Josh Kahoe: My name is Josh Kahoe. I'm with
the Oklahoma Employer Services Center. I'm
one of the marketing and outreach
coordinators, along with Danny Collins and
Sue Ann Floyd, who was wandering around
the room introducing herself to everybody. I
would like to welcome all of you to the
"Business and Child Support in the 21st
Century Employer Seminar." It has a lot to do
with the electronic income withholding order
and EFT and web tech. Blugh. Sorry. And web
pay, as well. What I would like to do now is
just introduce all of our speakers for the day.
First off, we will have Barb Perkins, who will
be talking about the new IWO and the IWO
overview. We will have Bill Stewart and Toby
Hallows. Bill Stewart coming from the
National Child Support office and Toby
Hallows coming from state office here in
Oklahoma. Sorry, I forgot to mention Barb
Perkins as from state office, as well. Both
from the Center for Coordinated Programs.
And then, finally, to top it off, we have EFT
and web pay with Devin McGee, who is the
center director for the Oklahoma Employer
Services Center. I would like to mention, as
well, that we will have a Q A section at the
very end of the session, so hold your
questions till the end. And I would also like to
mention we passed out an evaluation form
to go along with this, so if you would please
fill that out after we are done for this
afternoon. And without further ado, I'd like to
welcome Barb Perkins.
Barb Perkins: Have you ever thought that
being in being in business would be great if
you didn't have all of the paperwork. You have
so much documentation that it has to be
handled on each employee and much of it
really seems to be complicated. Well, this
afternoon we are working towards taking
some of the mystery out of the paperwork that
is dealing with child support. Now, I'll be talking
about the basic income withholding process.
There are four steps that you would go through
when you are interacting with the Oklahoma
Child Support Services. Now, first, you may
receive a questionnaire that asks some basic
questions like, does this person work for you?
What you do with that is just complete the
questionnaire, send it back to the Oklahoma
Employer Services Center. Address is on the
form. And one of the things that you may notice
is that if this form has the correct social
security number, but has the incorrect name
for your employee, then please contact us. Let
us know about that because we want to make
sure that we update our records and correct
any error so that you do not receive any future
paperwork in error on that particular person.
Also, please check your files to make sure that
you've go the correct Social Security number
for that individual. Now, the next document that
you would probably receive from Oklahoma
Child Support Services is the income
withholding order. The first thing that you do
with that is document the date that you received
it. And this is very important because you have
a limited amount of time to start withholding
support. You start withholding from the very
next pay period on that particular employee,
so you want to document when you received it.
Second, is that if this is a case that goes
across state lines, say you're receiving an
income withholding order from another state,
you'll want to give a copy of that to your
employee. Many other states do not provide
copies to -- of the employees. Now, Oklahoma
does. We do send out a copy to the
non-custodial parent, but many other states do
not, so if it's coming from another state, please
go ahead and give them a copy. Determine if
this document appears to be a legal and valid
document. Now, does that mean that you need
to figure out whether the court was correct in
issuing that order? No. If the employee is
wanting to dispute that, that's their issue. They
need to take action. You don't need to be
involved on that, however, there are different
states and even private attorneys who will
send out income withholding orders, and so
the formatting of the document itself could have
some variation. The size of the font, where the
shading blocks are, just how the document
looks could be different. What's important is
look at the wording. So, If it appears to be a
valid document, then, yes, you do need to
follow the terms. And that's our last step.
Follow the terms of the notice. Has a set of
instructions of what you need to do. Now,
remember, child support is not a garnishment.
It is paid before all other garnishments, except
for IRS, and IRS tax levy, if it's received before
the child support income withholding order, it
will take precedence. Another difference
between income withholding for child support
and other garnishments is that a higher
percentage can be withheld from the
employee's paycheck than can be done on a
regular garnishment. One of the questions that
we had in our morning session had to do with,
well, what is the correct percentage amount.
There is an employer handbook that is
available that gives you the step-by-step
instructions on how to calculate that, and it
varies based upon if the employee is behind in
their child support and whether they are
supporting more than one family. So the
lowest percentage amount would be 50% as
the maximum that could be withheld and then
the highest would be 65%. And that handbook,
it does have the instructions on how to
calculate that. Make sure that you send in the
payment within seven days from when you paid
the employee. The payment needs to be
identified so that we have it going to the right
person. We need their name, the child support
case number, their Social Security number and
the amount that you're withholding, and, yes,
you can combine payments on the check. All
payments need to be sent to the Oklahoma
Centralized Support Registry, no matter if they
came from Oklahoma Child Support Services
or a private attorney.
Now, that covers the basis -- the basics of
income withholding. Let's look at some of the
commonly asked questions that employers
have. What do you do if your employee
terminated before you got the income
withholding order? Well, you notify Oklahoma
Child Support Services within ten days. And an
easy way to do that is that on the paper form
that you receive there is a page that has a
response, and you send it back to the
Oklahoma Employer Services Center. We
need the person's address, the last known
address that you had for them. And if you
haven't, where they've gone to, you know, who
are they working for now. Now, we understand
that a lot of times an employee is not going to
tell you where their working at this point in
time. Next question. You get an income
withholding order, the Social Security number
 matches but the name does not. You contact
the issuing agency for that income withholding
order and that information should be listed on
the very front page of the income withholding
order. It tells you who sent it to you and there
will be contact information in the document
itself. Now, in Oklahoma, you would be calling
the Oklahoma Employer Services Center. In
the Oklahoma City area, that number is area
code 405, 522-5550, and then toll free that's
1-866-553-2368. One thing that's very
important, the toll free number is an 866
number. It's not a 1-800 number. Can you
combine payments? Say you've got more than
one employee that has an income withholding
order for child support. Yes, you can. Make
sure that you identify the payment with the
individual's name, all the individual's names.
The case numbers, their Social Security
numbers, and the amount that is related to
each employee. O.K., this one's a little bit more
involved. O.K., you've got an income
withholding order for child support and you
receive a second one on the same employee.
What do you do? Well, the first thing you need
to do is look at, is the second notice for the
same employee and the same family. It's
possible for that employee to have more than
one child support case. So, if it's for a different
family, then, yes, you're going to withhold on
both notices. If it's for the same family, the next
thing you need to look at is, is one of them for
current child support and the other one for past
due child support or arrears, or is it for medical
support only. Well, in that case, they're looking
for different amounts, and so you would enforce
both the first and the second notices. It is
possible for -- say a family originally lived in
Kansas, and then they moved to Oklahoma.
Kansas can send an income withholding order
for money that is owed to them, you know, the
past due support, and then Oklahoma can
send a different notice for the current child
support. And, yes, both of them would be
withheld at the same time. Now, if you end up
in the situation where you have two different
states sending you an income withholding
order for the same employee, the same family
and they're both for current child support,
you're going to honor the first notice and
contact the agency that sent you the second
notice to let them know. You also want to
contact the agency that sent you the first notice
to let them know the existence of the second
notice. The states are going to have to figure
out who has the current case at the time, and
you'll end up getting contacted. They'll let you
know, terminate one and withhold on the other
one. But, yes, you would continue to honor the
first one until you're otherwise notified. Now,
what should you do if an employee comes to
you and says, "I want to make voluntary
payments." Can they do that? Well, yes, they
can, but what you would want to do is direct
your employee to contact Oklahoma
Department of Human Services, and there's a
web site that they can look at. They can set up
the web pay and send in payments voluntarily,
directly to child support services. However, you
cannot include that in on an income withholding
from your payroll. You follow an income
withholding order that's, you know, been issued
by a court. And so, that actually makes it much
easier for you because you're working with
legal information as opposed to word of mouth.
