SCA Health & Welfare — Controller Guide
Hours worked on a service contract, at the health & welfare rate that contract's wage determination publishes, less the bona fide credits already paid on the employee's behalf. Computed per pay period. This screen replaces a spreadsheet somebody derived by hand every payroll run.
Where it is: Accounting → SCA H&W (/accounting/sca-hw).
Part 1 — The ideas you need first (read once)
The exceptions come first, on purpose
Most report screens put the clean rows on top and fold the exceptions into a collapsed panel at the bottom. This one does the opposite, and it is an argument rather than a preference: an employee the engine will not price is a decision somebody has to make before payroll runs. Burying that turns a blocking question into a footnote.
So Needs a decision renders above the computed table whenever it is not empty, and the three configuration panels sit above that. If a panel is open when you arrive, it opened itself because something in it needs you.
Refusals are grouped by reason, not listed per person. Twenty-three people blocked by one unstated field is one decision, and a flat list of twenty-three names hides that.
Cash due can be right and still not be the amount to pay
This is the most important sentence in this guide.
While no bona fide credit code is confirmed, "Cash due" equals the full obligation. Credits only ever reduce what is owed, so that figure is an upper bound, not the amount to pay. It is arithmetically correct and practically incomplete — the most dangerous kind of number to read bare.
Arcvue therefore annotates it where it is shown rather than in a footnote: the Bona fide credits tile reads "None confirmed" and grays out, the Cash due tile carries "Excludes credits — overstated", and an amber banner sits under both. Do not hand that number to payroll until you have confirmed your credit codes.
The credits are shown as a build-up, not a total
The table gives credits four columns: 401(k) match, Benefits, Disability, and then Credits as the sum. That is so you can check a person line by line against your own workbook instead of trusting a single figure. Cash already paid then sits deliberately after the credits total and before Cash due, because it is a payment rather than a benefit — you read the build-up downward: obligation → credits → cash already paid → cash still due.
What the hours base actually contains
Hours paid = timecard hours plus PTO and vacation payout.
A payout is held in dollars, so Arcvue converts it at the employee's base hourly rate and adds it to the hours; any row carrying one shows "incl. N payout" beside its total. Where a payout exists and the roster has no base hourly rate, that person is listed as unresolved with the reason — never counted at an understated obligation. An absent rate produces a refusal, not a quiet undercount.
Part 2 — How to run it
Fetch from SAM.gov pulls the wage determination and reads Fetching while it waits. It is a live call out to SAM.gov, so a pause here is the network rather than the page.
The button only appears on a determination Arcvue does not already hold. Once a determination is in the register there is nothing to fetch, so its absence on a line means the rates are already there — not that the fetch is unavailable.
Set From and To to the pay period. Then work the panels top down; each one is a prerequisite for the numbers below it.
Step 1 — Contract coverage: state the determination and EO 13706
The header tells you where you stand: "N service contracts, all stated" or "N of M service contracts need a statement".
The H&W rate follows two facts about the contract, both stated once:
- Which wage determination the contracting officer attached.
- Whether the contract is covered by Executive Order 13706.
The second one matters more than it looks. Every wage determination publishes two H&W rates — a standard rate and an EO 13706 rate — and which applies is a property of the contract, not of the determination. Getting it wrong understates or overstates every employee on that contract.
On a contract with nothing stated, enter the determination number (the field pre-fills from the contract documents when Arcvue read one, and says "from the contract documents" when it does), choose the coverage, and click State. The coverage selector deliberately starts unset — a pre-selected answer would be a supplied default read as a decision.
Stating a determination also makes the contract's labor service-contract labor. While the statement is in effect, the contract's hours post to the SCA labor account and count in the base the SCA fringe pool is allocated over — the same as when Arcvue finds a determination in the contract documents. State one only for a contract that is service-contract work.
If the register does not hold that determination, the refusal offers Fetch from SAM.gov right there. Use it; do not hand-maintain rates.
Once stated, the line shows what the engine will do:
- "resolves to $X/h" in green — settled.
- An amber reason — still unresolved, and it names why.
- Where several revisions exist, a governs: row lets you pick which one applies, each button showing the rate that revision would produce under the coverage you already stated — not both rates, which would be unreadable.
- stated by / no author on record, and Withdraw to take a statement back.
The same fact is stated in two places under two different labels, and
they are not separate settings. On the contract the picker reads
Covered by EO 13706 or Not covered (standard rate); on the wage
determination the same call is a pair of buttons reading EO 13706 covered
and Not covered. Set it in either place and you are answering one
question.
The picker's own wording says why it matters: a determination publishes TWO health-and-welfare rates, and coverage is what selects between them. It is a property of the contract, not of the determination — so two contracts on the same wage determination can legitimately owe different rates.
Step 2 — Say who on the contract is a service employee
Expand "N of M people treated as service employees" under a contract.
Each person shows their hours and their baseline — "hourly, in by default" or "salaried, out by default". That baseline is the payroll roster's wage type, and it is shown rather than assumed, so any statement you make is made against a visible default.
