You can communicate participation data for all plan categories (except credit plans) to external providers, along with other relevant employee data stored in the Benefits Administration component. To do this, you generate intermediate documents (IDocs), which can be forwarded by means of a variety of media, for example as an e-mail attachment, tape, or file on a server.

The structure of the IDocs in the Benefits Administration component conforms with the standard ANSI X12.834 governing electronic data interchange.

The IDoc BENEFIT1, which is available as of Release 4.6A, includes the following data:

• Administrative data
• Personal data
• Address data
• Medical data
• Health plan coverage

The IDoc BENEFIT2, which replaces BENEFIT1 in Release 4.6C, includes the same data as BENEFIT1 and the following additional data:

• Administrative data (additional fields)
• Organizational data
• Information about employee posts
• Savings plan participation data

The IDoc BENEFIT3, which replaces BENEFIT2 in Release 4.6C (Support Release 2), includes the same data as BENEFIT2 and the following additional data:

• Insurance plan participation data
• Flexible spending account participation data (USA only)
• Stock purchase plan participation data
• Miscellaneous plan participation data
• Additional fields for savings plan participation data

You can choose to transfer either all relevant data or only those records that have been changed within a given period. For example, you may want to send a full set of data to the provider initially and subsequently communicate updates only.

The system generates IDocs by selecting data and arranging it in a predefined hierarchical structure. The IDoc is automatically passed on to the SAP Basis component where it is further processed.

If your organization wants to send IDocs containing changed data to a provider, long-term change documents need to be set up in Customizing to log changes to the relevant infotype records. These documents are then evaluated during IDoc generation to identify changed records.

The system considers the following infotypes when searching for changes. You therefore need to log those infotypes for which you want to transfer changes, depending on the contract with your provider:

• If you use the IDoc BENEFIT1 instead of BENEFIT2, you do not need to track changes in the infotypes 0001, 0008, 0375, and 0169.

• If you use the IDoc BENEFIT2 instead of BENEFIT3, you also do not need to track changes in the infotypes 0168, 0170 (USA only), 0377, and 0379.

Change documents are set up in the Personnel Administration Implementation Guide under Tools ® Revision ® Set Up Change Document.