match to the expected loan repayment values supplied by the Program.

*If a lump sum is provided, an algorithm tries to break up the total loan payment into valid combinations

Mismatched loan payments are automatically removed from the contribution submission.

If there is a match on one or more of the loans, those other loan payment(s) will not get reduced.

- Reason displayed on the Contribution Detail screen: “Mismatched loan payments”

Confirm the loan payment amount then manually resubmit the payment via the off-cycle submission tool under the 'Other Options' menu on the Contributions landing page
OR
Return the funds to the impacted employee if the loan payment was deducted in error
AND
To avoid future issues, confirm and update the loan repayment schedule in your payroll system

Invalid Loan Payments

A participant has a loan payment on the submission but no active loans are in the database for that participant.

Invalid loan payments are automatically reduced to $0.

- Reason: “Invalid Loan payment”

If you believe this is a valid loan repayment, work with record keeper to update the loan records sent to ProgramPay, then manually resubmit the payment via the off-cycle submission tool under the 'Other Options' menu on the Contributions landing page
OR
Return the funds to the impacted employee if the loan payment was deducted in error
AND
To avoid future issues, confirm and update the loan repayment schedule in your payroll system

Bad contribution format

A participant has a contribution for less than $0

Non-number values get normalized into Null.

Values with more than 2 decimal places get rounded to 2 decimal places.

Badly formatted records from contribution submissions are automatically reduced to $0

- Reason: “Invalid contribution amount”

If the negative contribution was submitted in error, then:
- Manually resubmit the corrected contribution via the off-cycle submission tool found under the ‘Other Options’ menu on the Contributions landing page, AND
- Update your payroll system to avoid future problems.
If the negative contribution was submitted as an offset to prior contributions, then
- Please note, you cannot correct a previously submitted contribution by sending in a negative contribution as an offset. Please work with Voya to reverse incorrect contributions.

IRS Contribution limit exceeded

Contributions that take a participant over the IRS allowed annual contribution limit are not supported.

ProgramPay will identify that a contribution exceeds limits following this logic:

1) Calculate the maximum amount an employee can still contribute

2) Calculate employee unallowed amount

3) Calculate the employer unallowed contribution amount
4) Calculate total unallowed contribution

Contributions will automatically be reduced to avoid exceeding annual contribution limits. The contribution record is reduced to the limit and the excess amount is rejected according to a specific set of reduction rules:

— First reduce the unmatched elective funds, then matched contributions, then profit sharing.

- Reason displayed on the Contribution Detail screen: “Reached contribution limit”

If a wrong contribution amount was submitted

Manually resubmit the employee’s correct contribution amount via an off-cycle submission tool found under the ‘Other Options’ menu on the Contributions landing page.

If the contribution was correct and the employee did over-contribute, then refund the excess contribution amount to the employee

Unestablished self-directed brokerage accounts

Certain participants have chosen to have self-directed brokerage accounts. This validation blocks any contributions that are not Roth contributions (includes all money sources other than Roth or Roth Catch-up) or Roth contributions, that are not allowed because the participant has elected to direct their contributions to a self-directed brokerage accounts. Until the brokerage account is setup, the contributions will not be allowed.

- Record from submission reduced to 0

- Reason: “Brokerage account not set up”

Sponsor works with the record keeper to confirm setup of the Self-Directed Brokerage account. Once the account is setup, sponsor will manually resubmit the employee’s correct contribution amount via an off-cycle submission tool found under the ‘Other Options’ menu on the Contributions landing page. OR
If the participant has not elected a self-directed brokerage account, sponsor works with Voya to remove that setting, then resubmits the contribution. OR
Return the funds to the impacted employee if the contribution was deducted in error

Participant and Contribution Validation Types - Contribution is Processed

There are some contribution validations that identify incomplete or mismatched data which DON'T require the contribution to be removed. In these cases, the sponsor should take action to ensure data is corrected in the payroll system.

Validation Description	Validation Logic	Systemic Action Taken	Sponsor Remediation Options
Bad Date of Hire (DOH) format - required field	Date is not in a valid date format. DOH must be <= today's date & > DOB.	The Contribution record(s) is not removed from the contribution submission. The latest date pulled from DB Error is displayed in the Contribution Detail screen.	The sponsor must update the date of hire in their payroll system to an acceptable date to avoid ongoing error notifications.
Bad Date of Rehire (DORH) format Bad Date of Termination (DOT) format - Optional fields	Date is not in a valid date format	The Contribution record(s) is not removed from the contribution submission. The latest date pulled from DB Error is displayed in the Contribution Detail screen.	The sponsor must update the date of rehire or date of termination in their payroll system to an acceptable date to avoid ongoing error notifications.
Bad Zip and Bad State	Zip or State fields are not properly formatted. Zip must be either 5 or 9 digits, with a dash.	The Contribution record(s) is not removed from the contribution submission. The latest date pulled from DB. Even if only 1 field is bad, we pull the entire address from DB Error is displayed in the Contribution Detail screen.	The sponsor must update the zip code or state in their payroll system to an acceptable format to avoid ongoing error notifications.
Unrealistic Date of Birth (DOB)	DOB does not fall into 15 to 110 years old age range	The Contribution record(s) is not removed from the contribution submission, but the Date of Birth on the contribution is updated to the last known valid date of birth stored in ProgramPay database. Error displayed in the Contribution detail screen.	The sponsor must update the date of birth record in their payroll system to an acceptable birthdate to avoid ongoing error notifications.
Bad Date of Birth (DOB) format	DOB is not in a valid date format	The Contribution record(s) is not removed from the contribution submission, but the Date of Birth on the contribution is updated to the last known valid date of birth stored in ProgramPay database. Error displayed in the Contribution Detail screen.	The sponsor must update the date of birth record in their payroll system to an acceptable birthdate to avoid ongoing error notifications.

Need help?

Please contact: contactus@abaretirement.com for further assistance.

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