Recent Topics
Weekdays with Bernie General Session Speaker - Arnie Malham
We’re excited for Weekdays with Bernie 2023—and Arnie Malham is too! With 20 years of experience as a CEO, entrepreneur, and best-selling author, Arnie will be sharing tips and tricks on how to create a strong company culture. Check out our HR Party of
Election PDF: Insurer
It would be very helpful to have the insurer listed on the Election PDF.
Rounding on Voluntary Life
We need the ability to round the VTL coverage to the nearest $500 or $1,000 (varies by carrier) in order for payroll deductions to be accurate in the system. Ex. An employee's voluntary life reduces to $16,250 of coverage. We work with a carrier that
What's the story with Benefit Booklets?
From the Broker Service Team side (Benefits/Booklets) I can export a Benefit Booklet for any of our clients. I wasn't here when this feature was setup and, though there are improvements I'd love to see, I can edit it to easily create a resource for our
BerniePortal Email
A way to view emails that have been sent out of BerniePortal. Both content and dates. For Example, Welcome emails, Open Enrollment Welcome and Open Enrollment Reminders.
EOI & BernieBill
It would be nice if Guardian, Unum, and One America would approve EOIs in BerniePortal when an employer is on BernieBill rather than the employer having to keep track of those and update them in BerniePortal.
1094/1095 Subgroup Configuration
1094-C: Idea to have this section saved from year to year rather than having to fill it out each year. 1095-C: It would be nice to have an all or copy section of benefits subgroups rather than having to configure each benefits subgroup separately.
Voluntary Life Elections
Please change the "slider" bar for electing limits on Vol Life to a drop-down menu instead. We have multiple groups that end up fixing employee elections because either the slider bar did not work for the employee, or they did not understand how it works
Adding Qualifying Event Dates
When an employees account is unlocked due to a qualifying event, would it make more sense to have the employer enter the qualifying event date instead of the employee? If an employee is past their window when they go in to make changes they could put
Reinstatement should still prompt emails to service team
If an employer terminates an employee by mistake, uses the Reinstate option and chooses Made Mistake as the reason, an email notification to the service team regarding the reinstatement is not sent. This results in coverage being cancelled with the carrier
Approving EOI needs field to Amount Approved
We need to be able to change the amount when approving an EOI. An employee may apply for $300,000 and after underwriting review may be approved for $200,000 instead. We need to be able to put in the amount approved when processing the EOI.
Suggested Reports - Awaiting Elections & Outstanding Compliance
This week I’ve encountered a need the following two reports within our groups: Awaiting Elections - I’ve created a custom report but it still requires filtering out those that have completed their elections (sorting the medical election to blank cells).
Allow different notification settings for Admins vs Employees.
Our Agents and the HR Admins like having the carrier forms attached as it simplifies communication with the carriers. We would prefer to limit the PHI that goes out in email, so we'd prefer to have employees receive only their Election PDF when they complete
Weekdays with Bernie General Session Speaker - Colene Rogers
We’re excited for Weekdays with Bernie 2023—and Colene Rogers, founder & CEO of Retention Architects, is excited too! Visit Nashville, TN, to hear specialist Colene Rogers’ strategies for recruitment and retention. Check out our HR Party of One video
Add Tier to Most Recent Elections Report
There can be confusion when an employee doesn't select the same tier across all plans, it would be useful to have the coverage tier listed on this report to avoid errors.
Applicant Tracking
Some employers are required to keep records of all employees that applied for a specific job. Currently, if an applicant applies for a position and is ultimately considered or hired for another position there is not a way to move\copy the applicant to
State Withholding Forms
It would be helpful to be able to assign a new state withholding form to an employee that moves, without having to delete the original state withholding form. The original form will be needed for record keeping purposes.
Election PDF's
It would be very helpful to be able to pull PDFs by the Primary Billing Subgroups. We have a client with over 800 employees and 19 different locations. Each location is set up with their Billing Subgroup...which is their Location Code. The Feature admins
Weekdays with Bernie 2023 Keynote Speaker - Johnny C. Taylor
Weekdays with Bernie 2023 is coming in April, and our keynote speaker, President and CEO of SHRM Johnny C. Taylor, is excited to see you there! Check out our HR Party of One video where Johnny shares a special message highlighting what you can expect
EOI on Children
We need the ability for the EOI to be required on children in some instances. Not all insurers automatically approve children VTL or Critical Illness. Some require them to complete EOI before each child can be approved if they declined coverage when
Add a functionality to map termination/COBRA forms when an employee is terminated
Would be extremely helpful to have BP generate a mapped termination form/COBRA form when an employee is terminated. This form would include information like the termination date.
