Create and Send Benefit Enrollment Forms with the PDF Form Builder

This guide outlines the process for using the PDF Form Builder to send enrollment data to carriers. It includes a table of contents covering key steps: reviewing carrier and benefit plan details, uploading a form, adding predefined data fields, saving the form, downloading it, and sending it to carriers. The PDF Form Builder allows administrators to configure carrier-specific forms and automatically populate them with employee data from BambooHR. Users can manage fields for employees, dependents, and plans, and utilize e-signatures for legal compliance. Important considerations include saving changes during form setup and downloading forms in manageable batches to avoid errors. The document concludes with instructions for sharing completed forms with carriers.

  • Jul 6, 2026
  • Knowledge

Title
Create and Send Benefit Enrollment Forms with the PDF Form Builder
Article Text
Benefits Administration is only included as an add-on.

How can I send enrollment data to my carriers through the PDF Form Builder?

Purpose: This guide will provide information about how to utilize the PDF Form Builder to send enrollment data to your carriers for data processing.

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Table of Contents

The PDF Form Builder in Benefits Administration allows you to configure your carriers' specific forms as a template in BambooHR. After approving your employees' benefit elections, use the template to download your employees' demographic and enrollment data directly onto it. You can then send the downloaded forms to your carriers through email or upload to your carrier's SFTP.

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Step 1: Review carrier and benefit plan details.

We recommend you first review with your broker and carriers the details of their export requirements to ensure what you have set up in Settings > Benefits meets their expectations.

Carriers

On the Carriers tab, you can manage and review your carrier information. To learn more about how to configure your carrier settings, click here.

Benefit plans

On the Plans tab, view your benefit plans and make sure everything looks correct, including the following fields:

  • Plan Name*
  • Carrier*
  • Group Number*
  • Plan Type*
  • Plan Type ID

*Required fields

This help guide provides in-depth information on how to manage benefit plans in Benefits Administration. 

Plan years

Review your plan years on the Plan Years tab. If a plan year has missing employee, dependent, and/or company data, click Update Missing Info (blue hyperlink) in the Employee Elections column. Updating required information helps ensure data accuracy before you use the PDF Form Builder to send enrollment data to your carriers. To learn more, click here.

Step 2: Upload a form to the PDF Form Builder.

The PDF Form Builder allows admins to upload a carrier-specific PDF enrollment form as a template in BambooHR. To upload your carrier form (PDF file), navigate to Settings > Benefits > Carrier PDFs. On the Files tab, select Upload Carrier PDF.

The Upload Files modal will appear, and this is where you can either drop files to upload or click Choose Files. 

To begin adding data fields to the form, hover over the file name and click on the gear icon. From the dropdown menu, select Setup Form.

If a custom access level user (e.g., benefits administrator or broker) has access to Settings > Benefits and needs to set up a form, you can grant them access to Request Signatures and Set Up Templates under Company Files within the custom access level settings.

Step 3: Add predefined data fields.

When you download the form for a specific enrollment window for one or more employees, any fields you have added to the form (including a signature field) will be automatically populated with the employee's data in BambooHR.

Keep in mind that this feature differs in some ways from our e-signature feature as employees do not need to fill out the form manually.

Under "Data Fields" in the Carrier Form Setup section, there are three categories you can choose from. When you click on one of these categories, additional data fields will appear. 

  1. Add Employee Info: Employee fields
  2. Add Dependent Info: Dependent fields
  3. Add Plan Info: Plan fields

The fields you add to the form may have additional formatting options. Click here to learn more.

Fields

Employee fields

If you have added custom fields to the Job tab in BambooHR, you will be able to add those fields to the form when using the PDF Form Builder.

When adding employee fields, you can use the search bar to quickly find a specific field by name.

Dependent fields

 

If you are adding dependent fields to the form, you will need to determine the number of dependents the form can support (up to 15 dependents). Once you select a number, the system will add dependent fields under subsections named "Dependent 1," Dependent 2," and so forth.

Plan fields

When adding plan fields, you can use the search bar to quickly find a specific field by name. 

Most plan fields have a checklist requiring you to select which benefit plans are applicable for that field. The example above shows a benefit plan selection for the Effective Date field. This means the form will show the effective date for those benefit plans if the employee has enrolled in a selected plan.

Please note the details listed below about specific plan fields. 

