The Governmental Accounting Standards Board (GASB) requires TRS to have sufficient controls to ensure our REs will report complete and accurate data. As part of this initiative, if records are deleted from your monthly Regular Payroll (RP) or Employment After Retirement (ER) reports, TRS will contact you once the reports reach a “Complete” status. A member of the TRS reporting exceptions team will confirm whether any RP and/or ER records were deleted, and, if so, explain why the deletions were valid.
Common valid reasons for deleting records are as follows:
- RP20 records were deleted because they were for retirees, so they were reentered as ER20s on the ER report.
- RP20 records were combined because they were not wholly separate and were combined with another RP20.
- Records were deleted because the record was generated in error. When a record is deleted for a valid reason, REs should take appropriate corrective action to prevent your software system from resending the unneeded records in a future report month.
Examples of possible corrective actions to take:
- Update all TRS retirees in your software system so records will be sent as ER20 records going forward.
- Check with your software provider to determine if a system setting will automatically combine payroll records that are not wholly separate.
- Ensure that you have terminated employees in your system after a separation from service has occurred.
- Consider using the Zero Day Reason Code of C (employee on less than 12-month pay scheduled) when reporting irregular employees who have not terminated but did not work or receive any pay in the report month.
TRS would like REs to minimize recurrences of record deletions. This minimizes the number of contacts TRS has to pursue to ensure our controls are in place. Taking appropriate, corrective actions to prevent future exception reports will lessen the burden of these reports.
Please respond to the email from your coach any time it is necessary to delete a record for any reason. Even if you have discussed deleting a record with your coach, an exception email will be sent to you after the report has reached “Complete” status. Documentation for your explanation is retained for audit purposes.
As a reminder, REs may not remove records from the report for the sole purpose of bringing the report to “Complete” status, unless directed to do so by their coach. A coach might direct an RE to remove a record because of a defect in the RE Portal that does not allow a record to be processed at that time.
Section 821.101(b) of the Texas Government Code states that, “A person commits an offense if the person knowingly or intentionally makes or permits the making of a false record for or statement to the retirement system in an attempt to defraud the retirement system.” Therefore, when an RE contact certifies the report is correct by signing the report, but records have been removed from that report to bring the report to “Complete” status to avoid penalties, that RE contact is engaging in fraudulent reporting.