Manage Benefit Plans

This guide provides instructions on managing benefit plans in BambooHR. It details how to view plan details, track enrollment, edit settings, duplicate, deactivate, or delete plans, and manage expired plans. Users can access benefit plans under Settings > Benefits > Plans, where they can filter by active or inactive status. Editing a plan involves selecting the plan name and modifying coverage, eligibility, and costs, while duplicating creates a copy for adjustments without affecting the original. Deleting a plan requires confirmation and removes all associated enrollments. Notifications are sent before a plan's expiration, and users can reactivate expired plans by updating settings or duplicating them. For new plans, additional resources are provided.

  • Jul 8, 2026
  • Knowledge

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Manage Benefit Plans
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This feature is included in the Core, Pro, and Elite packages.

This guide covers how to manage existing benefit plans in BambooHR. It explains how to review plan details, track enrollment information, edit plan settings, duplicate plans, deactivate or delete plans, and manage expired plans. 

If you need to set up a brand-new benefit plan, see Create a Benefit Plan in Benefits Tracking or Create a Benefit Plan in Benefits Administration, depending on which benefits feature you are using. 

Table of Contents

View benefit plans

Go to Settings > Benefits > Plans to see all benefit plans in your account. From this tab, you can quickly review plan status, eligibility, and enrollment progress, and take action when updates are needed. Plans are grouped by benefit type (medical, dental, etc.) to make them easier to find.

You can filter which plans appear by using the Showing dropdown. 

  1. Active plans: Currently available to employees
  2. Inactive plans: Plans that have ended
  3. All plans: Both active and inactive plans

Each row on the Plans tab gives you a snapshot of how a plan is being used.

  • Plan Name: Click a plan name to view or edit its settings.
  • Eligibility: Shows which employees are eligible based on the eligibility groups assigned to the plan
  • Status: Shows enrollment progress and highlights actions you can take
    • Enroll someone: No employees are enrolled. Select this link to open bulk enrollment to enroll multiple employees at the same time.
    • # Enrolled / # Not Enrolled or Waived: Some employees are enrolled in the plan while others are not enrolled or have been waived, and you can select this link to bulk update enrollment statuses if needed.
    • # Enrolled: All eligible employees are enrolled in the plan.
    • # Will be eligible when marked manually: Eligibility requires manual updates.
    • Plan setup incomplete: The plan is saved as a draft and needs completion.
    • Additional details needed: The plan has new fields that must be configured.
    • Inactive: Plan has ended but can be reactivated via the Reactivate link.

The additional tabs (Plan Years, Carriers, etc.) on the Benefits page are for BambooHR® Benefits Administration, which includes many more features and capabilities for tracking benefit information in BambooHR. If you are interested in learning more, click here.

Edit a benefit plan

Select a benefit plan name to open its details and make changes.

You can edit most plan settings, including coverage options, eligibility, and costs. When editing a plan, keep the following in mind: 

  • Start date: Once a plan’s start date has passed, or if deductions have already occurred, the start date cannot be changed. 
  • Eligibility groups
    • Eligibility groups based on employment status do not allow employees to be removed after the plan is added; you can only make additional employees eligible. 
    • Eligibility groups based on employment status cannot be deleted as well; to change eligibility, duplicate the benefit plan, create new eligibility groups, and move employees to the new plan.
    • For eligibility groups that use the Specific People filter, you can add or remove employees and delete the group, as long as it is not the first and only eligibility group set up for the plan.
  • Cost information: To update costs, go to the Eligibility and Cost step.
  • Coverage options: You can add more coverage options, but each option must include cost information. 

Be sure to save the plan after completing your edits to apply the changes.

When deciding whether to continue editing a plan or create a new one, consider how the changes affect costs and employees’ enrollment history. Extending an existing benefit plan versus creating a new benefit plan depends on how benefits work without your provider. In general, it is best practice in BambooHR to create a new benefit plan if you are updating employee and/or company costs. If your costs are not changing, you can usually extend the plan’s end date instead. The following outlines how each option affects employee enrollment and benefit history.

  • Extending an existing benefit plan: Employee enrollments stay the same, and no new entry is added to the Benefit History table.
  • Creating a new plan: Employees must be re-enrolled manually or through bulk enrollment, and a new entry is added to the Benefit History table.

Duplicate a benefit plan

From Settings > Benefits > Plans, hover over the plan you want to copy, then select the duplicate icon next to the plan name. 

Duplicating a benefit plan creates a copy of the plan and its settings, which you can updated as needed before saving. The copied plan includes the original plan's settings. 

Duplicating a plan is helpful when you need to adjust eligibility rules, coverage options, or costs without affecting the original plan.

Delete a benefit plan

From Settings > Benefits > Plans, hover over the plan you want to delete, then select the trash icon. 

A confirmation window appears. Here, type DELETE, then click Yes, Delete Plan to remove the plan.

Deleting a benefit plan removes the plan entirely, unenrolls all employees, and removes the associated deduction.

If you use BambooHR® Payroll, you cannot delete benefit plans that have enrollment history. Instead, you can update the plan's end date to deactivate the plan. 

Manage expired plans

When a benefit plan is expiring soon, the Account Owner, Full Admins, and any custom access level users with access to Benefits receive an email notification 30 days and 10 days before the plan's end date. 

If the end date is not extended, the plan becomes inactive, and all employees are unenrolled. You can extend a plan's end date if there are no changes to plan settings from Settings > Benefits > Plans.

To view expired benefit plans, go to Settings > Benefits > Plans and change the Showing filter to show inactive plans. From there, you can reactivate an expired plan in one of the following ways:

  • Duplicate the expired plan, the update the plan's settings, including start and end dates.
  • Select the expired plan name, update the end date to a future date, review each step to confirm settings, and then save the plan.
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