To import your Social Security earnings, please follow this step-by-step process:
- Go to the Social Security Administration website and create an account if you don't already have one
- Log in using your SSA user name and password and go to 'Earnings Record'
- Select all (not just the data) on the Earnings Record page using Ctrl-a on your keyboard (Mac users: Use Command-a)
- Copy to the clipboard using Ctrl-c (Mac users: Use Command-c)
- Click your mouse in the text box below and then paste your earnings data using Ctrl-v (Mac users: Use Command-v)
- Scroll down and click the 'Import SSA Earnings Record' button. Your data will be imported and you will be returned to the 'Past Covered Earnings' screen.
Social Security prohibits you from logging on to another person's account, even if you have that person's permission. If you are assisting another person with Maximize My Social Security, there are two options:
- If the person is with you, they can log on to their Social Security account and retrieve their past covered earnings from the Earnings Record page on the Social Security site. They can then import their information into Maximize My Social Security by copying and pasting according to the instructions above.
- They can send their information to you, either in an email or as an attachment, after they have logged onto the Social Security site and retrieved their past covered earnings according to the steps above. Note: the email or attachment must be in plain text format. Emails cannot be HTML or rich text format and attachments cannot be word processor documents or PDFs. Attachments can be text files created in NotePad on PCs or TextEdit on Macs. You can then copy and paste the information into Maximize My Social Security and click the 'Import SSA Earnings Record' button
Most problems are due to not correctly selecting the data. Be sure to copy and paste the entire Earnings Record from SSA, not just the table of earnings. To select the entire Earnings Record, use Ctrl-a to "Select All", then use Ctrl-c to Copy, then click your mouse in the import box below and use Ctrl-v to paste the data.
Once you have copied your data into the box, please scroll to the top of the text box and make sure you see your name near the top. You should see all the text from the SSA page in the box and near the top it should say something like:
Skip to Content my Social Security [Your Name]
If you do not see that text near the top, you most likely did not copy the full page, or copied it wrong. Please try again.
If you're using a Mac, use the 'command' button instead of 'Ctrl' on your keyboard.
In either Mac or Windows, if you don't want to use the keyboard shortcuts, you can use the 'Select All', 'Copy' and 'Paste' commands in your browser's 'Edit' menu instead..