Next situation. O.K., you're going to incur a cost.
Can you charge a fee for this? Yes. You can
charge $5 per pay period for a maximum of
$10 per month for the cost -- to cover your
administrative cost for processing these
withholdings. Now, this fee comes from the
employee's paycheck as opposed to being
deducted from the child support. O.K., this
never happens. The employee disputes the
notice. They're telling you, "Oh. This court
order is just not right. You shouldn't follow it."
Well, what should you do? The employee
needs to contact the issuing agency. It's
actually their issue. It's their problem to have
resolved. You need to follow the income
withholding order. That's the legal notice that
you're working with. And most employers are
very happy to know that, no, they do not have to
become involved with their employee's dispute,
their legal dispute. So, once you have the
notice, you follow the notice and you do so
until you're otherwise notified by the issuing
agency. O.K., you have the custodian who calls
you up and says, "Have you sent that payment
yet?" What do you do? This person keeps
calling you. Well, they need to call child
support, Oklahoma Child Support Services.
We actually have a call center that is open
every day that the State of Oklahoma is open,
eight to five. In Oklahoma City, it's
(405) 522-2273. Tulsa, it's (918) 295-3500
and the toll free number is 1-800-522-2922.
And, so, if the custodian has a question, they
need to call there. No, you do not need to
answer their questions. I -- they're supposed to
contact child support. What do you do if the
employee is activated in the military. And we've
had a lot of National Guard members who
have been deployed. You notify the issuing
agency and in Oklahoma, here are the contact
numbers. Now, what do you do with an income
withholding order? You're going to retain that.
You're going to keep that on file because when
your employee comes back you're going to
begin withholding again. And that's the same
is if someone had terminated and you have
rehired them back. So you'll begin withholding
the support according to the notice, and you
retain it even after they leave. Now, one of the
questions that we had this morning was
concerning -- there was a gentleman who
talked about the -- they had an employee who
left and he has come back as an independent
contractor. Is that person still subject to income
withholding? Yes. You're paying them income.
It doesn't matter whether they're an employee
or an independent contractor, the income
withholding order still applies. Now, you'll
want to notify us that they're an independent
contractor, because there are some other
documentation that we would refrain from
sending to you, but the income withholding
order does apply. O.K., and that wraps up the
basics of income withholding. In your materials
packet you have an example of the new income
withholding order form that's been issued by
the federal Office of Child Support Enforcement.
There are some states that have already
implemented this form. Oklahoma is in the
process of doing so, and so, you'll start to see
this particular form and how it looks from
Oklahoma soon. Now, again, it's very important
to look at the wording and not so much at the
format, but we wanted to give you an example
so you could see what the wording is
supposed to be like.
Bill Stuart: I'm going to be going over a project
that the federal Office of Child Support has
been working on since about 2004 called the
"Electronic Income Withholding Order Project."
And before I start I do want to thank Toby,
Barbara, everybody in Oklahoma for inviting us
out from the federal office. This is a great
opportunity to get this word out and to discuss
this project with employers who deal with the
income withholding order form that you get
hundreds or thousands of, depending on the
size of your company, a year. And our little
logo, here, we have on the front is the "Portal
Express," for those of you -- there's the
Christmas time story of the little boy who hears
the bell and goes to the North Pole and sees
Santa Clause, and it's believe -- and, you
know, getting on the train and that's what we
have employers and states doing, getting on
the project. So, anyway. Moving on. We have
several states and employers up on this
project right now, and basically what this is --
Barbara said in the beginning, you know,
wouldn't it be nice if you could, you know,
eliminate a lot of the paper work. That's what
this project is aimed at. This is going to enable
and does enable right now with the states and
employers that are up, employer -- states to
send the income withholding order
electronically to employers and for employers
to transmit electronically information about
what happened to each income withholding
order. In other words, did you accept it and
were you able to process it, or you got it and
said, "I've never even heard of this individual.
Who is he?" Or she. And you can send that
back electronically, and that's a nice thing to do
because it's going to -- it makes the
communication much more simple, much
more straightforward. And what is e-IWO?
e-IWO is the short for "Electronic Income
Withholding Order" project. I'll say it a lot,
during this presentation, but that's what it
stands for. And, basically, it allows the states,
tribes and territories to send this form rather
than paper electronically to employers. What
they -- what the states do basically is -- every
state has a state child support system and
every night, they have a nightly accounting run
that goes through, that identifies all of the
NCPs, all the non-custodial parents, that
have -- that should have an income
withholding order issued, and they have
employer or income payer sources listed in
their records. If they have that record notated
that this is an employer, they have a table of
the employers that get these electronically. We
have a record layout, which I'll get to in a little
bit, which they now, rather than send a piece of
paper -- what they do is, they generate an
electronic file. They put it in a record layout that
we can -- that we've recommended and that the
work group has approved and we get it out to
the employers, and the employers can then --
they know about the record layout, they know
exactly where the fields are and they can
process that. And how did they -- how did the
states know which employers are on this? The
employers tell us. And they tell us their FEINs.
And that is the key. Every employer has to tell
us those FEINs, in their company or their
organization, that they want to get
electronically. We have -- and you'll see -- I'll
go through a couple of examples, but it's very
important that we get the FEIN because we
cannot rely on the name of companies. There's
too many variations, a period here, a space
there, and the name is different for a computer.
So, the FEIN is really the key. We need to know
that, and we have the -- an electronic
acknowledgement, as I said earlier, that allows
employers to tell states what happened with
every order that came in. And, hopefully, that
will result in, in turn, the states not having to
send you those reminders after they send you
the income withholding order saying, "Hey, I
sent this to you. Where's my money?" And you
can send it back to them and the -- you know,
electronically and say, "Hey, he's not here.
We've never heard of him. So don't -- you know,
don't send more reminders. Don't send more
paper, because you're not going to get any
checks." And, anything that can be done on
paper, anything the states can do, original,
amended, termination, lump sums, whatever,
on the paper form, they can do electronically.
So, it's not like they can only do the originals
and then they've got to do everything else on
paper. The e-IWO process handles all the
particular functions that can be done on paper.
And just to give you a quick background, how
we got started to where we are today, several
states and employers -- this is back in 2003,
2004 -- several states and employers had
started to implement some kind of electronic
process to get the income withholding orders
to employers. Colorado had put up an employer
web site. Texas has an employer web site,
where they will e-mail the employer and tell
them, "You have income withholding orders.
