In this topic we'll take a deep dive into some aspects of the Salary section.
One of the great things about Janus is that you have great flexibility in how you enter an annuitant’s salary history.
In the topic "Opening a New Case, Part 1," we illustrated the three main areas of salary. Feel free to open that topic for a refresher if you like.
When you enter salary, you have to provide at least three consecutive years of pay changes in any one group of pay changes (with a few exceptions, such as a FERS disability case). Remember that, when you select a type of pay change, by default Janus repeats that information in the other two displayed rows. That way you can concentrate on entering just the start date and the amount.
When you need to enter more pay rates than the initial three rows, select Add a pay change. Janus adds a new row at the end of the pay changes. It also reflects any value you’ve already chosen in the Type list.
Sometimes you might want to indicate a break in service within the salary history. To do so, leave the Amount field blank to indicate breaks in service (or stop credit), to let Janus know not to credit that time in the high-3 average salary calculation. Janus ignores the Type field in that case.
When you finish entering pay changes, provide a date in the End date field. Remember that this end date must be later than any start dates you’ve entered.
A convenient tool in Janus is its ability to add comparison groups. In this way, you can add a separate list of pay changes. You can use this to compare the groups of pay changes to see which works best for the annuitant. When you add comparison groups, Janus shows them in sequential order, for example, Comparison group 1, Comparison group 2, and so on.
Two checkboxes add specific columns as necessary.
- If a pay change contains any tours of duty, select the Tours of duty checkbox. Janus adds a field where you can enter the tour of duty the pay change uses.
- If a pay change contains any unpaid deposits, select the Unpaid deposits checkbox. Janus adds a check box where you can indicate that the pay change has unpaid deposits associated with it.
Most of the time, you enter pay changes in chronological order as you refer to the annuitant’s pay card. Sometimes you might have new information about pay, or you might discover some information that causes you to add a pay change that is not in order. When you calculate or reload the page, Janus automatically sorts pay changes chronologically by start date within a group.
If you enter any pay changes out of chronological order and want to sort them before calculating, select Sort pay changes by date. This tool allows you more easily to scan through pay changes and review your work for accuracy.