  • Employee Signature
  • Effective Date
    • This field will show the effective date of the plan the employee has enrolled in.
  • Plan Start Date, Plan End Date, Qualifying Life Event Date
    • The date will appear in DD/MM/YYYY.
  • Group Number
    • This field will show a dropdown menu of all carriers you have in your account. Select the carrier and their group number.
  • Plan Name, Employee Enrollment Status, Relationship Enrollment Status
    • When an employee has an enrollment status of "Enrolled" or "Waived" for the selected plans in the checklist, the field will appear on the form. This also applies to a dependent field named Plan Name (D1).
  • Total Monthly Premium
    • This is a dollar amount representing the monthly premium set up in benefit plan settings or the total percentage of contributions.

If you find that you need to add fields that are not part of the PDF Form Builder, you can upload the form as a signature template in BambooHR and add the necessary fields. Note that a signature template will not have auto-populated fields like the PDF Form Builder. Instead, you will need to have those fields filled out manually. Click here to learn more about creating a signature template.

Formatting options for fields

Because different forms have different requirements, formatting options are available for fields in the PDF Form Builder. 

  • Text (default for most fields)
  • Checkbox (a checkmark for boxes)

Text 

The example above shows the text option selected for the Employment Status field. This means the employee's employment status (i.e., Full Time) in BambooHR will appear on the form upon download. 

Checkbox

Selecting Checkbox will show a new dropdown menu with more options. You can place checkboxes for those options onto specific areas of the form.* Upon download, one or more of the options will be automatically populated according to the employee's enrollment data. 

In the example above, the form shows "Hourly" with an empty checkbox. I added the Pay Type field and chose Hourly from the dropdown menu. A checkmark will appear upon download if the employee has the Hourly pay type.

If you do not include a specific option (i.e., Hourly) for a field (Pay Type), an employee with that option (Hourly) will not have that field (Pay Type) filled out on their form.

E-signatures

The PDF Form Builder has two e-signature fields: Employee Signature and Employee Signature Date. You can find these two fields under Add Plan Info > Plan Information. If you add an e-signature field and then download the form, the e-signature field will automatically pull the employee's e-signature from their completed enrollment experience. Each e-signature collected will store all necessary information for it to be legally binding. For more details, click here to view Section 16 of our Terms of Service.

Step 4: Save the form.

If you exit the form setup without saving it, any changes made during your current session will not be saved automatically. If you want to save changes, be sure to click Save Template so that you can go back and pick up where you left off.

After adding fields to the form, click Save Template at the bottom right of your screen to save the form with the fields and any changes you have added.

Step 5: Download the form.

An error message may appear if you download the form for many employees at one time. To avoid this error, download the form for 50-100 employees at a time.

After you approve your employees' benefit elections, their forms will be ready for download in Settings > Benefits > Carrier PDFs. Hover your cursor over the form name and click on the gear icon. From the dropdown menu, click Download Employee Forms.

Determine which enrollment window you want to download the employee forms for. The dropdown menu includes active and closed enrollment windows. 

Once you choose an enrollment window, a list of available employees will appear. Move over the employees you want to download benefit elections for to the Selected Employees area. Then, click Populate Forms. The system will then download the forms into a ZIP file onto your computer.

Note: The examples above show open enrollment windows from 2023 and 2024. The process is the same for all enrollment windows, regardless of year.

Ben Admin PDF Enrollments folder
Files

Account Owners and Full Admin users have automatic access to any files manually uploaded to the Ben Admin PDF Enrollments folder on the Files tab.

Edit Custom Access Level

If you need to grant a custom access level user access to the folder, follow these steps:

  1. Navigate to Settings > Access Levels.
  2. Select the custom access level.
  3. Click the gear icon on the right.
  4. Click Access Level Settings from the dropdown menu.
  5. Select Company Files under "What Can People with this Access Level Do?"
  6. Enable Ben Admin PDF Enrollments and then determine if their access to files within the folder should be View Only or Edit.
    • View Only: Can download and email a file (as an attachment or secure link).
    • Edit: Can download, email (as an attachment or secure link), delete, rename, and share a file with specific employees.
Step 6: Send the downloaded forms to your carriers.

To access the .zip file, click on the downloaded file or navigate to your downloads on your computer.  Opening the file will populate all employee forms, which you can now share with your carriers.

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