Come and get them." The employer will then
go to the Texas web site, download them. I ran
the child support system in New York for about
17 years, and I got a call one day from the
person who ran the municipal housing authority
in New York City, asking me if I was the
individual who was responsible for sending
this piece of paper to them hundreds of times
a week. The same piece of paper, just a
different name, different $10 amount to
withhold. And I said, "Oh, yeah, I am, because
I'm running the system." And he said, "Well,
can't we -- can't you get us just a file. You know,
an electronic file, rather than send me paper all
the time." And we did. Just a short file of the
NCP's name, the amount to withhold, the SSN,
so on. The case number. And they -- we were
able to do it. We did it weekly and cut a round
reel, and got it from one location in Manhattan
to the other. So, that was back in 2003, 2004.
In 2004 this form was up for revision. The
Office of Management and Budget at the
federal level has a shelf life on this form of
three years. So every three years it's go to be
renewed and if -- it needs to be revised. There
are changes in laws, of statutes, or if the states
and employers see a big need for a change,
they do it. So, the form was going to be redone
at that time, in 2004. So, the combination of the
states starting to do some of their own
electronic transmission of the income
withholding order to employers, plus the fact
the form is going to be redone, the Feds
looked at this and said this is a perfect
opportunity to see if we can't get the states and
employers together to make this whole
process electronic, so that everybody has -- in
other words, we don't want 54 states
developing the same program, you know, to do
all this and establishing the communication.
So, we had a meeting with the federal
government, federal OCSE. We had about 11
employers and 18 states, tribes and territories
in Chicago back in August of 2004, and at that
meeting we laid out a work flow and we went
through every single element that's on this
income withholding order form and mapped it
to a flat file record layout, and then also to an
XML Schema, just a different way to present the
data. That's all. So, we took a look at this, we
went through with the employers and the states
and formed a couple of work groups, and said,
"Let's work through this and let's do the
process." O.K., the states generate this instead
of generating paper, because every state today,
as I said, has a statewide system, and that
statewide system does a terrific job of
generating paper, as I'm sure all of you are
aware. And every night they generate a lot of
paper income withholding orders. And, you
know, we can -- you know, we went through this
and said, "Let's get the process where it can be
electronic." So we had the record layouts and
we said, if they can generate these and put
these in a file and get them to the employers,
can the employers get the acknowledgements
back. At the end of the meeting, the federal
government said, "Well, what do you think?"
And we -- everybody in the room -- everybody in
the room jumped up and said, "We definitely
do this." This is a time saver. It's a money saver
for everybody. And so we said, then, O.K, who
wants to do it? Who wants to actually have --
who has got the resources to program,
because the states would have to now
program to put the variable elements in the
layout in the order we had them, and for the
employers to be able to program to receive that
and to process it so they could update their
payroll system with the withholding amounts
against a correct individual. So we wanted to
test the layouts. We wanted to test the process,
the work flow and the rest of it, and we had
several employers and states that agreed to do
this. Now the third bullet on there, you'll see on
the next slide the states and employers that
participated in the pilot, and you'll see a phrase
called "OCSE Net," and that stands for
basically without the federal in front of it, Office
of Child Support Enforcement Network. The
federal government established a closed --
and has maintained and still to do this day
maintains a closed frame relay network which
connects -- which ever state is connected to
every other state through a router. And Barb
mentioned interstate cases, with getting -- you
know, getting copies of the income withholding
orders to the non-custodial parents. If a parent
moves from one state to another, they can send
a transaction using that network to the other
state. So we figured we'd use that network to
get these transactions to other agencies,
whatever. The problem is that that's a closed
frame relay. It was not open to the Internet. The
private employers could not use it. So you'll
see on here, "DFAS," and that's the Defense
Finance and Accounting Service, and since
they were federal government, we just
basically put them as another node on that
network, just like another state. It was easy to
get the files to them. It was not so easy to get
those files to private employers. We now have
a portal that's been up since March of this year
where now states and employers only have to
deal with one entity. So, the pilot
implementation. Here are the states and
employers who decided, yep, let's go ahead
and we've got he resources, and let's see if
this works and how it works. We had Indiana
with Meijer Corporation. I don't know if
anybody's familiar with Meijer, but they're in the
Midwest, located in Michigan. And Indiana also
went up with DFAS, and you'll notice over here
that OCSE Network. That's how they got the
files from Indiana up to DFAS. Colorado and
Texas went with Labor Ready. They used the
XML Schema version and got the files up there
separately. They created their own
communication. They just FTPed the files up
there to them, up to Labor Ready. And Labor
Ready's a firm up in the state of Washington
that does temporary employment, so they
provide companies with temporary assistants
and so on. In Oklahoma -- here we are --
Oregon, North Carolina and Virginia also
decided to pilot this all with DFAS. And, again,
the reason DFAS is so popular here and
mentioned so many times, it was easy to get
the files from the states to DFAS because we
already had the network in place. And to give
you a time frame reference, Indiana and Meijer,
and Indiana and DFAS -- remember I said that
meeting was in August of 2004 -- they went up
and had their first production file transfer in
May of 2005. And that's quick. We actually -- I
mean, the states and employers really, really
wanted to do this and fast-tracked it and we
had a lot of meetings to go over the record
layouts and the transmission and -- you know,
whether everything would work. And they got it
done. And Indiana and Meijer, and Indiana and
DFAS also, that implementation occurred on
exactly the same day because once the states
developed this, and the same goes for
employers -- once they develop, implementing
with other employers is just as simple as
adding the FEINs for the other employers,
because the record layout that you get from
this process -- are always, always the same.
They don't look different. I know this form looks
different from different states. If you get them
from different states, and I'm sure some of you
have -- Oklahoma's doesn't look like Texas's,
doesn't look like Missouri's, doesn't look like
Nebraska's. The record layout, 100% of the
time the SSN's always going to be in that
same place, the name is always going to be in
the same place and so on. So, they did that
and they did that implementation on the same
day without a hitch. And I'll go into a little bit
later how easy it is for states to implement with
other employers, but it's a very easy,
straightforward process. And for employers to
take other states, because once you've taken
the record layout and applied it, you can take it
from any state. It's just the state that's different
and the variable data. Now, the work group
members. Just to give you a flavor of who is on
this -- and we have -- I have over now 70 fairly
large employers that are on the e-IWO work
group, and we have a call at least once a
month to go over all of the upcoming events
with the project, bring people up to date on the
implementation status for all of the states and
employers. We got ADP on here, the large
payroll processor out in San Dimas, California.
They have just short of 200 very, very large
employers -- FedEx, JC Penny, Petco are a
couple of examples of them -- that they do
income withholding order for. They will be up
the first quarter of this year. We'll finish testing
with them. We've been testing with them for
quite a while, and they're done and we're going
to be able to put them up the first quarter of this
year. American Airlines; Ceridian, another large
payroll processor; the auto makers, Chrysler,
Ford, General Motors, but we have not heard
recently from them, so -- and for probably
obvious reasons, but they may be picking it
back up later. DFAS is on the portal. That's the
Defense Finance and Accounting Service. They
are up and running and using the portal. Ruby
Tuesday is our first real private employer that
is using the portal. And they started probably
about two months ago, now. And they're getting
them from a bunch of states that are up on the
IWO. They get them and the states just send
them the income withholding orders and they
process them electronically. Schwab -- Schwab
investment. They're very interested. They're
writing -- they're designing their programs now.
