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BN - Benefits Billing Enrollment
GENERAL DESCRIPTION:
Procedure 15270 explains how to create and remove an enrollment of an employee into benefits billing. The employee is personally paying premiums for insurance benefits via check, money order or cash. Two examples when an employee may be personally paying premiums:
- Employees off payroll on leave of absence
- Employees has insufficient earnings to cover benefit premiums
- Benefits Billing needs to be set up for employees who fall under one of the following conditions:
- Employee can only be enrolled in Benefits Billing for benefit plans in which they have elected. See BN - Review Benefit Enrollments
- Employee or department notifies benefits administrator of a pending leave and has submitted the LOA Checklist.
- Employee has insufficient earnings to cover benefit premiums.
- Prepay was not taken correctly for short work break.
- Employee was laid off and elected to use sick leave credit to continue their state group health.
- Employee missed premium deduction due to termination/retirement.
- Each month the benefits billing statements are produced and mailed by the UWSC Benefits billing, payments are due by the 10th of the following month. If payment is not received by the end of the following month, the insurance(s) will be cancelled.
PROCESS EXCEPTIONS:
University Insurance Association Life Insurance (UIA) is an annual $24 deduction for eligible FA/AS/LI employees taken in October. UWSA HR and the UWSC oversee the UIA eligibility verification process. Institutions should not create UIA charges in benefit billing. Institutions should make sure that all FA/AS/LI employees on a LOA are entered into HRS in Job Data timely, so that they will be identified in the eligibility process. UWSA HR will issue a letter and invoice in October to employees on LOA giving them until December 1st to make payment. If payment is made, the UWSC will create an October benefit billing charge and allocate the payment. The UIA enrollment will be updated by the UWSC. The is no enrollment opportunity when the employee returns from LOA.
Individual and Family Group Life Insurance (I&F) allows for premiums waivers in the case of medical LOA. There is a 6-month waiting period for the premium waiver to begin. If the employee terminates prior to meeting the 6-month waiting period the employee will need to continue to make payments until the premium waiver period has been met. Please work with UWSA HR benefits@uwsa.edu. They will forward an e-mail to the UWSC Benefits team to update the employee’s Life Insurance enrollment in HRS and to set up the benefit billing charge. When a decision on the waiver is received, HRS will be updated by the UWSC.
State Group Life Insurance (SGL) and Income Continuation Insurance (ICI) allows for premium waivers in the case of medical LOA. While the premium waiver request is being reviewed by the plan vendor(s), the employee must continue to pay the monthly premiums until a decision is made. If payment is not made, the employee will forfeit any benefits that may be approved through the premium waiver. If the premium waiver is approved, the plan vendor will send written notification to the institution. The institution is responsible for entering the premium waiver on the employee’s Life Insurance and/or Disability Insurance enrollment record in HRS through an ADM event. When the waiver has ended, the vendor will send a new notification to the institution. The institution is responsible for updating the employee’s Life Insurance enrollment record and/or Disability Insurance enrollment record in HRS. The benefit billing enrollment may stay active during the waiver period and the system will generate a 0.00 charge.
Worker’s Compensation: If there is a delay in the determination of the WC claim, the employee will only be eligible for employer share towards SGH and ICI for the additional 3 months. If later the WC claim is approved, the employee will be reimbursed the premium difference. If they select to lapse the coverage while the WC determination is being made, they will not be able to reinstate the coverage until the LOA is deemed over.
BENEFITS BILLING ELIGIBLE PLANS:
PROCEDURE STEPS: ENROLLING
Before setting up the enrollment, please review the following information:
- Review the Arrears screen to verify no payroll deductions were missed thus creating a balance in the arrears. If an arrears balance has been created, contact the UWSC to adjust.
- Payroll for North America > Periodic Payroll Events USA > Balance Reviews >Arrears
- For quick review of the benefits the employee has refer to the Current Benefits Summary screen. Use this screen to key your benefit billing enrollment from.
- Benefits > Review Employee Benefits > Current Benefits Summary.
