Benefits - Payroll Onboarding

The article provides a comprehensive guide for completing the Benefits module in payroll onboarding. It outlines essential steps, including setting up benefit plans, enrollment details, dependents, and deductions. The Benefits module is critical for Payroll customers, as it integrates deductions into payroll processing. The article emphasizes the importance of adding benefit plans to BambooHR and maintaining year-to-date information. It also highlights the need for accurate payroll deductions and offers resources for additional training. Users can access a Payroll Deductions Summary report to verify deductions and ensure employees are enrolled in the correct benefit plans. Lastly, it notes the fee associated with garnishment payments processed through BambooHR.

  • Jul 8, 2026
  • Knowledge

Title
Benefits - Payroll Onboarding
Article Text
Part of Payroll that is an add-on feature.

How do I complete the Benefits module in payroll onboarding?

Purpose: The purpose of this guide is to explain the required payroll steps and tasks you will need to complete within the Benefits module of onboarding.

For more information about general onboarding/implementation, click here. For more information about Payroll-specific modules of onboarding, click here.

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Table of Contents:

Benefits

The Benefits module is required if you are a Payroll customer as deductions are part of processing payroll. You will work through the following steps and their associated tasks:

  1. Intro
  2. Benefit Plans
  3. Enrollment Details
  4. Dependents
  5. Deductions
  6. Administrators

Each task will provide you with the information necessary to correctly set up your benefits. You can find more information about setting up your payroll deductions in the following section.

Benefit Plans

Would you like to enroll in one of our BambooHR learning courses to learn more about benefits in BambooHR? 

In order for your benefits to be deducted from employees’ paychecks, they first need to be added to BambooHR under settings. Year-to-date information is also important to us, so any benefit plans that have been paid in the current calendar year must be added to the Benefits section of BambooHR.

Here are some helpful guides on how to set up benefits with BambooHR Payroll enabled:

Please note that we will not deduct and payout any benefits from your benefit plans in BambooHR settings. We will only withhold the benefit amounts from employee paychecks. You are responsible for paying out your providers from the amount we help you withhold from your employees. 

Benefit deduction date settings

Benefit eligibility and the corresponding deductions rarely begin on the same day. For this reason, you have the option to select from which pay period the benefit deductions will get withheld when an employee first enrolls in the benefit plan.

Review payroll deductions

The Payroll Deductions Summary report will help you verify your benefit and non-benefit deductions for all employees. 

If employees are missing deductions, please take the time to enroll them in the appropriate benefit plans, or you can also enter this information manually right from an employee profile. You may want to work with your current benefits administrator to collect the current benefit enrollment information for all employees.

Non-benefit deductions

You will also want to add any applicable non-benefit deductions to the employee's Pay Info tab. These include things like tax levies, child support, loan repayments, garnishments, etc. Click Yes > Open Employee Profiles > Employee Name > Pay Info > Deductions  to enter this information manually.

If you want BambooHR to pay any garnishments on your behalf, you will want to make sure you have this set up in your BambooHR Settings > Payroll > Garnishment Payments. When you check the applicable garnishments, the system will know to ask you for any payee information when you add a garnishment to your employees’ profiles.

Note: BambooHR Payroll charges a $4 fee per garnishment per pay period that we collect and pay.

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