Maintaining Affordable Care Act compliance is top of mind for people all over the United States.
Maintaining Affordable Care Act compliance is top of mind for people all over the United States.The Affordable Care Act’s objective is to make health insurance accessible and affordable to more Americans. Right now, 50 million Americans—16% of the population—are uninsured. The goal sounds simple, but for businesses, the reality is anything but. Case in point: Affordable Care Act employer mandates were delayed a year, to give businesses more time to prepare.
If you’re like many employers, you’re struggling to understand how the Affordable Care Act healthcare reform affects you, what your obligations and options are, and what your next move should be. And if you manage a complex labor environment, it gets even trickier. One of the main areas that leaves employers vulnerable to Affordable Care Act penalties comes from not properly tracking employees' time.
Maintain Affordable Care Act Compliance by Avoiding These Top 3 Time Tracking Pitfalls
Employers will find it difficult to achieve Affordable Care Act compliance if they continue to:
1. Use paper time sheets. Why? Because their primary records aren’t credible, and compiling integrated documentation will require hours of admin time.
2. Fail to track 100% of their workforce. Some workers, such as scattered employees, require special tracking solutions. If employers don’t start using these, they’re opening themselves up to penalties.
3. Define ‘full-time’ as a 35 or 40 hour week. Often, employers keep part-timers’ hours just under their full-time threshold. But if the total adds up to more than 30 hours, employers will find themselves with ‘accidental’ full-time employees who must be offered health insurance.
These are just a portion of the practical strategies for containing costs while achieving Affordable Care Act compliance.
Download EPAY’s free Affordable Care Act Compliance Playbook to learn:
- Concrete steps for proactively reducing Affordable Care Act premium and admin costs
- How to handle the new reporting requirements and avoid IRS penalties
- What habits your managers may need to change
- Time tracking habits to properly keep hours