TPA Processor

The Problem

A TPA (Third-Party Administrator) was dealing with the distribution of payroll deduction funds for several school districts in California to many authorized companies that mange and invest these pre-tax payroll deductions. The TPA would receive a single check for a large group of employees along with a file that contained information about how much each employee wished to contribute and to which company it should go. Of course each employee would choose their own amount and their own company or combination of amounts and companies. The TPA then had to forward the funds on a company by company basis along with the information about which employee it was for and how much. The TPA also had to make sure that the amount being contributed was within the federal guidelines for pre-tax contributions. They also had to deal with situations where an employee had funds deducted but there was no information as to where it should go, or if there was information as to where it should go and the receiving company did not have information about the contribution then the funds had to be returned. The process is fairly simple the difficult part is to account for every penny and to show and track each and every penny as it came in went out and possible came back and then went back or out again.

The Solution

Using MS-SQL we built in all of the business logic into SQL stored procedures thereby separating the operation for the user-interface. This limited the number of places where data was actually inserted or modified in the database and thereby allowed use to more easily ensure database integrity and therefore assure that every penny could be accounted for. Also by employing this strategy we have left the door open for expanding the capability of the system to have a web-interface.