Since July 1, 1986 the Consolidated Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act (COBRA) has affected employers with 20 or more employees in the US with its health care continuation provisions. This well-intentioned and seemingly innocent law has evolved into a surprisingly complex area for employers. Recent growth in regulatory and enforcement activities has made COBRA a risky and potentially costly area of benefits administration.
COBRA Administrative Manager ® may help you stay on top of and comply with COBRA requirements.
What is it and how will it help HR professionals?
The COBRA Administration Manager ® is a WindowsTM based software program designed to maintain your company´s COBRA compliance. HR professionals, especially those involved in benefits administration, understand the necessity of maintaining compliance with COBRA. This product can help you with that task.
How does it work?
Before you can use the program, you must understand the contents of the COBRA legislation, your firm´s responsibilities and potential liabilities. The COBRA Administration Manager ® software package comes with a manual explaining COBRA legislation.
Immediately upon entering the program a "Things To Do List" pops-up and urges you to complete the tasks immediately. It will notify you when to send conversion notifications, terminate people for non-payment, enter new insurance rates and send COBRA completion letters.
There are four monthly reports are produced by the program documenting all aspects of the COBRA legislation:
§ The Qualifying Event Tracking Report
§ The COBRA Tracking Report
§ The Payment/Collections Report
§ The Termination Report
When a covered employee (and/or dependent(s)) experiences a "qualifying event" (you can refer to the manual for the criteria for a qualifying event), you enter them into the program. Unfortunately, all employee information must be manually inputted, since database information cannot be transferred.
As everyone is entered, the program creates a database of COBRA Qualifiers and Participants. The program then tracks and informs you of further COBRA responsibilities. Once a qualifier´s election period has passed, they are removed from the report/database.
A profile list illustrating COBRA participants, their specific "qualifying event", insurance plans, acceptance date, maximum COBRA time frame and completion date can be generated by this function.
This function enables you to create monthly invoices to assist with the collection of insurance premiums. The program offers two methods for collections; invoices and coupons (similar to a mortgage book coupon). As payments are received, they are entered into the participant´s file creating a record of all premiums, check numbers, and when they were received. Balances are carried forward to next month´s bill, allowing you to collect the correct premium each month.
This report details when a participant should be terminated from COBRA, ending your COBRA responsibility.
Competitors Others in this space are:
§ Solo COBRA Solutions
§ Travis COBRA for Windowsä
Customizable To meet various state requirements or corporate guidelines the program is entirely customizable.
Documentation/Manual A manual about COBRA legislation is provided with the software package to compliment the program.
Installation Downloading the demo required two simple steps - transferring the data to my computer and unzipping the file. Since the actual product comes in CD format, installation should not be difficult. Unfortunately, this company has not jumped on the bandwagon of providing their software through an ASP model (i.e. over the Web, with no installation or maintenance requirements).
Limitations The most noted limitation of the software is that it lacks a tutorial or help function to add clarity to required fields in the program.
Price $US295.00
Scalability The program is entirely scalable to meet the needs of a growing business. As well, the program allows for the creation of an infinite number of divisions and separate databases, for growing companies and companies with various locations.
Support Online support is provided through CSI´s new Customer Care Web site (www.csisupport.com), as well as through the telephone at (480) 831-6078. If you are going to use their Web site for support, you´ll need to be using Netscape 3.0 or higher, or Microsoft Internet Explorer 4.0 or higher, since the site uses frames, cookies and Java scripts.
System Requirements A PC 386 or higher, 4 MB of RAM, disk space with 3 MB of available memory, a graphics card and a WindowsTM Operating System (version 3.1 or higher) is required to run this program.
User Friendliness Once you understand basic COBRA requirements, this software is fairly simple to use. However, there are various statements or questions that require you to provide answers, such as "What if full-time student?" which were ambiguous. The software does not provide a tutorial or a help button to explain items such as these.
COBRA Solutions, Inc. (CSI) is a (somewhere) based provider of software for the HR environment. With over 7,000 COBRA Administration Manager clients and nearly 10 years in the business, CSI now offers software to deal with administering a firm´s cafeteria plan. Visit them at www.cobra-solutions.com.