General

These notes are intended to give a brief background to the structure of OmniPensions Software. It is assumed that any new user will have been given a tour of the main features before reading these notes. It is not intended that the notes should cover all of the intricate details.

The main areas covered are:

1. System Administrator

2. Consultants and administrators

3. Service Levels

4. Member Fund Allocations

5. Filtering reports (saving defaults)

6. Merge info

7. Calculation Programs

8. Shortcut Keys

System Administrator

The System Administrator has access to various general features that are not generally available to all users (e.g. service levels). This will usually be the person in the firm who is responsible for maintaining the system. There are separate notes on the role of the System Administrator.

Consultants and Administrators

Members of staff need to be introduced to the system in Other, Staff. The administrator and the consultant can then be assigned to each individual scheme using the drop down lists on the Scheme, Amend Scheme, Details tab. This information can be used to filter reports e.g. to select schemes so that only schemes for a particular consultant are listed.

Service Levels

Different service levels are set up by the System Administrator e.g. Full service, standard service or Gold, Orange, Blue or 1, 2, 3, 4 etc. Each scheme can be assigned to a service level on the Scheme, Amend Scheme, Details tab. This is used in filtering reports.

Allocating the Fund Between The Members

Need to update bank transactions, post records and then import all records for events prior to the fund allocation date. The windows that need importing are:

Annuities Contributions DIS premiums Pension Payments (including lump sums) Transfers In Transfers out

Need to allocate the contributions between members and store the fund value at the date to be used for the allocation of the fund value.

If a transfer payment has been made out of the SSAS for a member, then the member’s status should be changed to ‘Transfer to occupational scheme’, Transfer to Personal Pension’ or ‘Transfer to Section 32’. The fund split program will then allow you to ignore that member and split the fund between the remaining members.

If a transfer payment is made ‘in specie’ the full amount of the transfer payment should be shown as being transferred out of the SSAS on the effective date of the transfer (using the prices and values prevailing on the effective date). After the effective date, any assets that have yet to be transferred should be treated as ‘creditors’ i.e. amounts owed by the SSAS to the receiving scheme. For any fund splits in that period, the value of the outstanding parts of the transfer should be deducted from the asset value and then the balance of the fund is then allocated between the remaining members.

Even if there is only 1 member, the fund split program should be used to track the LPI sub fund and any retained benefit sub fund.

Filtering reports (saving defaults)

Reports can be filtered on various criteria. The selections can be saved so that they can be retrieved for reports run subsequently and the saved selections can be set to appear by default for all users.

For instance, the scheme statuses could be set to use active schemes (Live, No conts and Pensioners) and filter out schemes that are not active SSASs (Gone Away, Non-SSAS, Quote, Wound Up). There are separate notes on 'Report Filter - saving'.

Merge

The system administrator sets up templates in Word

Documentation can be produced in Word using the Scheme, Produce Deeds, menu option. Any documentation which uses the scheme name, trustees or companies can be produced. Some examples are provided with the system. However, the System Administrator should replace the wording with your own wording for such documents. The advantage of the examples is that the main merge fields are readily available in the appropriate context.

Calculation Programs

On the ‘Calculations’ menu the ‘Contributions and Funds’ option allows data to be stored and changed in the main database. The other options on that menu (Valuations, Retirement, Leaving Service, Pension Analysis and Annuity Calculations) allow data to be changed temporarily for purpose of those calculations but the permanent database is not amended.

Shortcut Keys

When you are in the main window, you can bypass the normal menus using shortcut codes. For example, holding the 'Ctrl' key and typing B will take you straight into the Bank Transactions Entry screen. There is a list of 'Shortcut Keys'.