Understanding Links Between Plans and Benefit Categories

To streamline data entry when you enter benefit information for employees, you can link plans to categories within a benefit group. Benefit categories are groups of related types of benefit plans. For example, an organization might offer two medical plans, a traditional-style plan and an HMO. You can define a benefit category called Medical and link those two medical plans to that category.

You can link specific plans for each benefit, or you can link a plan with attached options. For example, you can set up a benefit category called Medical and link three plans to it:

• MED, for the employee only.

• MED+ONE, for the employee plus one other person.

• MED+FAM, for the employee and the employee's family.

Alternatively, you can set up a benefit category called Medical and link to it a single medical plan with options for the employee-plus-one and family coverages.

When you link plans to categories, you can also enter effective beginning and ending dates. The system supplies default dates to the employees' records when you enroll employees in a particular plan.