MERS Employer Reporting - Get Ready Overview

  1. Introduction

The Connecticut Office of the State Comptroller (OSC) and Retirement Services Division (RSD) are transitioning the Municipal Employees Retirement System (MERS) to the State’s integrated human resources, payroll, and financial system (Core-CT). The project seeks to improve the efficiency of administering the plan and processing retirement benefits for its members. As a result of the implementation, RSD is changing the current business procedures for reporting MERS payroll and employee data to RSD.

  1. Who Should Read This Document

This document is for all employers that participate in the MERS plan and report payroll and employee data to RSD.

  1. Purpose of This Document

The purpose of this document is to provide employers with information that will assist them in selecting the appropriate method of reporting data to RSD and clarify the MERS procedural changes that are being implemented. It is important the employers understand the technical aspects associated with the new system and that organizations plan and prepare for the work required to transition to the new process.

  1. The Preliminary Steps

The following steps outline a process intended to facilitate employer readiness for the MERS transition. While you may have already performed some or all of these steps, they serve as a reminder that RSD is relying on each employer to keep the appropriate personnel involved in the transition and to make sure that RSD is aware of the correct contacts within each organization for purposes of communication.

  1. Get the right people in your municipality/town involved

Please share information, as you receive it, with your Information Technology, Human Resources, and Payroll staff members as needed. This process may affect all three groups and will require coordination.

  1. Identify the appropriate points of contact for your municipality/town and notify RSD

RSD would like to have an established technical and/or business point of contact with all municipalities and towns that report payroll contributions and earnings information to RSD. To ensure that information is communicated timely and appropriately to you, please notify RSD of your designated contact(s) at .

  1. Get your third party payroll service/software provider involved

If you use a third party service or software provide to provide your payroll contribution data, please share the appropriate contact information with that provider immediately. Employers are responsible for working with their service and software providers to make the changes necessary to complete testing activities. RSD cannot instruct vendors to perform work for their clients. RSD wants to assist third party providers to prepare for this change and is preparing to:

  1. Collect information regarding service and software providers that are used today
  2. Share information with third party service and software providers on the technical specifications of the new interface file layout, as and if requested by MERS employers
  1. Select a Reporting Method

Employers that have not already done so will need to choose a reporting method for each program for which they provide data to RSD.

  1. The Reporting Methods

There are three methods for reporting payroll and employee data to RSD. Employers can either enter data online once logged into Core-CT, submit data via a turnaround document, or transmit data electronically through a File Transfer Protocol (FTP) method.

Employers can choose a combination of the three reporting methods to submit data to Core-CT. For example, an employer may elect to submit payroll data using the FTP process and use the Online Data Entry method for making employee demographic changes. The best method for an employer will depend on the size of their staff, volume of records transmitted to Core-CT, availability of technical and administrative resources, and backend system functionality.

(1) Online Data Entry

The online data entry method is a good choice for smaller employers. Since the data is entered directly into Core-CT, an employer does not need to create a file, and file testing is not applicable.

(2) Turnaround Document

The turnaround option is a temporary option for small to medium sized employers lacking the resources to generate a file for FTP submission. Employers are able to complete the turnaround document and submit to RSD for entry into Core-CT. This method will be phased out over time as all employers are shifted to either online entry or an electronic file submission.

(3) File Transfer Protocol (FTP)

The FTP process is recommended for medium to large sized agencies. File creation for FTP is done on the employer’s business system using an internal software application that the employer or a vendor created. The transfer method is a secure way of submitting payroll and employee data to be automatically processed by Core-CT. This method reduces the amount of manual effort required by employers in submitting data on a monthly basis. File testing is required for FTP to ensure that the file meets the new technical specifications of Core-CT.

  1. How My Municipality / Town will inform RSD of its Reporting Method

Please contact RSD by email () to notify us of the reporting method(s) you select. A RSD representative will contact you regarding your selection and next steps. Please notify us of your selection no later than Friday, March 10th.

  1. File Format

For detailed information on the technical file layout, please see the MERS Employer Welcome Kit. If you have selected the FTP method of reporting, you will be contacted regarding development and testing meetings.