Results for “estimate_balance”

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Overview

APPS.BEN_DISTRIBUTE_RATES is a PL/SQL package within the Oracle E-Business Suite Advanced Benefits (OLTP) schema that performs rate conversion and rate distribution calculations for benefits plans. Its principal business function is to translate rate amounts between annual and per-period bases, and to determine the number of activity periods that fall between two dates. These calculations are fundamental to benefits processing, because plan rates are frequently defined on an annual basis while enrollment, payroll deduction, and costing processes require per-period amounts, and vice versa. The package also provides supporting utilities for balance comparison, proration of minimum and maximum limits, periodization by rule, and rate caching. The package header carries the RCS identifier bendisrt.pkh 120.2, with an original creation date of 23 September 1998. It is declared AUTHID CURRENT_USER and executes with the privileges of the calling user rather than the package owner. The package is referenced by eleven other packages, indicating that it is a shared utility used broadly across the Benefits calculation and enrollment infrastructure.

Key Procedures and Functions

Sixteen documented procedures and functions are exposed by the package. The following are the most significant:

• ANNUAL_TO_PERIOD — Converts an annual rate amount into the equivalent per-period amount.
• ANNUAL_TO_PERIOD_OUT — The output-oriented variant of the annual-to-period conversion, returning converted rate values for downstream use.
• PERIOD_TO_ANNUAL — Performs the inverse conversion, translating a per-period rate amount into an annual amount.
• GET_PERIODS_BETWEEN — Returns the number of activity periods occurring between two supplied dates.
• COMPARE_BALANCES — Compares benefit balance values, added in version 115.2.
• PRORATE_MIN_MAX — Prorates minimum and maximum limits, also added in version 115.2.
• GET_BALANCE — Retrieves a benefit balance.
• ESTIMATE_BALANCE — Estimates a benefit balance for a given context.
• CONVERT_RATES_W — Wrapper procedure for rate conversion.
• CONVERT_PCR_RATES_W — Wrapper procedure for converting rates associated with a plan configuration rate.
• PERIODIZE_WITH_RULE — Distributes amounts across periods according to a defined periodization rule.
• CACHE — Supports caching of package-level data during processing.
• SET_NO_CACHE_CONTEXT — Establishes a context in which caching is disabled.
• DECDE_BITS — Decodes bit-encoded values used by the Benefits calculation engine.

Tables Accessed

The package reads and writes Benefits configuration, enrollment, and rate data through APPS synonyms. Plan and program definition tables — BEN_PL_F, BEN_PL_TYP_F, BEN_PGM_F, and BEN_OIPL_F — supply plan type and option-in-plan context. Year and period definitions are drawn from BEN_YR_PERD and BEN_POPL_YR_PERD, which anchor the plan-year and activity-period calculations used by GET_PERIODS_BETWEEN and the conversion routines. Rate data resides in BEN_ACTY_BASE_RT_F, BEN_ENRT_RT, BEN_PRTT_RT_VAL, and BEN_COMP_LVL_FCTR (composite-level factors). Enrollment and eligibility context is obtained from BEN_ENRT_BNFT, BEN_ELIG_PER_ELCTBL_CHC, BEN_PIL_ELCTBL_CHC_POPL, and BEN_PER_IN_LER. HR_LOCATIONS_ALL provides location information used in rate determination.

Usage Notes

BEN_DISTRIBUTE_RATES is typically invoked from Benefits forms, concurrent programs, and custom PL/SQL code that require rate conversion or period counting. When calling the conversion routines, the metadata strongly recommends passing the enrt_rt_id (rate start date) rather than the elig_per_elctbl_chc_id (coverage start date) as the starting period, because the procedures are designed for rate conversion. The complete-year flag governs date handling: when on, start and end dates default to the plan year boundaries; when off, the rate start date or coverage start date is used as the start, with the plan year end retained as the end date. Explicitly supplied start and end dates are not overridden except when the complete-year flag is enabled. The CACHE and SET_NO_CACHE_CONTEXT procedures allow callers to control caching behavior during high-volume benefits processing.