05 methods field entry
Jump to navigation
Jump to search
Methods of Field Entry
There are numerous types of data used within the micro-related fields that are eligible for selection. Employment, wages, tax rates, dates, comment codes, and ZIP codes all represent numeric data, yet they differ significantly in their appearance, and how they should be used for 040D parameter entry. Each type of data will be listed below, with tips on entry and formats of their appearance on the screen:
- Employment - In addition to the three months of employment (shown as MON1, MON2, and MON3), you can select the smallest employment value of a quarter (MIN-E), the largest employment of the quarter (MAX-E), or the average employment throughout the quarter (AME). Each of these is a six-digit value. You may use them interchangeably (comparing field-to-field), or you can compare any of these to a particular value or look for a range (inclusive or exclusive). Whenever you compare against a constant value, that constant will be displayed with the leading zeroes suppressed. For instance, if you are looking for current AME between 100 and 200 employment, the display would show the parameter line as “AME 2 = 100 200” (meaning 100 ≤ AMECQ ≤ 200).
- Wages - The standard wage fields include the total wages (TOTW), taxable wages (TAXW), and contributions (CTRB). In addition to these, the average quarterly wages (AQW) can be selected. As with employment, the fields can be compared against one another, or against distinct values. Also similar to employment wage fields, having the leading zeroes removed before the constants are displayed (100,000) is much easier to recognize as “100,000” than it is as “00000100000” (since total and taxable wage wages are 11-digit values). In addition, redisplayed wage constants will have commas and a leading dollar sign shown (e.g., “AQW P GE $25,000” would be the same as AQWPQ ≥ 25000).
- Tax Rates - The tax rate (TAXRT) is a percentage value. If you neglect to insert a decimal point, the system assumes that you are working with a whole percentage value on the tax rate. If, for example, you type “TAXRT 2 NE 3 8”, it will be redisplayed as “TAXRT 2 NE 3.000% 8.000%”. This is equivalent to saying, “select accounts with current-quarter tax rate either < 3% or > 8%, but ignore those within the 3%-8% tax rate range.” Note that tax rates are always displayed with the percentage character at the end of any constants.
- Dates - Date fields are stored as 8-digit numeric values. The first four digits are the year, the next two digits are the month, and the final two digits are the day of the month. So a date of April 13, 2018 would appear as 20180413. Date fields in the system include the initial liability date (LIAB), the end-of-liability date (EOL), the reactivation date (REACT), the setup date (SETUP), and the most recent physical location address change date (PLADT or PL-DT 11). Dates can be compared against each other, or against any given date or date range. A date constant can be entered in almost any form (mm-dd-yy, mm/dd/yy, yyyy/mm/dd, yyyymmdd, etc.). The one form that could be misinterpreted would be a yy/mm/dd or yy-mm-dd form. As an example, the above April 13, 2018 date, if entered as 18-04-13 (for 2018-Apr-13), would be interpreted as a dd-mm-yy format (i.e., 4/18/13 = April 18, 2013). Regardless of the form that you choose for entering the date, it will be displayed on the screen as mm/dd/yyyy (or 4/13/2018 for our sample date). Leading zeroes are removed from the displayed date (e.g., “3/1/2018” rather than “03/01/2018”).
- Broken out Fields - An example of this would be the Census ID (BLOCK, BL-ST, BLCTY, BLBLK, BLTRA, and BLTSF). Each of these would be treated as a string with values generally equaling a particular value (e.g. BL-ST = (local-state FIPS code), e.g., 43, for the make-believe state of Ohiowa, with postal abbreviation of “OA”).
- Other Fields - All other fields, whether stored as numeric, packed, computational, or text format, are selected and displayed as though they were straight text fields. The program will convert them into a displayable format, and then perform any comparisons based on the text-based data. The one exception to this rule has to do with the “contains” comparisons (with the “()” or “CT” code); these comparisons can only be used with text type fields (names and address fields and the like). They can’t be used to check for the text equivalent of various other types of data (longitude/latitude, computational, dates, etc.).
11 There are several fields that can be accessed by two different ID’s. The PLA change date here can be referenced by either “PL-DT” or “PLADT”; the data source code (used to indicate EDI employers among other things can be selected with “DATSO” or “EDI”). These alternative references are available for the convenience of the analyst, who may be used to different field ID’s.
Related Links