Social Security is working on it, looking at, you
know, the design of it. The Postal Service is up
and running on the portal. They were the first
employer that took advantage of the portal. So
they have -- they will take and want income
withholding orders from any state that comes
up. Wakefern, which is ShopRite Supermarkets,
they're pretty much on the East Coast. Waste
Management -- Waste Management has
340-some FEINs, 340 separate companies
they own. They want to do it with all of them
because they do the payroll centrally in
Houston, Texas. So they think this is
tailor-made for them. They can get them all in
one place -- and Yum Brands -- which they do
a lot of package processing food for Kentucky
Fried Chicken and Pizza Hut and those places.
They're also designing and developing. "And
now it's a portal" is the title of this slide. As I
said in the beginning, when we started and we
had that first pilot, we knew coming out of we
needed a way for states and employers to
easily communicate with each other. Setting
up separate lines, setting up separate
communications is not going to work. When
Indiana and Meijer, that first example on the
pilot that I showed you, went up, Indiana had to
learn and implement PGP, which is pretty good
-- it stands for "pretty good privacy." It's
encryption. It's the -- basically the standard
encryption used by a lot of banks and a lot of
other industries. They also had to set up their
own secure transmission between
themselves and Meijer. When they got
through, they said this is worth it, however,
they can only do this for a few more employers.
They said because this is just every -- if we
have to do this every time, it's too much work.
What we needed was a portal so that once
they developed it they could implement it
easily with any other employer. That's what
this employer -- that's what this portal does for
them. It allows them -- there's only the one
place that employers have to deal with and
contact. Same with the states. And we -- the
portal also has the ability to convert and
forward file formats. I mentioned that we have
this form. We converted this into a flat file and
into an XML Schema. Let's say that Oklahoma
-- which they are -- is using a flat file and let's
say that company XYZ out there wants to use
the XML Schema. If they want to use the XML
Schema, Oklahoma generates the flat file, we
pick it up from them, we convert it to the XML
Schema because we see XYZ wants the XML
Schema, and we forward it to them. So they're
happy. They think it came in XML Schema.
They're -- when they generate the
acknowledgement, they generate it in their
XML Schema, we pick it back up, bring it back
through the portal, send it back to the state in a
flat file, because we have a table that says
Oklahoma wants everything flat file. The
bottom line here is, or the point is, the portal's
doing a lot of this work, a lot of the conversions,
and I'll get to more of it in just a second, but
they'll flip the -- we'll convert the format based
on the employer and the state preference. We
also offer PDF along with the data record, so if
you want, you can get the data file and a PDF
copy of it so you can index and file it. And we
also -- the portal handles payroll processors. I
mentioned ADP and Ceridian. And DFAS is
also a payroll processor because they do the
payroll for the Army, the Navy and several -- you
know, the branches of the service, but in
addition, they've picked up several federal
agencies because federal government is
combining the payroll functions into several
just one or two agencies eventually. DFAS,
they're right down -- right now they're down to
four and they'll be down eventually to two and
DFAS will be one of them, so they've picked up
Health and Human Services, Department of
Energy. So any state that goes up with the IWO
automatically gets those other ones, because
the payroll processor is doing the actual
deduction. They will get the income withholding
order from the employer. For example, with
ADP, if -- let's just say JC Penny. When the
state sends that income withholding order to
JC Penny, the first thing JC Penny does is
forward it on to ADP because they're paying
ADP to do the child support withholding part.
So, the portal can keep that table. ADP tells us,
"Oh, we're doing this for JC Penny." We see a
record come from Oklahoma for JC Penny, we
send it right to ADP. So it gets implemented
quickly and the money gets to the families
faster. And the transmissions are secure. We
use secure file transfer protocol, which is the
SFTP, and the files encrypted with PGP,
because we've got names, SSNs. We've got a
lot of personal identification on this file that
cannot get out. So it is encrypted and the file
transmission is secure from the beginning to
the very end. When we drop this at the
employer, it stays encrypted so that no one can
get at it. Now, this is -- this is a schematic. This
is a high-level diagram of the -- of how the
portal works, and if you're not technical, take
this back to the IT people and say, "Jeez, this
sounds like a great idea. Can we do this?" You
know, just take a look and say here's what it
looks like. And I'll run through this quickly with
you. On the top we have the two little computer
towers that represent the state child support
system and what we do every day, at least
once a day, we pull the files that contain the
income withholding orders from the states.
Remember I said there's a -- every state has a
child support system and in that system they
generate income withholding orders and they
will create a file based on the FEIN of the
employers that go ahead -- you know, and they
put that out there for us to pick up. So that's
step number one. And then, you see that OCSC
Net? That's that closed frame relay network I
was talking about before, and we go and we
pick up those files at least once a day from the
states. Step two here is we un-batch them. So,
for example, Oklahoma is up with, right now,
DFAS, the Postal Service, and Ruby Tuesday.
So they will have a file every day possibly of
income withholding orders for all three. They
will put each one in its own batch. They will
batch by employer. The portal will take all of
the batches in for all of the states for each day
and un-batch them and get all of Ruby
Tuesday's together and send them just to
Ruby Tuesday, all of the DFAS and send them
to DFAS, and all the Postal Service and send
them to the Postal Service. The state does not
have to worry about it. Just send us the income
withholding orders, tell us who they're for, we'll
sort them out, get them batched to the correct
employer. We also validate them. Step number
three, there, is the e-IWOs are validated, so
when the employers receive them, you know
that all of the required fields have been filled in,
they're correct with the syntax, all of the alphas
that should be there are there, and so on. And
note step four is where I talked about just
before, about the file format being
transformed. If a state or an employer wants
XML or flat file, we know that. So we can
convert it for the state and/or the employer. And
most everybody, by the way, has picked flat file.
So we have one coming up with XML, but
everybody so far is with flat file. And then we
batch them by employer and send them on
their way. We go through. And this circle in
here, when we go through, that is part -- when
we have this OCSC network up at the top, what
we've done now to create this so that the states
and employers only have one entity they have
to deal with, we installed an Internet connection
in that OCSC network and put a buffer server in
there to maintain the integrity of the closed
frame relay, so now we can get files out to
private employers. Just like with that pilot in the
beginning with DFAS, now it's just as easy to
get files out to employers as it was to get the
files to DFAS in the beginning. And that's in
place, in production, working with three
employers in 15 states as I stand here. Then,
we go down through here, it goes through
here, the file gets validated and gets passed
on to the employer, and the employer, what
they do is they give us a server and they give
us a URL where they want the files dropped
and we put them there. We always, always
push the files to the employer. And we -- you
know, these two little boxes in the bottom are
the employer server and when we're there,
when we drop off the files, we can also pick up
those acknowledgements that I was talking
about earlier. Where, now, when you get
through, after you've gotten the income
withholding orders from the state, you can let
the state know, "O.K., well, I know -- I know I
implemented the ones for John, Billy and
Joanie, but the one for Frank, can't do anything
because he's not here. He's either not here or
he was never here. And we always pick those
up. So we drop -- always drop off the files from
the state to you and we always pick up the
acknowledgements from you to send them
back to the state. So, down here in steps seven
and eight, we pick those files up. We route
them back. We also validate those to make
sure that the employer has the -- all the
required fields filled in correctly, the syntax is
correctly, and then we push those back to each
state. And the cycle is complete. The state has
created the file electronically. No paper has to
go to the employer. We've picked it up, got it to
the employer, picked up the
acknowledgements and got those back to the
state through the portal. And the employers
again do not have to worry about contacting
and establishing a communication link with
every state, just the portal. And the portal is run
by federal CSE and there is no fee for
employers to use the portal. I forgot to mention
that this morning, but I know -- we had a
meeting in Denver and a couple of people I
think came just to ask that question, so I'm
sure people would want to know. And this is
what employers want to know. Who's up?
