Administer Benefits, Allowances And HMO
Benefits are a promise the organisation makes to its people — an HMO scheme, a housing allowance, a pension, a wellness package — and a promise that has to show up correctly in everyone’s pay. This page covers the two halves of that: maintaining the benefit-plan catalogue, and enrolling individual staff so that an active, payroll-linked enrolment materialises automatically when the next pay run is built.
A little vocabulary. A benefit plan is a named scheme of a given kind — HMO, Allowance, Insurance, Pension, Wellness or Other. A pay component is a line on payroll (an allowance or a deduction); when a plan is linked to one, the plan can feed money into pay. An enrolment is one staff member’s membership of a plan, with an effective date and a status. The phrase “feeds payroll” means exactly this: an Active enrolment whose plan links a pay component is turned into a real add-on line the moment payroll computes that person’s pay.
Who / when: the HR Manager or HR Officer owns the benefit catalogue and enrolments; an Administrator can do everything. We’ll follow Chidi in the HR office and Mrs. Okoro, whom he is enrolling in the staff HMO.
Create a plan and enrol a staff member (the main path)
Section titled “Create a plan and enrol a staff member (the main path)”- HR Officer — open Human Resources → Cases & Benefits → Benefits. Two tabs sit across the top: “Plans” and “Enrolments”.
- HR Officer — on the “Plans” tab, select “New Plan”. Give it a “Name” (for example “Staff HMO — Gold”), choose the “Kind” (here, “Hmo”), optionally a “Provider”, and — if this benefit should reach pay — pick the “Linked Pay Component (feeds payroll)” from the searchable component picker. Select “Create” (“Benefit plan created.”).
- The plan appears with its auto-generated code and a “Feeds Payroll” column that names the linked component (or reads “No” if you left it unlinked). It is Active and ready to enrol against.
- HR Officer — switch to the “Enrolments” tab and select “New Enrolment”. Search and pick the “Employee” (Mrs. Okoro), the “Benefit Plan” you just made, optionally a “Member / Policy No”, and an “Effective From” date. Select “Enrol” (“Enrolment created.”).
- The enrolment lands as Active in the table, with a “Feeds Payroll” flag of Yes if its plan links a component. The readouts at the top tick up — total enrolments, how many are Active, and how many feed payroll.
Other ways this goes
Section titled “Other ways this goes”Edit a plan
Section titled “Edit a plan”- HR Officer — on the “Plans” tab, open the plan you want to change. Adjust its name, provider, or the linked pay component, and save.
- The change applies from then on. Re-pointing a plan’s linked component changes what future pay runs materialise for everyone enrolled in it, so make catalogue edits deliberately.
Set an enrolment Active
Section titled “Set an enrolment Active”- HR Officer — a newly created enrolment is Active by default, so it counts and (if the plan links a component) feeds payroll straight away.
- If an enrolment was previously paused or ended and you need it live again, return it to Active via the enrolment’s status action. From the next pay run, a payroll-linked plan resumes contributing its line.
Set an enrolment Suspended or Ended
Section titled “Set an enrolment Suspended or Ended”- HR Officer — on the “Enrolments” tab, find the active enrolment and select “End” to close it. Its status becomes Ended (“Enrolment ended.”) and it stops feeding payroll immediately.
- An enrolment can also be Suspended — a temporary pause (for example while a staff member is on unpaid leave) that you can later set back to Active. Suspended and Ended both remove the pay line; the difference is that Suspended is meant to be reversed, while Ended closes the membership for good.
An active, payroll-linked enrolment materialises on the next pay run
Section titled “An active, payroll-linked enrolment materialises on the next pay run”- When payroll builds a pay run, it reads each employee’s Active benefit enrolments. For every one whose plan links a pay component, it adds that component as a line to the employee’s payslip — automatically.
- HR Officer — you do not re-enter anything in the pay run; enrolling the staff member here is the whole instruction. The allowance or contribution simply appears, correctly, when the run is computed.
Staff read their own enrolments via self-service
Section titled “Staff read their own enrolments via self-service”- Any staff member — a staff member can see the benefits they are enrolled in through their own self-service, without any HR permission. It rides the same everyday self-service access every employee has.
- They see their plans and statuses; they do not see anyone else’s, and they cannot change enrolments — that stays with HR.
Blocked: benefit-manage is required to administer
Section titled “Blocked: benefit-manage is required to administer”- Reading the plan catalogue is broadly available, but creating or editing plans and enrolling or changing a staff member’s enrolment all require the benefit-manage permission HR holds.
- If those buttons are missing or an action is refused, you are not on that key. Ask an Administrator to grant benefit-manage rather than working around the control — benefit administration is deliberately HR-only.
What happens next
Section titled “What happens next”The plans and enrolments you maintain here are read directly by payroll: when an HR or payroll officer builds the next pay run, every active, component-linked enrolment becomes a line on the right payslip with no re-keying. From the employee’s side, the benefits show up on their self-service view and, where they carry money, on the payslips they download. Benefits, in other words, are configured once here and then simply flow.