An eligible employee is any employee who meets the criteria for mandatory or optional membership.

• Mandatory Enrollments: Full-time, permanent, regular, 12-month positions earning at least the current state minimum wage, and all police officers and paid firefighters (including part-time positions).
• Optional Enrollments: Temporary or provisional positions (under Civil Service Law), employment of less than 30 hours per week, or less than the standard number of hours for full-time employment as established by the employer for this position, duration of employment for less than one year, or employment on less than a 12-month per year basis, annual compensation less than the New York State’s minimum wage multiplied by 2,000 hours.

Yes. All employees who meet mandatory membership criteria, employees who are eligible for optional NYSLRS membership regardless of enrollment status, and public retirees should be reported on the enhanced file. They will receive NYSLRS IDs and employment instances when you hire (not enroll) them at your location through Retirement Online. If an employee is in another retirement system, such as NYSTRS, you do not need to report them to NYSLRS. Employees who are not eligible for NYSLRS membership should NOT be reported.

The registration number will not be reported by the employer after they have transitioned to enhanced reporting. However, registration numbers will continue to be issued for all new employees until the transition to enhanced reporting is complete, at which time registration numbers will become obsolete.

You will need to hire (not enroll) your new and non-member optional personnel that work in NYSLRS-eligible positions as one of the final steps in the Gold Certification transition process in the Retirement Online training environment. “Hiring” an optional member into the system allows NYSLRS to collect days and earnings information that can be referenced if they choose to enroll in NYSLRS later. At the end of the transition process employers will complete this step again in the live Retirement Online system before submitting their first enhanced report.

No, NYSLRS membership is for life. If you hire an employee who participates in NYSLRS, they are already enrolled. However, you will be required to hire them at your location and report them using their new employment instance.

An enrollment-only report can be submitted at any time on an as-needed basis. Please note, biographical data for a member can only be entered once, as it generates their unique (permanent) NYSLRS ID.

In enhanced reporting, ERS and PFRS can be reported together.

An employer may report as many earnings transactions as necessary per employee to NYSLRS.

If an employee with a single employment instance had three different types of earnings for the month (for example, regular, overtime, and holiday), each of these earnings would be reported as separate earnings transactions. The result would be one days and contributions transaction and three separate earnings transactions.

You will be reporting both days worked and hours worked. In the days and contributions field, you will be reporting the number of days the employee worked for the reporting period. This is what NYSLRS uses to determine the service credit owed to an employee. In the earnings transaction, you will be reporting the number of hours worked at each relevant earnings type (such as regular, overtime, etc.).