Who's up from the states on e-IWO right now?
These are the states, you can see listed on the
left-hand side, that are up. We have a lot of
large states up and running on the system. We
have, you know, California, Colorado -- you can
go all the way through West Virginia.
Pennsylvania just came up December 22. One
of the nice things about this project,
Pennsylvania did a little clean-up and they sent
a couple of thousand records through the first
night. No problem. Because there's no paper.
If they went through, everything -- there were no
errors. I mean, it can get processed by another
system easily. So. And the state of Texas will
be coming up this weekend. They're
scheduled to send their first file Friday night
and we're supposed to pick it up on Saturday
morning. So these are the states that are up
and running on e-IWO and those are the
employers that they're with. Again, it's very
easy for states to add employers, it's just a
matter of the FEINs and making sure they've
got the right ones and adding them to their
table. And the upcoming implementations that
we have for states, we have New York,
Michigan and, as I said, Texas is coming up
this weekend. New York should be up the first
or second week in February. The District of
Columbia, Maryland and Arizona by May of this
year, and then Georgia, Mississippi, New
Jersey and Illinois probably in July, and New
Jersey is putting in a new child support
system. They had me up there for a meeting
about a year ago and they said, "Well, we'll put
this -- we'll put e-IWO in rather than our regular
paper IWO process." I mean, we can generate
paper out of it, but we'll -- you know, we're
already programmed for this. So, we have a lot
of states coming up, and any employers that
are out there, that deal with other states and, if
 you're, you know -- feel free to mention this to
them and give them my contact information.
Other employers have and that's fine. That's
what we want. I want to get the word out. We
want to get as many employers and as many
states as we can in the project, because as I
think I said this earlier, states want employers
to participate and employers want states. I
mean, you want a lot of states. You don't want
to -- you know, you want to get as little paper
as you can. There is a registration -- there's a
portal registration profile and testing process
that we go through. There's a registration
which is fairly straightforward with, you know,
business and technical contact information,
you know, about who to contact if there's a
problem with the transmission or with the file
on a particular day, and they have to fill that out.
That's the registration form on the second
bullet there. This includes a one-page
agreement -- which basically the employer
just says they agree to accept these electronic
income withholding orders the same as if they
showed up on paper. In other words, they have
the same force and effect as if they came to
you on paper the way they do today. And then
they complete the profile form indicating, do
you want flat file or XML, what time do you want
the files picked up, what are the dataset
names, and so on. And we have an automated
testing module. When employers are done
and states are done with testing, and they
think that they've got all of their bugs out and
they want to test and send the file -- for
employers, we have a test file of about 100
plus records that we can send to employers
and you can run them through your system to
see, is your system acting as it should or as
you expected it, is it updating it correctly and
so on -- and get the results back to you within a
day. So within a day you'll know, you know,
was I successful or have I got a couple of
other issues that I have to get resolved before
I can go up. Same with states. We can get
acknowledgements back to states and let
them know -- you know, and let -- you know,
employers know, well, you have a problem
here, or you've got this field that's missing
here, or it's, you know, miscoded over there.
So the -- that's the ATM, we call it. You don't get
money out of that, but you do get the good
results of, was your file correct. The
cost/benefits. This is for the pilot states only.
This is a little bit old, or getting a lot older as I
do these. I've got it updated. I'm going to be
doing that probably within a couple of weeks.
But this is just for the period from May of 2005
through August 2007, and just for the pilot
states. And if you look over in the right-hand
column, the net increase, says it all for the
states. That's why we'll probably have 25
states up. This is a time, resource and savings
for the states. I mean, it just -- it saves you time,
money and labor. And the development cost
for the state, I would say averages in the $400
range. Some are more, some are less. It
depends on, you know, the level of IT
resources, the contracts they have, the
availability of the resources, but generally in
the $400 range. There's a collection increase
because that first payment comes in much
more quickly. If they get that income
withholding order electronically the next day,
and they do EFT -- I've seen payments come in
the following day, within two days of the
issuance of the income withholding order. I
mean, that's the way it should be, versus two,
three or four weeks when they send a paper
and you have to get it, open it up, implement it
and then put it in your next payroll cycle. So it's
really sped up the first payment. Those are the
collection increase and the administrative
savings are a dollar a document. It costs the
state a dollar -- it costs just about anybody a
dollar a document, with postage, handling,
printing, all the costs associated with that is a
dollar a document. And, with that, you look over
in the right-hand column, I mean, Colorado,
over $500,000 savings, and, you know, again
-- and this -- this is only with one employer.
And when we add -- this is, again, through
August of '07. When we go through and we
add in the postal service and the -- and
whatever, these cost/benefits go through the
roof. They really do. They are very -- and the
employers, also -- I'll get to that in a little bit.
The employers save a lot of money, here. A lot
of time, a lot of effort. And some of the more --
some more benefits from e-IWO. Adding
additional employers for states or states for
employers is straightforward. It really is. I
could tell you that we had -- when we put up the
portal the Postal Service was the first employer
that went up on the portal, and we had a couple
of states up with DFAS that were sending them
through and DFAS came up on the portal, and I
had West Virginia. Said, well, we're going to
start on the portal with DFAS. So they started,
and they generated the file, we picked it up
and we got it out to DFAS. About a week after
that I get a call from my contact up at the Postal
Service saying, "I'm not saying this is a
problem, but we're starting to get e-IWOs from
West Virginia. Did they want to start with us?"
So I called my contact in West Virginia. I
said, "Did you start with the Postal Service?"
And she said, "Well, yeah." She said, "You
said it was easy. And, we said -- you know,
the programmers said there's only one FEIN,
so let's add it in." That's the way this should
be. The states can just add the employers by
updating their table with the FEINs from the
employers and on they go. There isn't any
need for retesting with every state employer
that comes up, every combination. Once you
can take a file, you can take a file from
anybody, because that record layout is the
same from Maine to California. It increases
collections. I went through before, the first
collection gets there more quickly, plus with
the acknowledgement the state knows that
that income withholding order, if it isn't any
good, they know it much more quickly, they
can look for another income source or an
employer. Obviously it saves everyone time,
money and resources. The standardized data
record ensures uniform data for employers.
