Release Date Rules

Rules for Calculating Release Dates

When you calculate an EBC result, the Interview Wrapup Release Date is based upon the cases within a household’s eligibility group.

The following rules are used to calculate release dates:

Important: A Full Employment Plan (FEP) status change takes precedence over all release dates once the TAFDC case is active. FEP supplements will release immediately and will be effective on the 23rd of the month.

• Single Cash or SNAP case within an Eligibility Group - if you are approving or denying a single case within an eligibility group within a household, the release dates will be determined as follows:
  • If there is a status change from pending to denied, the release date is the current system date.
  • If there is a status change from active to closed, the release date is based on the processing schedule available in the Reports Analysis & Protected Information Dashboards (RAPID). For instructions for using RAPID please see: RAPID Reports
  • If the status remains active, the release date will be based on the instructions contained in the section titled Ongoing Case Release Dates below.
• Cash case and SNAP case within an Eligibility Group Within a Household - When you process an eligibility change on a related Cash and SNAP case within an eligibility group within a household, the Cash case is calculated first.
  
  If you select all the transactions for EBC calculation for the Cash and SNAP case, the release date of the Cash case will be used as the release date for the SNAP case. The Effective date for the SNAP case is the first SNAP Benefit Issuance cycle following the release date. If another case action needs to be taken on either case with a separate release date, the requests must be selected separately. 
• Multiple Cash cases Within an Eligibility Group Within a Household - When you process eligibility changes within multiple Cash cases within an eligibility group within a household, the release date is based on the system date and the last number of the Social Security Number (SSN) for the multiple grantees. If another case action needs to be taken on either case with a separate release date, you must select the requests separately. 

  • Note: If you and another case manager are assigned to the multiple cases and both are trying to process transactions, you may have to delete another case manager’s request and reselect changes and reauthorize according to the ongoing case release date rules (see below).

• Pending and Active cases Within an Eligibility Group Within a Household - When you process an eligibility change on related active and pending cases and the change results in a reduction/closure in the active case causing a request to pend for ten days, a yes/no dialog box will display with the following message:
  
  “The calculation resulted in a change of status to a pending AU, and the change to an Active AU with a future benefit Effective Date. Because of the change to the Active AU, this request will have a future benefit release date using only the pending AU so that the pending AU can be released immediately?”

If you answer Yes:

1. The calculation will be rerun for only the selected pending case using the current (not pending) information for the active case.
   1. A message will display stating:
      “All AUs in the eligibility group will automatically be recalculated in Batch the night following the release of the pending AU.”
2. The pending request for the active case will be automatically recalculated in batch the night following the release of the pending case only request. This batch recalculation will be visible on the Interview Wrapup page under the program administration section as post split pending request.
   If you answer No:
3. The request will contain the Active and Pending cases and have a release date with the appropriate pending period.

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Ongoing Case Release Dates

The following release date rules apply to an ongoing single Cash or SNAP case, a related Cash case and SNAP case and Multiple Cash cases. 

If there is one eligibility change and the change results in an:

• an increase, the release date is the current system date, or
• a decrease, the release date is based on the case processing schedule available in RAPID.

If you are processing two eligibility changes and both changes result in an increase, select only those whose EBC result would calculate the earliest benefit date and authorize that request. On the next day,  you must select the remaining actions and calculate a second EBC result which would calculate a different release date.

Note: If the transactions are not performed on separate days, BEACON will use the later release date.  To ensure the client receives accurate benefit amounts, you must wrap and authorize each change on separate days.

Example 1Example 1

If there are two eligibility changes with one resulting in an increase and the other is a decrease, you must:

• On Day 1: Select only those sections whose EBC results would calculate an increase in benefits and authorize that request.
• On Day 2: Select only those sections whose EBC results would calculate a decrease in benefits and authorize that request.

This two day process will ensure that the increase in benefits will release on day 1 and the negative transaction performed on day 2 will release according to the release date posted on the case processing schedule in RAPID. Performing these transactions on separate days will produce correct notices for each transaction.

If you are processing two eligibility changes and the changes result in separate decreases with the same release date, you must:

Combine and authorize the requests together. When the requests are combined, the notice will default to the notice hierarchy.

Example 2Example 2

Note: If a request is already pending and a second request is entered and selected, a pop-up message will be displayed stating:

“A request with a Status of Pending Release already exists with the same release date. Please either combine the selected changes of the two requests into one request or wait until the requests have a different release date before authorizing.”

When this message appears you must delete the original request (see Deleting a Request on the Interview Wrapup) combine the requests and reauthorize (see Initiating a New Request on the interview Wrapup). When the requests are combined, the notice will default to the notice hierarchy. A notice was already generated for the initial request.

If you are processing two eligibility changes and the changes result in separate decreases with different release dates you must authorize the requests separately. The two transactions do not need to be combined. These transactions would release based on the case processing schedule available in RAPID. The notices would be specific to the reason for each decrease.

Important: For all transactions entered, BEACON will always recalculate an EBC result in batch before releasing the new benefit amount. This process is necessary to include changes that may have permanently updated the database since the original calculation was performed. This process will not change the effective dates, re-pend any adverse action, or send out any new notices.

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Last Update: June 16, 2022