Microsoft Dynamics GP Year-End Update 2017: Affordable Care Act (ACA)

There was an issue found with ACA reporting and 1095 information for the 2017 year.  This was corrected in the January Hotfix which we recommend you install if you are going to print 1095 information in Microsoft Dynamics GP.

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Here it is the THIRD year of reporting ACA and you are a WHIZ.  It will be easy as ever this year, no issues to report!  I think we all know better than that, right?

I want to give you and update of some of the areas we changed for ACA for the 2017 year.  If you are filing the 1095-C forms in Microsoft Dynamics GP, we do recommend you to install the 2017 year end update.  We have code changes in place for the 2017 year that need to be there PRIOR to you creating the year end wage file and gathering the 1095-C information.

1. Form changes -
There were changes to the instructions on the back and small alignment changes to the front of the form.

2. Inactive employees -
One of the items we still struggle with is inactive employees and to not print a 1095-C form.  The changes we had in place based on customer data was not working.  This year we have a NEW approach.  With how the ACA rules changed, now you cannot leave a box blank/empty, so when employee Joe leaves the company, what customers do is put 2A in Box 16 - meaning Employee not employed during the month.  When you click the PRINT button for the 1095-C form, if an employee is 2A for all 12 months, the form will not print.  I feel this is a great indicator to go by.  You will see the employees get complied in the year end, (incase you need to edit this employee and make changes to the record) but when you go to print, those employees will not be included.

3. Multiple insurance plans (dental and vision examples) dishevel the 1095-C reporting.
As I painfully worked with customers on this reporting YOY another area that was causing ACA data inconsistencies was insurance codes that are non ACA reportable, such as Vision or Dental as an example.  If I had a health insurance code that did not change all year, then I added Dental, we would grab that "None" record as that was the newest record for the year.  How we decided to "identify" true ACA recordable codes is from the Health Insurance Setup on the Human Resource side. The field we will use to determine if the code is ACA recordable is at the Setup, None and None.  Then we will not include this code when we create the year end wage file.

Most of you have this properly set already based on prior year learning.

What I need you to make sure and do is at the SETUP for your health codes you want ACA recordable, make sure you do not have None and None.

Pick a default that would suite most of your employees, such as 1A and 2C as an example.

This code will NOT be picked up for ACA reporting.

This code will be picked up for ACA reporting as Box 14 and 16 are something other than None

4. Microsoft Dynamics GP will NOT support the electronic filing for the 2017 year for ACA.
Greenshades and Integrity-Data will allow you to track ACA in Microsoft Dynamics GP, and just do the electronic filing for you at a lower cost option.
Thanks to both ISV's for doing this!!
Greenshades - https://www.greenshades.com /             Integrity Data - http://www.integrity-data.com/

5. Plan start month is not required again this year so we are not populating it.

6. Similar to prior years, the all 12 month checkbox is not required for employee so we are populating each individual amount for employee,
but on the dependent the covered all 12 month box will be populated.

7. If you would like editing capability of your 1095-C data prior to creating the year end wage file, check out this free one-window utility. (This is not a Microsoft supported tool)

Click HERE for the FREE SmartList Designer reports library, free to you, it includes ACA SmartLists for you and many more!!

There is no new video this year as the tracking is the same as last year, click HERE if you are just getting started to track ACA and want to ramp up.

Please refer to the 2017 Year-End Blog Schedule to review current and upcoming blog posts and other helpful resource links related to Year-End Closing for Dynamics GP.

Enjoy, and everyone have a successful ACA 2017 year.

**NOTE - if you do not have Human Resource installed**

If you installed the 2017 year-end update and create the year end wage file without having Human Resource installed, you will receive the following error messages for each employee during creation of the payroll year-end file:

An error occurred executing the SQL Statements
GPS Error: 56
SQL Error 208 Invalid object name 'BE020230'

This is due to your environment not having Human Resource installed. 
To quickly get around this issue, run the following script (CreateBE020230.sql) against each company database to create the table that is missing (this script works for all versions)
You could also install Human Resources if the customer may want to use this in the future.
This will be corrected in the January Hotfix.

Terry Heley
non-ACA expert
Microsoft