Again, the record layout is always the same
regardless of the state it comes from. It
increases the accuracy and reliability of the
data that the employers get and the states get
back from the employers, and the electronic
acknowledgment enables everybody to keep
up to date, have a good communication flow
going back and forth, and it's quick. Now, the
next couple of slides are from employers, and
these slides were done by Meijer Corporation
and Labor Ready and they were presented at
an employer session after a national job
support enforcement conference a few years
ago, about two years ago. Meijer corporation
estimated it took them about 300 hours to do
the programming, to put in the IWO. And they
broke that down: the staff was about 40 hours,
they had some additional technical assistance
for 15 hours, and no other company resources
were required. So it was, you know -- that's a
chunk of resources for people who don't have
many IT resources. I'm going to get to that in a
little bit, but that's what Meijer had estimated,
but Meijer also said it saved them, when they
put it in, $6.50 a document. They figured by the
time that mail arrived and they would open it
up, and they would get it and have to key it and
everything, the cost savings was over $6 a
document. Labor Ready, the temporary agency
out in Washington, had this bar chart that they
showed at the symposium, and Mike who was
from Labor Ready at the time, said, "Here's
why everyone should do this." He said, "We
took it -- we did a sample, and a survey of how
long it took us to do 244 income withholding
orders manually." It took them 450 minutes.
They put in an optical character solution in
between before e-IWO, dropped it down to 180.
They put in e-IWO, the 450 minutes went down
to 30. He said that says it all. He said, "That
savings for us is enormous." And they said
-- he said, "That's why you do this." He said it
saves everybody time and money, gets the
collection there faster. It really is a winner for
everyone. The spread -- this is entitled
"Spreadsheet Alternative." We do realize --
O.K., and I have done -- and other people have
seen me at these presentations -- and I've had
employers come up to me and say, "You know,
I really want to do that. This sounds great. But I
don't have the IT resources." How many -- well,
no, I shouldn't -- no. Nope. I'll wait till the end.
But they just don't have the IT resources. When
I was at the American Payroll Association
Conference this May, I had a lot of employers
come up to me and say that same thing. "I
really want to do this. This is the way to do it.
But where am I going to find the IT resources to
do this." What we're looking at and what --
we're looking right now -- this is only in
development and it's only a prototype. O.K. It's
a spreadsheet alternative that we could give to
employers so that you would basically -- this
would eliminate the programming. And what
would happen -- I've got a link here -- now, this
happened this morning, too. Oh, there it is. It
must go away when I don't -- this is a -- again,
this has not been done. This is what we're --
this is actually the first conference I'm coming
out to, where I'm discussing this with
employers. What we could do, or what we're
thinking we could do is to take the record in
from the state. This would be no change on the
state's side. They would create the record the
same way they do today, but instead of sending
a file to the employer, what we could do is send
them -- this is basically an Excel spreadsheet,
and it would be pre-filled for you, for the
employer, with that data that you see on there,
and there's other data that's to the right of this,
which is all of that termination information and
other address and lump sum and so on. That's
all on the right-hand side. I'll get to that in a
second, but, basically, what you would do is
you would get this spreadsheet and you would
take a look at each one -- each one of these
would be an individual income withholding
order. The state's on the left-hand column. And
you could take a look at the name and we have
the SSN. We'll probably move the SSN over
because that's probably the most critical field
you use, so we'll list that right next to the state
and the document action code, and then the
name. And then you see these two shaded
columns. One's the record disposition status
code and the other is the rejected reason code.
For example, if you got this spreadsheet and
you wanted to process these income
withholding orders, you could get that and you
would also along with this get a PDF of the
document, so you'd have a copy of the
document right next to you. You would have the
spreadsheet and you could say, "Well, for
Joseph Smith, the very first file, with that SSN, I
got him." All you have to do is put an "A" in that
column and send it back. And, you know, fill out
the rest of them. Don't do just the one -- and
let's say you get to number two -- let's go to
number three. He's easier to print out. So,
Michael Lance. Michael Lance you never heard
of. O.K.? So what you do is you go over to
those two columns and you put an "R" in the
rejected disposition status code. We only have
five or six rejected reason codes. They're fairly
simple and it just says he's not here. You put
that in and you're done. And, I'll get -- as I say,
I'll go to some of the other columns in a
second, but this is the acknowledgement file.
This is all of the elements, and if I can get over
this time to the rest of them. I wasn't too
successful this morning. See. It's not liking my
-- O.K., here we go. You'll see the rejected as it
slides to the left here. You see all these other
fields? The termination date, final payment
made date, final payment amount, all the lump
sum, the NCP address -- that's from the
termination. If you do have a termination, you
would fill that information in. If you do know
where he or she went to work, then you would
put that in and then there's a control number
that would be filled in and that's it. That is the
acknowledgement record. Those fields on the
top, what you see there, that is the
acknowledgement record in the e-IWO
process today. All we're doing is pre-filling that
for you and giving you an Excel spreadsheet so
that you can just populate that, you know, fill in
the rejected -- and, again, 95% of the time, I
think all you're going to have to do is fill in
these two shaded columns, complete them for
everyone and send it back. And, right now,
what we're thinking is, to deliver that file to you,
to get it to you, is the same process that we
use today for e-IWO and that would be a
dataset on a server at your employer. And, you
know, I'll get to something else in just a
second, but that's what we're thinking and to
pick up, to pick this file up the same way. You
give us a dataset name, give us a name, where
that's going to reside on your server, on your
company server and we'll come and pick it up.
This basically gives the acknowledgement file
back to us. Then we take that Excel
spreadsheet, we turn it back into that file layout
that I was talking about and send it back to
Oklahoma. Oklahoma and every other state
thinks, well, they did the e-IWO process, they
got it done, here's the record layout, here's all
the fields filled out, we're done. So -- and let
me just close this out. Yeah, and you also --
when I did those other fields -- if you do have --
let's say you do have somebody to terminate it.
What we're also thinking is we can give you a
template, you can just fill in if, you know, John
Jones quit or left or was fired. You can take a
blank one of those forms, put in his case
identifier, his name, his SSN, send it back to
Oklahoma. Let them know electronically rather
than sending a piece of paper. So it can handle
that plus lump sum information. You saw that
as I scrolled across quickly, but -- scrolled
across. Now, at the end of this, not now, but at
the end of this, when we're all done and they
have questions, I'd really like to see a show of
hands of the employers that are out there
today that think that this alternative would be
viable or feasible, or this is what they're
looking for. And, also, in addition to this --
we're also looking at possibly having a
fill-able PDF. Now, what that would be is, we
would create -- again, no change for the state.
The state would give us the file the same way.
We would create a PDF of this document and
then instead of the spreadsheet, have a short
form that -- basically with those elements up
there -- a short, fill-able form where you could
have radio buttons or check boxes or whatever.
You would fill that in and transmit those back.
The difference is, that spreadsheet is -- you get
them all in one location. The fill-able PDF, you
would basically tab through these. You'll get
one document at a time. Both alternatives, you
get the PDF. Next slide is e-IWO resources.
