PBJ Export

Overview

The Payroll Based Journal is a system for facilities to submit staffing and census information to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS). CMS intends to collect staffing and census data through the PBJ system on a voluntary basis beginning on October 1, 2015, and on a mandatory basis beginning on July 1, 2016.

The Time and Attendance software creates the ZIP files as required by CMS, with each ZIP file containing a single XML file. If your software contains a single facility then the zip file will be named pbj.zip and the xml file contained in the zip file will be named pbj.xml. In a multi-facility software, the zip and xml file will be named using the facility description. You can access the folder from Tools / Folders.

The report is run from Reports / File Export. You should use version 1 during the voluntary submission period and version 2 when the mandatory period begins.

CMS requires categorization of the employees and their time data within the XML file.

The data is organized into 4 sections; header, employees, hours and census.

Header

The header contains information identifying the file version specification being used, information to identify the facility and the date range of the data within the file. It also contains information about SBV including a contact email address and the software version used to create the file.

Required: You need to enter your facility identifier and state into the software. For a single facility software the PBJ Facility ID is entered in Configuration / Setup / System / Payroll. The state is entered in Configuration / Setup / System / Defaults. In a multi-facility software both the PBJ Facility ID and State are entered in Configuration / Setup / Labor Levels / Facility.

Employees

The employees section will use the the hire and termination information from the Employee / Status tab. CMS also requires a Pay Type Code which is used to distinguish Exempt, Non-Exempt and Contract staff. The Is In House setting on the Company labor level is used to distinguish contract staff from your payroll employees. To identify xxempt staff we are providing three methods; at the pay rule, at the base schedule group level, and at the employee level.

Required: In Configuration / Setup / Labor Levels / Company, select Is In House for your payroll companies.

Required: Determine at what level you wish to identify your xxempt staff. This can be done in Configuration / Calculation / Pay Rule, Configuration / Schedules / Base Schedules, or on a per employee basis on the Employee / Misc tab.

Note: hire dates are required for all staff. if you have not entered an Active status date in the software then we will use the first day worked. There is also an additional requirement that an rehired employee that has had a termination date previously submitted can only be submitted with a hire date that is after the previously submitted termination date. We do maintain status history so deleting an inactive status record to reactivate an employee would be problematic and is not recommended. If an employees has an Active status date after an Inactive status date then we will use this Active status date even if an earlier Active status date is marked as the Hire Date.

Note: We have an expectation that the built in Active and Inactive status types are being used to indicate Hire and Termination.

Note: an additional field named Work Type Code was used to distinguish Full Time from Part Time employees but this field has been eliminated in the version 2 of the specifications. As such, we are identifying all employees as Full Time in the version 1 file.

Hours

The employee's paid hours (not worked hours) are to be submitted. This has been clearly stated in the first revision with an example of a salaried employees working 10 hours but getting paid 8 hours must be submitted as 8 hours.

Required: agency and contract staff need to be included in this report so therefore at the very least be entered in the software and have the hours per day entered.

Required: the department configuration now has a PBJ Work Type Code dropdown from which you must categorize each department. Please note that this column has been added to the labor level import (column name needs to contain "pbj")

To be determined: the best mechanism for filtering out un-worked hours. Currently we provide a pay type selection in the Options tab which should be sufficent or we can use the Worked / Unworked setting on pay types and only count Adds To Totals hours. Another issue is owed worked hours and referencing the actual date and not the pay date.

Census

For each month of the PBJ report there are 3 census numbers; Medicaid, Medicare and Other.

To be determined: a mechanism for providing the census numbers, for each month, for each facility. We do currently have a census entry screen in the scheduler but not all clients use the scheduler, and of those that do use the scheduler, not all enter the census.