When using BambooHR®Payroll, only certain benefits-related settings will automatically sync to Payroll.

If you already have your benefit plans set up in BambooHR, you will see a migration modal when first navigating to Benefits settings after having the payroll integration enabled. You will need to go through and determine the deduction schedule for each benefit plan type.

In the Plan Details step, the Plan Type field requires a selection for the following benefit plan types. Options will vary based on the benefit plan type:

• Retirement
• Supplemental Health
• Flex Spending Account (FSA)
• Disability
• Other

When entering costs for employees included in Payroll, any employees with an assigned pay schedule that syncs with Payroll are required to have monthly costs listed in USD. If the plan uses another currency, it will not appear as an option in the Benefits Overview table for those employees.

If you are setting up a 401(k), Roth 401(k), or 401(k) After Tax retirement plan, you will also have the option to enable a Safe Harbor matching contribution for the plan. If enabled, the contribution amounts will automatically adjust to Safe Harbor rules during each payroll run. Please note that this setting will apply to all current and future 401(k) and 401(k) Roth plans and automatically update those plans’ settings. You must reset your payroll for these changes to reflect on an open payroll run.

When using Payroll, the following fields will appear in addition to the standard fields in the Payroll Deduction step:

1. Is the Payroll Deduction pre-tax or post-tax?: If the plan is pre-tax, the option to identify if the plan is reportable on the W-2 (as shown above) will appear. This option will only appear on health or supplemental health plans. If you are creating an FSA plan, options for this field will be Dependent Care Purposes or General Healthcare Purposes.
   • If you have an existing (active or inactive) benefit plan set to pre-tax, and it needs to be post-tax, you need to end the plan and create a new one that will accurately reflect the change in deduction type. This is to protect against affecting historical payroll records adversely. To make a change to the payroll deduction, you will need to end the plan by entering today's date in the Plan Ends field, creating a new plan as post-tax, and then migrating the enrollments through the bulk enrollment tool.
2. Reportable on the W-2?: Check the box if this plan is reportable on the W-2. This question will not appear when setting up supplemental plans with pre-tax deductions.
3. When should this benefit deduction start in payroll?: Determine when the first payroll deduction should happen once an employee is enrolled in this plan. This setting will also define when the last deduction occurs after an employee is unenrolled from a plan, but the last deduction will be the one before the one indicated in the rule. Click here for more details.
4. Does this benefit deduction happen every paycheck?: Check if this deduction happens every paycheck or not. If it skips some paychecks, you will need to determine below how often the deduction should be taken out. Please note the warning that if the deduction needs to skip some paychecks, you will need to manually suppress the deductions on the paychecks you want to skip when running payroll.

If you have payroll history tied to a benefit plan, you will only be able to enter an end date in the plan's settings to preserve the data history.

If the plan does not have payroll history, simply hover your cursor over the plan and click on the trash icon that appears to the right. Deleting benefit plans will remove all ability to manage that deduction, and employees will automatically be unenrolled from the plan.

When using BambooHR Payroll and Benefits together, there are a few best practices to be aware of as you manage your old and new plans. To keep your historical deduction data clean, we recommend recreating new plans each year. If a plan is staying the same from year to year, we still recommend ending the current plan and duplicating the plan with the same information. The following steps show how you can duplicate or create a new plan for a new coverage period.

You can duplicate an existing benefit plan by hovering your cursor over the plan and clicking on the duplicate icon. This will take you to a pop-up modal that asks you if you are recreating a plan for next year's open enrollment. If yes, choose the first option to have the plan recreated/duplicated. Note that the plan selection dropdown menu is automatically populated with the name of the plan you are duplicating. This is a helpful way to continue a benefit plan year to year, especially for open enrollment.

Clicking Continue to Duplicate Plan will copy over the plan details from the previous year, but you will be able to change the start date and end date, as well as make any additional necessary changes. However, there are some limitations to what settings you will be able to edit (see table below).

Once you save the new plan, you can use the bulk enrollment tool to enroll your employees in the new plan.

You can also create a new plan by clicking +Add New Plan. Please note that when you select +Add New Plan and select the plan type, if an active plan already exists within that type, you will see the same modal that pops up in the plan duplication process (as shown above). If you want to recreate an existing benefit plan and edit its settings for the new year, simply select the plan type* and then choose the existing benefit plan from the dropdown menu.

The following settings are not editable when copying over an existing plan by clicking Continue to Duplicate Plan or Continue to New Plan. If you need to edit those settings, we recommend choosing the second option in the pop-up modal to create an entirely new plan.