This is -- the source is the link to the software
interface specification document, commonly
called the SIS. If you took a look at there, that's
the link. It's about 100 pages long. Don't be
scared by the length. At least a third of it, just
the record layouts, and a lot of the -- I mean, we
try to explain everything that's in there, in the
process for any employer or state that would
want to do this for every possibility of naming
file, whatever. A lot of this you can go -- I mean,
take a look. There's an explanation of the
process and I think what we're working on --
well, we are working on, is a -- you know, like a
one-page checklist and sheet that would tell
employers and states what they would have to
do. And obviously we have other work to do if
the spreadsheet or the fill-able PDF is the, you
know -- looks like it should be done. But that
document's out there. It's right on the federal
OCSE web site. That is the link for it. You can
take a look at it and give it to any of the
technical staff or yourself take a look at. There's
also an e-IWO work group. I had a call at least
once a month with the states and employers
that are up on e-IWO, that are thinking about
coming up on e-IWO, that want to know more
about e-IWO. I go over the status, the
implementations, what's happened, the best
practices, the -- you know, lessons learned. All
of that we go over with the states and the
employers. It's only about a half an hour call
generally. So. And there's an e-IWO work
place. That's like an electronic bulletin board,
where all of the minutes from those meetings
are posted. There are business rules out
there. About six to eight months into this
project one of the employers said, "You know,
it would really be nice if we had something that
had the rules. What are we supposed to do
when we get an amended and we didn't have
one? We never got one. First thing that shows
up is an amended, and so we create a
business rule. The answer to that question is,
you do it, by the way. There are business rules
that we'll tell employers, when they're doing
any programming or whatever, if I get one and
I already have this, you do this. So that's out
there on the work place. The contacts are out
there. The states that are up are out there. It's
just -- it's like -- kind of like an electronic
bulletin board. If you want to get more
information about it, see the minutes. I think
I've got the minutes from the last two and a
half years' meetings out there. So. And if you're
interested in getting access to that work place,
just e-mail me or call me, and my contact
information's at the end of this and all over the
place. And what's involved if you want to join or
sign up, basically the states and the
employers -- the states have to make
programming changes, so do the employers
and to -- you know, be able to participate in the
full e-IWO process. The record layouts, again,
are based on the IWO form. Generally what we
do with employers when they want to come up,
is we establish connectivity with you first. We
get your network people, or you IT people on
the phone and say, "O.K., here's what we need
to do. We need to have your URL. We have our
encryption keys. Swap those. And we get that
and we put a file out there that's unencrypted,
just has no information in it, just to make sure
we can get out there, pick up an empty file,
again, go back and forth, and then encrypt it.
Then we're all set to go with communication
and, then, if the employers are ready to test,
then we go ahead and -- you can put a file out
there and you can test the acknowledgement
process. Or we can test the detail process to
get an income withholding order electronically
from a state. Or with the test cases that we
have, the 100 cases that we in a the test data.
Yeah, and then there's testing with the portal,
and if you have any questions on it, give me a
call. E-mail, fax, whatever. And, again, we have
the 15 states up. This project has worked
great. It started in 2004. It's now 2009, but we
have come -- I mean, people are on this. We
have come a long, long way. I mean, we
started with basically no record layouts and
we're now to the point where we have 15
states up, we have another ten that are
coming up, and this thing is saving everybody
a lot of time, money and effort.
Toby Hallows: Good afternoon, ladies and
gentlemen. You have it easy with me, because
my presentation doesn't include a PowerPoint,
and it doesn't include a long, lengthy speech,
I'm just going to give you a little bit of
information as far as Oklahoma -- as it relates
to Oklahoma, in the e-IWO. As Bill mentioned,
we are up on the portal. We do do file transfers
with both the Postal Service and the DFAS and
Ruby Tuesday's. I'm here basically to act as
liaison for Oklahoma employers, or mostly
state employers that deal in Oklahoma about
how Oklahoma uses the information we get
back from the portal. For example, if we get a
terminated record from -- on an e-IWO, we
automatically move that employer in the history
so that you should get no additional
paperwork from us. So, it's one of the benefits
to going electronic income withholding order
-- is that if you send back a response file that
says, "He doesn't work here, he never worked
here," instead of that information not getting
into the system because someone didn't enter
it in correctly or, you know, it fell through the
cracks, when we get it electronically it
automatically moves you as an employer into
history on that case so that you will get no
additional information on that person on that
case. So it's one of the benefits to going
electronic income withholding order. One of
the things I want to do is, I want to encourage
everyone here at this site and at these sites
listening to us over the Net to please, when
you get back to your company, either today or
tomorrow, tomorrow morning, e-mail Bill
Stuart at his e-mail address and say, "Yes, we
want the spreadsheet alternative." Even if you
don't. Just e-mail it anyway. No, no. If it is
something that you're truly interested in,
please send that e-mail to Bill, mainly
because -- I mean, he's our guy that can -- has
the clout. He's the one that can go to the federal
government and say, "Look, the employers are
asking for this." Because if employers are
asking for it -- they already know the states
want it. If the employers are asking for it as well
as the states, they're more inclined to say,
"O.K., let's develop this, let's get it in
production, let's go." So, please, if it is
something that you're truly interested in,
please e-mail him. I will be sending out
contact information for myself, as well as the
presenters from today to everyone that
registered for this seminar. And,<span tts:fontWeight="bold" > </span>basically, I --
you can contact me for questions that you have
on e-IWO as it relates to Oklahoma. I can also
answer some of the questions about just the
overall program itself, as well as income
withholding orders, and that type of thing. And,
you know, if it's a question that I don't have an
answer to, I have access to the work site, the
e-IWO work site. I can look it up, and if I really
get really lost on a question, I know who I'm
going to. I'm going right to Bill. And I'm -- you
know, I'm -- I usually pick up the phone.
Sometimes I'll e-mail him, and -- you know,
and one of the other great things about Bill is
that every employer that I've talked to that is
interested in electronic income withholding
orders -- he is very conscientious about getting
back with you. O.K.? So, please don't hesitate
to e-mail or call thinking, "Aw, I'm not going to
hear back from him for weeks," because
that's just not going to happen. I mean, he's
very conscientious. So, by all means, please,
please, if you're interested in this at all, please
let Bill know by e-mail as soon as possible.
And like I said, we've talked a lot about, you
know, IT things today. We've talked about, you
know, data files and schemas and things of
that nature that a lot of you may not, you know,
grasp if you're not an IT person. And, you
know, it's one of those things where if -- when I
give you my e-mail contact information
tomorrow -- I'll actually give it out today, but
when I sent it out, if you don't have an
opportunity to remember it or you lose it, I will
send it out by e-mail. And if you have a
question about some of the more technical
issues of it, I'll try to get with you and explain it
in a more basic format so that you can
understand it. Your IT people, you take this
back to them, they're going to understand it.
But if you need it to explain it to someone else,
a boss or supervisor, just give me a call and
-- or send me an e-mail, and I'll walk you
through it.
