The Salary Explanation page provides an online form which allows you to electronically submit additional information if an employee’s reported earnings need further explanation.

You must provide a breakdown of the earnings to ensure allowable payments are included in the calculation of their pension benefit. 

If the employee has more than one employment instance with reported earnings that require further explanation, you must complete separate Salary Explanation pages for each instance.

If you do not comply with our requests, NYSLRS will calculate the employee’s retirement benefit without final payment and service information, which may result in a reduced pension benefit amount.

How to Access the Salary Explanation Page

There are two ways to access an employee’s Salary Explanation page:

From the Notification

1. From Account Homepage, go to Notifications panel.
2. Click View All link to see a list of notifications, or click Search Notifications link to search by NYSLRS ID, date or type.
3. Select Explanation of Employee Salary notification for employee.
4. In notification, click Employer Salary Explanation link.

From the Search Page

1. From Account Homepage, go to I want to section.
2. Click Submit Salary Explanation link.
3. On Salary Explanation Search Page:

• Complete fields to search for a specific employee.
• Leave fields blank to see a full list of employees.

4. In search results, click anywhere in a row to go to employee’s Salary Explanation page.

What You Need to Do

The earnings you previously reported for the employee will prepopulate on the Salary Explanation page, and each table will provide the Total Earnings Amount reported for a Payroll End Date.

For Each Payroll End Date (Table)

• The employee’s earnings must be broken down by the type of pay, and in some cases, by the dates when the employee earned the specified pay.
• For each row that populates in the table, review the information and make adjustments.   
• When making adjustments, all earnings must add up to the Total Earnings Amount shown.
• Add rows to separate earnings information out and complete all editable fields—do not leave any fields blank. (Note: When you add a row, the Earned Begin Date and Earned End Date fields are disabled initially. If you select an Earnings Type that requires the dates the employee earned the specified pay, the Earned Begin Date and Earned End Date fields will become editable.)
• Delete a row if it is not needed. However, if only one row prepopulates, do not delete the row.

You can save your progress and return to the page later to finish filling out the fields or making adjustments. Once complete, you must select the checkbox to certify that the information is true and accurate, then submit the information to NYSLRS. Once submitted, the page will become read-only. If there’s an error, you will need to contact NYSLRS to request changes.

Guides and Resources

How-To Guide

For step-by-step instructions, refer to the Salary Explanation How-To Guide.

Interactive Tutorial

For an explanation of the fields on the page, use this interactive tutorial:

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