PTO Calendar
When the admin clicks on the employee name in the PTO calendar it would be helpful to see the PTO type approved instead of a list of all approved time. This would reduce the need to scroll through multiple types of PTO to find the type of time the employee
Weekdays with Bernie 2023 Keynote Speaker - Johnny C. Taylor
Weekdays with Bernie 2023 is coming in April, and our keynote speaker, President and CEO of SHRM Johnny C. Taylor, is excited to see you there! Check out our HR Party of One video where Johnny shares a special message highlighting what you can expect
Bernie Portal Link when sending reminder messages
BerniePortal should include a clickable hyperlink to the login page when sending out enrollment reminders It would be extremely helpful/useful if they could click on a link that takes them right to BP when they get that email message. I understand I
Add the date Open Enrollment was opened/closed on the Open Enrollment screen
It would be helpful to have the date open enrollment was open and closed for a set of benefits easily viewable on the open enrollment screen. There have been a few times that I needed to know what date open enrollment was open and/or closed and can't
Allow Users to Type in the Date
Some modules of BerniePortal require users to click through a calendar to enter a date. For example: Hire Date when onboarding an employee If the date needed to be entered is far away, like if you need to enter a hire date for 03/01/1995, it is more efficient
Next Pay Date Under the Payroll Tab
It could be helpful to see the most recent & next pay date (and possibly pay periods) as soon as you land in the payroll section. As a user, I often check this page to confirm my next pay date, and showing it right at the top would be great. I've included
Show name of the actual person that made changes in Edit Mode or changes during Masquerade
Currently if a service team member or broker goes into Edit Mode for an account and makes any changes to an employee, the Election Sheet and reports show that the admin at the Employer made the change. It would be helpful to show exactly who went into
Waiver Reason for Dental and Vision
Currently BerniePortal only asks for the waiver reason for medical plans. It would be great if BerniePortal asked for the waiver reason for dental and vision plans too.
All Data Report or Custom Reporting
For payroll purposes it would be helpful for the items below to be included on the All Data Report or to be able to build a custom report to include. Expected Hours Per Week OT Exempt OT Factor Employment Status Hire Type
Manager Access
It would be helpful to allow managers access to employee profiles, and to only allow them to see the employees that report to them.
Provide a link instead of a PDF when employee enrolls in an amount above the GI
Right now, BerniePortal shows employees a downloadable EOI document when employees enroll above the GI on Vol life and CI plans. Some carriers want employees to submit EOI info on a web portal, so it would be nice if BP allowed employers to show a link,
Prior offer should be offered to rehires
As of now, BerniePortal only shows the prior offer to employees making initial elections (when their account is first added to BP,) Qualifying events and COBRA enrollees. Currently, rehires are not triggered for the prior offer when they are eligible
Import Enrollment Forms from Service Team Level
Currently, if an agency's Service Team Member maps an enrollment form, it cannot be imported into a group's form library from any other level. Could we make it so that forms can be imported from the Service team level to Employer level?
Employee Census Upload to include Phone Numbers and Employee ID numbers
I would love to be able to include the phone number and employee ID number on the initial census upload. Many times this information is provided on a census but still has to be manually keyed in
Easier/Quicker Access to Edit Mode
Most of the things we do on an account as a service team member (and possibly from the broker account as well) requires you to go into Edit Mode. It would be nice if there was a quicker way to get to Edit Mode for an account from the Employer List page.
When we search for an employee we need it to lead to the action wheel not the profile
When we search for an employee by name it opens to the employee profile now instead of the screen with the action wheel. We need easy access to the action wheel for most things such as termination, opening for qualifying event ect. Either that or put
Defined Contributions
We need a way to pick and choose what benefits apply to the Defined Contribution. For instance, I have a client who provides a Defined Contribution of $350 that applies to Medical, Dental and Vision, and $0 toward Vol Life, it would be nice to have a
W-4 Changes
Currently the system replaces the W-4 with the new information when an edit request is made. For compliance purposes it would be ideal to have each version of the W-4 completed kept in the personnel file area like the Benefit Election Sheets.
Enrollment Wheels
The Home page of an employer portal shows total enrollment by benefit type using the circle charts. It would be very handy if you could click on any of these "circles" and see who is or it not enrolled in a particular benefit.