The baseline is usually right and occasionally not. Use Include or Exclude for the exceptions; a stated person shows "stated in" / "stated out" with who stated it, and Withdraw returns them to the roster default.
Step 3 — Bona fide credits: mark what counts
This panel opens itself while nothing is confirmed, because an unconfirmed credit map is not an unvisited settings page — it is the reason the number above it is an upper bound.
It lists the payroll charges in your own register. By default it shows only charges that can affect an H&W figure; Show N more reveals the rest, and the count of what is hidden is always stated so a filtered list never reads as "this is everything."
For each charge: pick the credit type (401(k) match, Health, Dental, Vision, Short-term disability, Long-term disability, Life, Other) and click Count as credit. Confirmed charges show Counts as credit with a Remove.
Read the amber sibling note when it appears. "Payroll code G/C also carries
$X. Marking this charge credits only this charge — the others stay uncredited." A single payroll code can carry several unrelated charges. Arcvue always credits the specific charge, never the whole code — but it is easy to think "I credited the 401(k) match" and believe you have dealt with that code. The siblings are listed with their amounts precisely because the dollars make the difference legible in a way a badge saying "ambiguous" would not.
Anything left unmarked is treated as not a credit.
Step 4 — Names on documents: nobody is credited by a name that did not match
The payroll summary and the carrier invoice print names their own way. Where a spelling does not resolve to one person, the credit reaches nobody until you say who it is — once. Each unmatched row shows the printed name, which document it came from, how many periods it has appeared in, and how much is uncredited.
Pick the person from "Who is this…" and click State. Every stored row carrying that spelling is re-matched on the spot, and the readers honor it on every later document.
"Two roster rows, one person?" is a separate and heavier decision. Each source system created its own row, so a printed name cannot choose between them. Pick which row survives, say what you checked (ten characters minimum), and Merge. The retired row is retired, not deleted, and every timecard, pay line and statement follows the survivor.
Where both rows are paid through payroll, an extra confirmation appears — "both are paid — I have established they are one person". That is usually two different people (a common name, a father and son). Tick it only when you have actually established otherwise.
Step 5 — Read the table, then export
Once the panels are clear, the table prices each employee: determination and revision, hours paid, the H&W rate, the obligation, the three credit columns and their total, cash already paid, and cash due.
CSV downloads the supplemental-pay file for the period
(sca_hw_<from>_<to>.csv). It is disabled when the period has no lines.
Part 3 — When something looks wrong
| Symptom | What it means → what to do |
|---|---|
| "Cash due" carries "Excludes credits — overstated" | No credit code is confirmed. The figure is an upper bound, not the amount to pay. Work Step 3 before using it. |
| Somebody is in "Needs a decision" | The reason is stated on the group. Almost always the contract they charge has no stated determination, or its EO 13706 coverage is unstated — both answered in Step 1. |
| A determination line says "not in the register" | Arcvue does not hold that determination's rates. Click Fetch from SAM.gov on that line. |
| "SAM.gov did not return a usable determination." | The fetch was refused — usually a wrong number, or a document with no occupation table or no health & welfare line. Arcvue refuses a partial determination rather than importing half of one. Check the number against the contract documents. |
| The rate looks like the wrong one of the two published | Check EO 13706 coverage on that contract. The two published rates share a prefix and differ only by coverage, and the coverage is a fact about the contract. |
| An employee I expect is missing from the table | Either they are in Needs a decision, or they are not treated as a service employee on that contract — expand the people list under it and check the baseline. |
| A person's credits are zero and I know they have benefits | Look at Names on documents. A printed name that never matched credits nobody, and the panel says how much is uncredited. |
| "No payroll charges have been ingested for this tenant yet" | There is nothing to mark. The credit map cannot be built before payroll data lands. |
| "No SCA employee has hours in this period." | Nobody with service-contract coverage charged hours in that window. Check the From/To dates first. |
| "No contract on this tenant is flagged as a service contract or carries a wage determination." | No contract has been marked as service-contract work. That is a contract-record question, not an H&W one. |
| "Failed to compute health & welfare for this period." | The whole computation failed — this is not an empty period. Reload; if it persists it is an engine problem, not a data one. |
One-line summary
Price each service employee's health & welfare obligation for a pay period — refusals and configuration first, because an unpriced employee blocks payroll — by stating each contract's wage determination and its EO 13706 coverage (the two published rates differ only by that), saying who counts as a service employee, marking which payroll charges are bona fide credits, and matching printed names to people; and never hand "Cash due" to payroll while it still says "Excludes credits — overstated."
Related
- The SCA variant of a leave plan → Leave Plans (
/accounting/leave-plans) - Pay codes and how supplemental pay reaches payroll → Payroll & Pay Codes
- Hours and how they are charged → Timekeeping
- Allowability of the underlying costs → FAR 31.205 Selected Costs (in the Compliance section of this manual)