Most employee benefit changes in ExponentHR are communicated to the benefit carrier via automatic file feeds. However, some benefit carriers do not accept these file feeds for some or all of their plans. In these cases, the benefit plan transactions (any demographic or enrollment status changes) require you to make manual adjustments through the benefit carrier's Web portal. The Benefits Portal Management utility in ExponentHR notifies you when an employee completes one of these transactions and provides a list of changes for you to review and then manually process through the carrier's Web portal.
The notifications are sent via the Message Center whenever an employee enrolls, changes any field in, or terminates one of their benefit plans, but you can limit which fields trigger a notification, who receives the notification, or turn off notification for a specific plan (or plan group) altogether.
To help manage multiple plans that have the same carrier, you may bundle plans into plan groups to reduce the number of duplicate transactions. For example, if an employee changes their address, only one transaction is sent for the plan group rather than multiple transactions for each plan provided by the same carrier. As a result, you will only need to keep track of one manual adjustment in the carrier's Web portal.
During open enrollment, notifications are not sent because the transactions have not been completed. You must manually generate all transactions at one time after open enrollment ends.
Related Help Topics
Reviewing Benefit Plan Transactions