Still Working on the ACA

I’m still working on the ACA report but it looks like we have about 80% of the data locked down. The other 20% appears to have data that doesn’t make sense when you compare various pieces of the data (hire date, term date, date coverage began, date ended, paycheck dates). The HR VP is now in the process of researching approximately 500 data. Ugh! I had hoped to winnow down the bad data to a more manageable level.

At least we have the other 80% already printed out and possibly stuffed in envelopes. Yes, I finally got the printing figured out. I basically used Adobe to convert the government’s PDF file into a Word document and then from there did a mail merge of the data into the Word document. I did have to do some special set up such as putting in tabs and setting the dollars as text rather than numbers. These actions helped place the codes and numbers into the correct boxes on the form.

From now until the 31st, I can’t do much of anything else, including posting to this website. Last weekend, I spent the entire weekend perusing the results to make sure the Excel formulas applied the correct codes for each month. For the most part they worked but there were a few areas where I had to hard code the answers. So the file still has some work but at least I got through 75% of it.

After I’m done with this exercise, I will have to go back and work on improving the file as well as move on to the next stage, which is transmitting the data to the government. That part I’m worried about. I have already started to work on it but I think it’s going to be a lot more problematic that my bosses are anticipating. I think they are expecting to just upload an Excel file into the government system, but my readings indicates a more complicated process. It doesn’t sound like a simple conversion of an Excel file into an xml file but is rather a more intricate endeavor with xml coding to send the data. Maybe I’m a genius at this.

So by next weekend I should be done with the first phase.