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Expected to Work/Barriers to Full Employment Policy & Procedures

Published Date: January 01, 2024
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02 Income Support Overview

Rounding Benefits

INTENT

To ensure clients do not receive less than they are eligible to receive, while adhering as closely as possible to the legislated value of each benefit.

POLICY

When calculating a new benefit rate or issuing a benefit, the benefit amounts may contain values that include cents. The rounded benefit rate is reflected in the Expected to Work/Barriers to Full Employment Policy & Procedures manual.

The IT system used to issue benefits (LISA) does not accept decimal values. Where the actual value of a benefit contains cents, the LISA system program has rounded up to the next (not nearest) dollar value. For example:

    • If the actual value of the benefit is $23.05, the LISA system uses the rounded amount of $24.
    • If the actual value of the benefit is $23.90, the LISA system uses the rounded amount of $24.


Manual Entry

In some instances, staff are required to manually enter benefit amounts into LISA. There are several reasons this might occur. For example, if the benefit rate is the actual cost, if a benefit is pro-rated or if several iterations of a Supplementary Benefit are compounded during one Period of Assistance.

Whenever manual entry of a benefit amount is required, the entry should be as close as possible to the actual eligible amount, rounded up to the next (not nearest) dollar value. For example:

    • Cost for two emergency goods/services is $100.30 and $50.50. The sum of the two items is $150.80. The worker enters $151.
    • 341 kilometres are eligible for a travel payment. The rate per kilometre is less than $1. When the actual (unrounded) per-kilometre rate is multiplied by 341 kilometres, the result is $51.15. The worker enters $52.
    • A benefit is pro-rated and the actual eligible amount is $99.33. The worker enters $100.


Income

This policy does not apply when entering income into LISA. Apply the Rounding Income policy to enter income.

Assignment of Benefits

The process for Assignment of Benefits involves calculating a Minimum Weekly Allowance and also Weekly Amounts for recovery. Amounts are rounded to ensure that the amount provided/recovered is as close as possible to the actual amount (with cents) without penalizing the client. Follow the steps outlined in the Assignment of Benefits policies.

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