Understanding Participant Contribution Administration
This section lists prerequisites and provides overviews of the Gather Contributions process (ESPP_CONTRIB) and the steps for running the process to gather participant contributions in preparation for a stock purchase.
Before you administer your employee contributions:
Set up your stock purchase plans using the Stock Purchase Plan Rules - General page.
Set up the offering ID using the Offering/Purchase Periods - Offering Period page.
Set up the purchase ID using the Stock Purchase - General page.
Run the Update Participants process using the Process Stock Purchase page.
Participant contributions may come from different sources collected during the purchase period, manual adjustments, and contributions left over from a previous purchase.
The Gather Contributions process gathers all contributions for participants based on how you set up your stock purchase plan and the deductions taken during the purchase period. The system also checks how you set up your process groups within a purchase ID. The Gather Contributions process obtains contributions from three sources:
Payroll for North America (USA and Canadian employees).
Manual contributions (adjustments and non-USA or non-Canadian contributions).
Residual contributions (unused contributions carried forward from previous stock purchase periods).
You can have contributions gathered from Payroll for North America, manually, or both. Residual contributions are always gathered in the process. Contributions outside of Payroll for North America must be manually entered for the process to gather the contributions.
The system stores the different types of contributions in the tables and changes the status as follows:
Payroll for North America contributions are identified in payroll as Gathered, so as not to gather them again.
Manual contributions are changed to Processed from New.
Residual contributions are changed to Processed Residual from New Residual.
Payroll for North America
Payroll for North America groups employees by company and pay group for reporting, accounting, and other payroll objectives. It defines the company and pay group for each employee's job on the effective-dated job record. Company definition ranges from simple to fairly complex. Payroll for North America defines pay groups within companies and uses the division for payroll processing. You define the pay groups that typically fall into one or more of the following criteria:
Frequency of pay.
Currency in which they are paid.
Country or location in which they are paid.
Employee type (hourly, exception hourly, salaried, and so on).
In Payroll for North America, employees are paid according to a pay calendar, which defines the company, pay group, pay period begin and end dates, and check date.
If you gather contributions based on check date or pay period, it gathers only the appropriate contributions. If you selected Check Date, it gathers contributions on check dates that fall between the purchase period begin and end dates. If you selected Pay Period End Date, the process gathers contributions for pay period end dates that fall within the purchase period begin and end dates. Within the purchase ID setup, you can include or exclude specific pages or page ranges from the Gather Contributions process. Work with your payroll administrator to determine the best setup for your process.
Payroll for North America stores deduction data in the PAY_DEDUCTION Table by pay calendar and pay period. It contains all deductions for an employee by company, pay group, benefit plan, and benefit plan type. The unique combination of benefit plan type and benefit plan defined for each stock purchase plan controls the deduction gathering process.
Once a payroll is processed and the pay calendar is confirmed, the Gather Contributions process collects the payroll deduction data for employees. The Gather Contributions process collects deductions that match the benefit plan type and benefit plan defined for a participant. After it processes a deduction for a participant, it sets a flag (ESPP_PROCESS_FLAG) in the PAY_DEDUCTION Table. This flag prevents the Gather Contributions process from processing a deduction multiple times. Specify the parameters that control the Gather Contributions process for Payroll for North America in the Purchase Table.
Manual Contributions
Contributions not gathered by Payroll for North America are processed as manual contributions. Using the Manual Contributions page, you can adjust a participant's contribution or manually enter the contributions of employees who are not administered through Payroll for North America. Alternatively, if you don't use Payroll for North America, you can import all your contribution data through an import process.
Residual Contributions
Residual contributions are those left over from a purchase. The Gather Contributions process collects residual contributions with a residual type of C (carry forward) from the Residual Contributions Table (ST_CONTRIB_RSDL). After the residual contributions are processed, the contribution status is updated from N (new) to P (processed). The residual contribution's stock ID, stock plan type, stock plan, and process group must match those of the current offering for the residual contributions to be carried forward into the current offering.
Negative Contributions
The process doesn't gather negative contributions, other than reversals. These contributions are ignored and the system generates a warning message.
To gather contributions:
Working with your payroll administrator, make sure the payroll is executed and the pay calendar is confirmed.
Payroll must be run to ensure the payroll check and deduction data is available for the Gather Contributions processing.
Enter manual contributions or view the results of a data import using the Create Manual Contributions page.
Run the Gather Contributions process using the Process Stock Purchase page.
Select the Gather Contributions check box.
If you want to hold a purchase for an individual, select a hold reason on the Review Contributions page.
View participant contributions and make manual adjustments using the Review Contributions page and the Review Residual Contributions page.
Generate the Contributions report to view contributions for audits and reconciliation.