Automate the flow of data and eliminate the paper chase and allow the plan sponsor to enter, print, and verify the data on electronic forms at the employer's location.

In today's increasingly competitive plan administration market, you need to find new ways to serve your clients' needs. DATAIR's newest offering, the Data Entry & Review Module (DATA ENTRY) can do just that by helping to automate the flow of data.

In the past, getting census or salary information from a plan sponsor into an administration system meant the TPA would receive a stack of paper from the employer, enter the data into the administration system, print reports and return them to the plan sponsor for verification, return the corrections to the TPA, make the corrections, reprint the reports...well you get the idea.

That's changed. With DATAIR's DATA ENTRY, you have the ability to eliminate the paper chase and allow the plan sponsor to enter the data on electronic forms (screens) at the employer's location. The employer verifies the accuracy of the data provided and either sends you a diskette with the data or transfers it to you via modem.

Either way, the data can be imported directly into DATAIR's Pension (DB/DC) or FlexPlus Cafeteria Systems, as well as all of our other systems in the future.

If you already have the plan on your computer, you can make the task even simpler by extracting data from the DATAIR system to a diskette that is sent to the plan sponsor. The employer then uses DATA ENTRY to review and update existing data, and add new data as required.

What makes this module truly unique is that it allows YOU to design the electronic data entry form. You can include as much or little information on the form as you like, decide what fields you want the plan sponsor to be able to edit, and position the fields in any order you want.

Not only will you find this module useful for data entry by plan sponsors, but you may decide to create data entry forms for your own use. This comes in particularly handy if you ever hire temporary help at peak times of the year to handle the crunch. Now they can enter the data without having to know the complexities of an administration system. Less training time and less worry for you.

You might also find DATA ENTRY useful to store and retrieve data like account balances which can be easily viewed while you're speaking with the participant on the phone... no more searching through files and printouts.

How Does the Data Entry & Review Module Work?

The module is divided into two parts. The first part is a "Forms Designer". With it, you can:

• quickly create custom electronic data entry form;
• alter an existing form you previously created;
• modify one of the forms we supply to help you get started.

A typical data entry form can be created from scratch in a few minutes. This part of the module stays at the TPA’s office. Through its pull-down menus, you can create the second part of the module, a "Data Entry" diskette that contains all the program files a plan sponsor needs to enter data. You then send this diskette to the plan sponsor, who will install it on their computer.

At this point, we have the Forms Designer on your computer, and the Data Entry portion of the module on the plan sponsor’s computer. The next thing you would do is either select an existing electronic form or design a new one using the Forms Designer. Once this has been done, you are ready to begin routine processing.

Routine processing would normally consist of the following steps:

• Select "Data Entry Extract" from the menus on the DATAIR System. This extracts existing data from that system and places it on a diskette which would then be delivered to the plan sponsor.
• The plan sponsor uses the Data Entry portion of the module to view, edit and up-date the data as necessary, verify its accuracy through proof reports, and returns the diskette back to you.
• The Data Import feature of the DATAIR System is then used to load this data into the plan file.

The cycle then begins again for the next period.

We're quite excited about all the potential uses this module has for our clients. We hope you’ll take advantage of all the new possibilities and the flexibility the DATAIR Data Entry & Review Module offers you!