Shortest Path to Add New Benefits Participant

We have received some questions recently about how to most efficiently set up new benefits participants under MissionConnect.  Due to the number of variables involved, different benefit types, premium categories, billing entities, setting up a completely new participant will always be a multi-step process.  If you have several new participants to add this could be somewhat daunting, so we want to make sure that MissionConnect: Benefits is streamlining this process as much as possible for you.

Part of that is making sure that you, our users, are aware of the most efficient route to follow through the program, the following will be a step-by-step example of that including screenshots.

In order to add a new benefits participant the person must be in the database, if they are not in the database, then you first need to use MissionConnect: Center to add a new person.  For clergy the person would need to be setup with an appointment and then have compensation added before calculated benefits, like CRSP, would be able to calculate correctly, all of this would be completed in Center before starting these steps in Benefits.  For this example I have added a new pastor to the database, his name is Joe Riggins and I have appointed him to the Albuquerque First UMC 07/01/2012 and given him fictitious compensation in a test database.

1.  Since Joe Riggins is not a participant in any benefits at this point I cannot use the regular search, instead I will use the “Add Participant to Tree” button.  Then using the Find Person search box we locate Joe Riggins and select him as the participant that we want to add.

2.  After Joe has been selected all of the participant management panels load for him, but they reflect data as of the current billing date.  If the participant is being added for the current billing cycle then this is fine, in our example however we are adding him for the future and since his appointment doesn’t start until July 1 we need to change the billing date dropdown at the top left to show 07/01/2012.  Once we do that it will correctly show his Pension Base Comp.

3.  Now we need to start adding benefit types for Joe, to do so click the green plus button shown in the screenshot above and select the benefit type to add, for Joe we are first going to add CRSP DB.  The Benefit Types panel is automatically opened for us and since Joe does not have any billing entities set up the Find Billing Entity search box pops up.  We search for Albuquerque First and select it from the list.

4.  Next we have to enter the start date for both the benefit type itself and the billing entity, as well as the billing percent. Click Done and then Click Save and Joe will be all set up for CRSP DB.

5.  Joe also wants to participate in CRSP DC, so following the same steps from above we click the green plus button and this time select CRSP DC from the list of benefit types.  Since we set up CRSP DB to bill by percent and Joe does not have multiple concurrent appointments, the system now sees that he has a “Global Billing Entity” of Albuquerque First.  When we select CRSP DC from the add benefit type list it will now automatically populate the billing entity panel with all of that information.  The only thing we have to fill in this time is the start date, click Done, click Save and Joe is all set up for CRSP DC.  The following screen shot has a blue square indicating all of the billing entity information that is automatically filled in on the second and subsequent benefit types when the participant has a Global Billing Entity.

We could continue following this process to add more benefit types for Joe.

Important tips for using the Global Billing Entity concept:

1. Global Billing Entity only works if you are billing by percents, it will work with a split billing by percent as well, for example if Joe Riggins was responsible for 10% of all of his benefits and Albuquerque First covered the remaining 90% it wold work the same as the above steps show.  If you choose to use “Bill by Dollars”, then the system cannot extrapolate that across other benefit types since they all have unique billing amounts.

1a. If you do use billing by dollars for one benefit type, for example Medical, but for all others you bill by percent, then the way to streamline this setup is to follow the above steps for all of the bill by percent benefit types first and then add Medical as a bill by dollars benefit type last, that way the Global Billing Entity will automatically fill in until the end.

2.  If the participant has multiple concurrent appointments the Global Billing Entity concept cannot be used.

Please feel free to comment with any questions that you have about this process or with any suggestions that you have for improving the workflow.

Overpayments Enhancement

In the MissionConnect: Benefits Enter Transactions function if a billing entity overpaid the balance on their invoice it can be over-applied, therefore leaving a credit balance held for future use.  However, if all of the invoices for that billing entity had previously been paid in full and an additional payment was received there was no way to apply it to that billing entity without creating a separate payment adjustment since zero balance invoices do not load in the payments grid.

We have now made an enhancement in the way that the payments grid loads invoices.  If a billing entity has paid in full, the payments grid will now automatically load all invoices for that billing entity from the prior 31 days.  This will allow an overpayment to be applied without creating a payment adjustment and it will work in the same way that it has for other overpayments and hold the credit balance for future use.  In the following screen shot the Burkesville church has paid all of their invoices in full, so when the account is selected in payments it now shows the most recent invoice, notice the 0.00 amount remaining.  If the Burkesville church sent in an extra payment it could then be applied against invoice 2797 and  held as a credit balance for future use.

Help Desk Enhancement

We have enhanced the help desk form that is built into all MissionConnect applications.  You may now attach one or two image files, such as screen captures, to help explain the problem that you are having.  Attaching images is an optional part of the help desk form.  The more detail that you can provide about your issue, either through a detailed description or by using images, allows us to respond more quickly with a solution.

The red outlined area in the image below shows the new image attachment fields on the help desk form.

Benefits Overpayments

After a discussion with many of our MissionConnect: Benefits users, we have implemented a solution to handle overpayments very similar to how they previously functioned in MissionBase.  This restored feature is now available in MC: Benefits Version 0.734.  Next time you open the application you will automatically be updated to the latest version.

Here is a brief example to demonstrate how this functionality works; Jim sent in a check for $182.82 to pay for three months of his dental and vision insurance, resulting in an overpayment.

The following image shows his payment being over applied to each benefit type to cover the three months of premiums.

His next statement will show he has a credit balance and does not need to send a payment.

The credit balance on his account can then be applied against the new invoices as shown here.

 

Two Resolutions and a Soup Pot

I’ve never been one to make New Year’s resolutions. But this year I need to make a couple.

2011 brought about major change for Great Spirit Systems as we launched our long announced MissionConnect software with 13 of our customers. This brought major change to these customers as well.

We still have six more customers to convert over to MissionConnect. We also have some MissionBase modules yet to convert with the accompanying customer conversions, and many loose ends to tie up related to MissionConnect. Beyond that, we have accumulated many new ideas and projects that were held off these past three years, while we waited on getting our software into a current development platform from which we can develop “anywhere access” to the data that you, our customers, need in order to enhance your ministries.

We know that in some cases we have left you with inconvenient work arounds and less than optimal solutions. Quite frankly, I had not fully realized how refined a product MissionBase had become until we began hearing from those of you on MissionConnect about little but important things like data entry “flow”, report options, multiple access points to some parts of the data, and other refinements that had been added to MissionBase over the years and then forgotten about by us, because stuff that works doesn’t get much attention. You have let us know clearly about many of these items that are missing in MissionConnect, and we are now working to add them into our new software.

So my first resolution for 2012 is to focus our efforts hard during the first half of the year on completing these software conversions, completing the incomplete modules, and adding all of those “missing pieces” that we’ve heard about from our MissionConnect customers.

We’re anxious to get on to the exciting, new, ministry enhancing applications that have been asked for and dreamed about. However, we must first get the foundational parts of MissionConnect complete, lest we build a “house upon the sand.”

My second resolution is to communicate better as we move forward. I want to keep you better informed of our progress, and we at GSS need to create a better mechanism for two-way communication with you, our customers. The only way we can develop our software in the direction our customers need, especially in those new, ministry enhancing applications for better access to data and information, is to become better at gathering your ideas and allowing you to help develop us the raw ideas and dreams into solid specifications for new software applications. Some people would call this process the “incubation of ideas.” I prefer to think of it as gathering the fresh ingredients into a large soup pot where they can simmer, exchange flavors, and cook up into some truly great software to nourish your ministries in ways not previously possible.

Let us know what you think.

Al