Offering and managing employee benefits is an essential part of an HR manager’s job. The choice to offer benefits demonstrates a long-term investment in your workforce and provides a crucial service that your employees and their families may not be able to afford on their own. This is why so many companies now offer a diverse array of benefits with complex plans and contribution structures, with offerings ranging from traditional medical options combined with vision, dental, retirement, life, and disability options – to name a few.

However, with more plan offerings and benefits options comes more complex billing and reconciliation processing. Not only does this more complicated process take more time and energy from your HR team to manage, it also opens up more opportunities for mistakes – mistakes that can be costly.

 The Problem With Benefits Billing Reconciliation

The primary issue with employee benefits billing is actually group billing reconciliation. In other words, managing and maintaining a record of human resources discrepancies between the carriers’ payment cycles, payroll deductions and current enrollment records. To be frank, it’s an administrative nightmare. Here’s what happens:

An insurance carrier sends over an invoice to an employer, who, by the way, is most likely receiving multiple invoices from multiple carriers. Due to internal HR changes throughout the year – new employees, terminations, life events, etc. – there are inevitably discrepancies between the carrier invoice and what the client should actually be charged.  Other potential complications include the timeline for payroll, how employee benefits are paid, the timeline for carrier premium due dates, the number of carriers an organization works with, the billing methods each carrier uses, communication between carriers and organizations… the list of potential issues and pain points seems endless.

So, what are most employers doing?

Well, 50% are paying invoices as presented by carriers*. And, while the exact percentage of employer invoices that contain errors is hard to nail down, the fact that 80% of general medical bills contain errors is telling.

The remaining 50%*? Enter billing reconciliation.

Many organizations take the time to reconcile invoices against an HR system records before remitting payment. Thought this process is well worth the effort, it can lead to internal inefficiencies and delayed payments when handled manually, which can start to impact other areas of the business.

Though technology solutions do exist, the industry is just now catching up with the necessary integrations and partnerships to make the process easier. And, in many cases, company adjustments are still made via phone, email, or even via written notes on invoice communications. Yikes.

Investing in the necessary technology or, better yet, partnering with a technology solution provider is a surefire way to improve the accuracy of and control the cost of your employee benefits.

The solution? Outsourced benefits reconciliation and payment.

*Data via Pitney Bowes

Trust The Benefits Billing Experts

The decision to outsource benefits billing and reconciliation comes down to more than just eliminating an administrative headache. Partnering with an experienced benefits billing expert will mitigate the risk of billing errors and discrepancies, thus saving your company substantial money over time.