- For quick review of the last deductions taken refer to the Review Paycheck query (UW_BN_REVIEW_PAYCHECK_PUB). This allows you to know which billing periods to set up. You may also submit a WISCIT and request a full reconciliation to be done by the UWSC BERT team.
- Reporting Tools > Query > Query Viewer > Review Paycheck query
- Click on Benefits > Benefits Billing > Manage Acct Status and Balance > Enroll in Billing
- Enter employee's Empl ID
- Click Search
- If Enrolling for First Time: Click the look-up icon for Plan Type and select the plan the employee should be enrolled in. (i.e., State Group Health is Plan Type 10.)
- If you need to additional benefit plans added for the employee click the "+" sign in the Billing Enrollment Details section to add a new row. Once row is saved, it will not allow you to minus existing benefit plans. Minus (-) button is how a benefit plan is removed on initial setup for an incorrect Benefit Plan.
- COBRA Event ID defaults to "0". Do not change.
- Enter the Effective Date (mm/dd/yyyy).
- The Effective Date should be set to the first of the month that the deduction would have taken from payroll. (i.e., an employee will not be on payroll for June 2016. The effective date for benefits billing will be 06/01/16 for July coverage.)
- Leave the Billing Status default of "Active."
- If you need to change the amount to be billed in a future month, add a new row by clicking the "+" sign in the Deduction Calculation per Billing Period section to create any future effects to this billing record (i.e. to activate or inactive billing for a particular effective dated period). Once row is saved, it will not allow you to minus existing benefit plans.
- Select the Billing Reason to appropriate reason for why the employee has to be setup in Benefits Billing. Reference: Billing Reasons.
- Choose the correct Calculation method.
- Percent Calculation = 100% of Employee Rate: will charge the employee their regular deduction rate that would be calculated by payroll. Or Percent Calculation = 100% of Total Rate: will charge the full benefit premium; used on fourth month of LOA for SGH, and will be what used for plans that do not have Employer Contribution.
- The system auto chooses "Total Rate" for specific benefit plans because some plans require employees to pay total rate. There is no employer share in these situations.
- Flat Amount - Employee Share = Fill in specific amount to be billed; used for coverage changes or partial payments that are needed
- Employer Amount - Employer Share = Fill in specific amount to be billed; used for coverage changes or partial payments that are needed
- Repeat above steps to enroll the employee in all of the benefit plans they are to be billed for.
- Click Save to save this benefits billing record.
BEST PRACTICES:
- If the employee is on LOA using Leave Without Pay and will be out for more than three months, you should enter a new row to change from 100% Employee Rate to 100% Total Rate on the fourth month during initial setup to ensure employee gets a bill for the full premium on their fourth month of LOA.
- NOTE: Be careful to follow the policy guidelines for C basis academic staff relating to summer recess.
- Once your enrollment has been saved and you later determine the enrollment needs correction, you will need to contact the UWSC Benefits Billing to request that correction. (i.e. you initially set the enrollment to be effective 06/01/2016 and determine several months later the enrollment should have started 05/01/2016.)
- When setting up past billing periods, we suggest that you allow the system to create the old charges during the “invoicing week” when we are calculating charges. This will avoid inaccurate charges being entered. The system will create charges for each insurance back to the last “Inactive” Billing Period. You will want to verify the charges are correct on the Monday of “invoicing week” - see Benefit Billing Processing Schedule
PROCEDURE STEPS: INACTIVATING
1. Click the Benefits > Benefits Billing > Manage Account and Balance > Enroll in Billing
2. Enter employee's Empl ID
3. Click Search.
4. Click the plus button in the Deduction Calculation per Billing Period section
5. Enter the appropriate Effective Date (always the first of the designated month)
- If the last billing period that needs billed is 1606, the effective date would be 07/01/2016.
6. Set the Billing Status to “Inactivate”.
7. Leave the Billing Reason to what it defaulted to (should be the same as the row previous.)
8. Leave percent calculation and percentage amounts as is.
9. Click Save and the employee's benefits billing record will be inactivated
