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 state’s minimum hourly wage — currently $11.20 — multiplied by 2,000 hours ($22,200).

Benefit plans are specific to the job code that you specify for an employee. Use the Job Codes Tool to pick the job code that corresponds to your employee’s role.

If they are eligible for NYSLRS membership, they will need to be reported, regardless of whether they choose to participate.

No. Employees who do not qualify for NYSLRS membership should not be reported.

If the employee’s job for the school district qualifies them for a NYSTRS plan (e.g. teacher), the employer should not report that job to NYSLRS. NYSLRS does not administer NYSTRS and the employer should seek reporting guidance from NYSTRS. However, if the employee’s job for the school district was not a teaching position (e.g. janitor) and made them eligible for a NYSLRS plan, this job would need to be reported to NYSLRS.

Similary, if the employee’s job for the city during the summer made them eligible to participate in NYSLRS, this employee would be reported to NYSLRS.

Yes. All employees who meet mandatory membership criteria, employees who are eligible for optional NYSLRS membership regardless of enrollment status, and retirees should be reported on the enhanced file. They will receive NYSLRS IDs and employment instances. 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.

Job codes are not the same as job titles. Please utilize the NYSLRS job code that most closely correlates to that employee’s role at your organization. Pay attention to employees that may be eligible for special plans.

Section 34 of the NYS Retirement and Social Security Law permits the Office of the State Comptroller to collect information for all employees. If an employee meets optional enrollment criteria, they must be hired at your location and reported to NYSLRS. Please note that hiring an employee is not the same as enrolling them. NYSLRS begins collecting employee data on hired employees, but optional members will only be enrolled when they elect to do so.

Please note that hiring an optional employee is not the same as enrolling them. When you hire an optional employee, NYSLRS begins collecting days and earnings information that can then be referenced should they choose to enroll in NYSLRS at a later date. However, optional members will only be enrolled in NYSLRS when they elect to do so, or if the system determines that they meet criteria as a mandatory member.

Yes. You will need to “hire” 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. 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.

Section 34 of the NYS Retirement and Social Security Law permits the Office of the State Comptroller to collect information for all employees.

Yes. All NYSLRS participating employers will be required to transition to enhanced reporting.

Between now and 2022, all NYSLRS participating employers will transition to enhanced reporting in transition groups. Each group will transition over a six-month period of training, direct support, and as-needed support.

A payroll system can be coded to create pipe-delimited .txt files. It is possible to create this type of file manually in software like ‘Notepad’ saved as a .txt file, however, this can be problematic as it requires a higher level of time and effort to learn and generate. We are encouraging employers who currently submit a .prn file to consider switching to manual reporting or opting for a later transition group so that they can seek knowledge and resources regarding this file update.

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

NYSLRS has established 16 unique earnings codes, and the breakdown of employee earnings is reported per employment instance. There are a few situations where an employee may have multiple earnings transactions, and an employer may report as many earnings transactions as necessary per employee to NYSLRS.

• If an employee has two employment instances at a single location, their employer would report days, contributions, and earnings for each employment instance. These would not be combined, resulting in one days and contributions transaction and two separate earnings transactions.
• If an employee with a single employment instance had three different types of earnings for the month (i.e. 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.

This decision is at the employer’s discretion. It will ultimately depend on the material difference for your employees. If it is for less than a week, it may not make sense to report. If it is a week or more, it could make sense to report the absence.

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 (i.e. regular, overtime, etc.).

Employers should report the hours for which their salaried employees were paid. This depends on the standard work day, as well as their earnings type.

Report the name that they currently have on file with NYSLRS so that you may submit your file. You can find this on the member contribution rates page. Please encourage the employee to update their information with NYSLRS as soon as possible.