Devin McGhee: I am going to talk a little bit
about EFT and web pay. It seemed like the
natural conclusion to all of this paperless
society to go with the final outcome of all this,
which is to get the child support to the state,
who can then get it to the families. Before I do
that, I've been listening to Bill give his
presentation a couple of times and I'm
dreaming of a whole lot less paperwork. I can
tell you, I really feel your pain. All those forms
that you guys fill out and return all come back
to my office. In the first ten and a half months
that we were open, we've received 875,000
pieces of paper, all of which are stored
somewhere in our building. So, I would love
for this to become a national standard. I think
this is great. A couple of other things before --
and mine is really short, as well, because I
know you guys have questions -- is a little plug
for our employer handbook. I think a couple of
speakers have mentioned it. We are going to
be mailing these out along with the DVD of this
presentation to everybody who had registered
for it, and that way you can have it for
reference, you can share it with other people
in your office. You could also get more copies
of these handbooks by just calling the
Employer Services Center. I think their number
is all over people's PowerPoints, including this
one. So, I'm sure you can find it. The other plug
that I wanted to do was I believe that we had
mentioned councils at some point. We do
have employer councils. There are four of them
throughout the state. One's here in Oklahoma
City. One's in Tulsa, and then there's one in the
southeast portion of the state, and one in the
sort of north mid-western part of the state,
around the Clinton-Weatherford area. If you are
at all interested, please contact us at the
Employer Services Center. We use this as a
forum to let you know what's changing in child
support, to answer any questions and to get
feedback about how to let other employers
know about these things that affect them. So,
without ado, I will go on to EFT and web pay.
This is in conjunction with, of course, the
e-IWO, but these are also services that are
already available for employers. You can use
them now even with the paper income
withholding orders, and they do save a lot of
time and money, and we'll kind of go through
just some very basic -- the EFT are electronic
funds transfer. It's basically your bank talking
to child support's bank. They transfer money
back and forth. There's no human involvement
in that. Once you get this set up, that's all you
have to do. It's a beautiful system. That being
said, sometimes, just like the e-IWO, it does
require some IT capabilities. There's basically
a three-step process for doing this. The first
step would be to contact your IT or payroll
department. Now, some of you guys may not
have that. The bank -- your bank actually
should have some information on how to do
this as well. A lot of them have software
packages that you can install in your own
system. Not all of them, but a lot of them do, so
you would just contact them and see if this is a
possibility for you. We had a question this
morning about the commercial software like
QuickBooks. I'm going to look into that. I know
at one point there was some talk about trying to
make that part of a standard with some of the
commercial packaged payroll software, but I do
not know the answer to that. As soon as I find
out, I will send that out to all the registration.
The second step would be to contact the
Oklahoma Child Support Services and the
number is up there on the board. That's the
questions number, the 600-0014. And just let
them know. There are specific formats that that
file has to be in and then they need to set up a
test, and that's the third part, is just you'll do a
test to make sure that the money is transferring
back and forth, and that's it. That's all you have
to do. It sounds simple. There's a lot of
programming, a lot of IT and I won't pretend to
know all of the details. Just like with the e-IWO,
there is a packet of information available that
gives you all those file formats. It's not quite as
-- it's not 100 pages, but, again, actually for
most people, the first couple of pages is all you
really need to know. It tells you what steps to
take. The rest of it is for your IT people. But
there is also a copy of the packet in the
handbook, so you can kind of flip through it. It's
released by the National Automated Clearing
House Association. It's a -- it's what the
bankers use, too. NACHA. Or you can receive
that packet just by calling us at the Employer
Services Center. Some of the benefits -- we've
already talked about this. Obviously, you don't
have to worry about printing checks. Any of the
additional paperwork, you know, with all of the
case numbers on that, you know, it saves
money. You don't have the postage costs. You
don't have to do the, "well, the check's in the
mail," and hope that it actually gets from one
place to the next. It also, of course, reduces
data entry errors. There's -- you know, there's
no human involvement in that. Once it's set up
and it's associated with the right case, that's it.
So it will always go to the right case every time.
And even by itself the custodial person will get
the money much faster because there's not the
human processing that has to happen. And
combined with the e-IWO, though I don't
remember if you've mentioned the story this
afternoon, but they were getting payments
within two or three days of having sent off the
e-IWO to begin with, and not only got the
acknowledgement back within 24 hours, but
got the first payment within two to three days.
So, in conjunction with those two, this is a very,
very fast process. We, of course, understand
that, you know, not everybody has the
capabilities or an IT person on site to be able
to do this, so there is an alternative, which is
web pay. This is set up very much like any of
your utility bills where you can go on and
register with your company and they can just
deduct money from your bank account. The
great thing about web pay is that you can also
set up multiple payments, so you can do it a
one-time payment if you need to, but you can
also set it up so it deducts money for that
account every single time, every month on the
day that you schedule it. You can use credit
cards, you can use debit cards, you can have
it directly taken out of your bank account and
the registration web site is on the PowerPoint.
Of course, once you enroll, you will actually get
a notification and you'll have to activate your
account. One of the things that I think is so cool
about web pay is that not only can you do the
multiple counts or payments and the one-time
payment, but if you've got say four or five
different cases and they're all on different
payroll schedules, and it's so all of everything
has to come out at different times, you can
actually<span tts:fontWeight="bold" > </span>set that up under one account in web
pay so that you can just go in, you have one,
you know, user name and password, and you
can just set this all up so that it comes out at
different times depending on who the
employee is and what their payroll schedule is,
so it's very neat and tidy package, there. The
one thing that I will tell you to be careful about
with web pay is that this is a vendor for the
state, so if you get a notice that the income
assignment or withholding order is terminated
because, for whatever reason, the kids have
aged out or that employee leaves your work
place, Child Support cannot stop the payments
that are coming through web pay. That has to
be done by you. So make sure that if you use
web pay, and for some reason you need to
stop the<span tts:fontWeight="bold" > </span>payments, that you go in and make
sure thatthose are stopped or cancelled. Again,
we have a few common questions. Some of
these are also just general questions about
making the payments to child support. Is there
a fee for -- to your web pay? The state will
never charge you a fee for using either of these
systems. The web pay system never charges
you. The only time that you might see some
fees associated may be with your bank, and
that will generally be with EFT, but again you'll
have to check with your bank about that. But
you will never be charged a fee for using these
for child support. One of the things that has
come up, especially if somebody has had to
switch bank accounts or well, for a reason,
there's a non-sufficient funds list, and an
employer may find themselves on this. The
only way, unless it's an error on the part of your
bank -- the only way to get off of this is sort of
12 months of good payments, and that just
means a cashier's check or money order over
a 12-month period of time, and then you can be
asked to remove, and you can go back to doing
-- sending, you know, either business check or
using one of these systems again. The caution
on that, too, is that it's -- you're put on this list
by the employer name. So, even if you switch
bank accounts, that's not going to get off the
list, because it's associated with whatever
business you're in. And basically for this,
especially if it's a bank error -- and so the next
two about entering a wrong case amount, or the
name or putting it on the wrong case -- if you
know that you've done this and you call us at
the Employer Service Center immediately, we
can usually let them know in time that they may
not put you on the non-sufficient fund list,
because they can either stop the payment or at
least know that it was an error in good faith
sort of thing. If it's a wrong amount and you're
wanting to get a refund, if it's already been
distributed -- and this is another reason why
as soon as you know that you've done this,
please give us a call -- once it's been
distributed to the family, they're not going to be
able to do a refund on that. If it's been retained
for the state, sometimes they can do that, often
they will, but, again, it's timing. As soon as you
know that this has happened, please let us
know, because we can usually help out with
that. The same thing with if you send a payment
in error, like they quit and the payment went out
again, especially with web pay, if you don't get
it stopped, again, let us know as soon as you
do, and that'll really help us be able to try to
resolve that in your favor much more quickly.