Tracking Open Enrollment and Completing an Enrollment for an Employee

Purpose

Your broker configures open enrollment: the window, the offered plans, and the published package. Your job during open enrollment, and all year, is to make sure everyone who should enroll does, and to understand what each enrollment does to payroll. This article covers the enrollment dashboard through each phase of the cycle, completing an enrollment on an employee's behalf, and what happens after enrollment closes: non-responders, payroll deductions, and carrier files.

Who can do this: the Employer Administrator, and any user whose role includes Benefits access. Of the roles UZIO ships with, Benefit Admins have full Benefits access and can act on behalf of employees; HR & Benefit Support and Payroll Support can view the dashboard only. See Managing Users and Roles.

Open the dashboard

Go to Benefits > Enrollment Overview in the left navigation. Older documentation calls this page the Enrollment Dashboard. The home page also links to it from Your Action Needed as "Track your group enrollments". The cost view is the sibling page Benefits > Financial Overview.

The dashboard changes shape with the enrollment cycle. Before any benefit package has been shared it shows a single message: there is no enrollment data yet, come back once a package is shared.

Before the enrollment window opens

Once your broker has shared a package and set an open enrollment period, the dashboard shows the package overview:

• View Benefits opens the plans offered, with contribution and premium details.
• View Employees opens the employee list. Each row has an Action icon for individual management.
• Financial Overview shows Year-to-Date, Current, and Projected benefits cost. Financial data starts on the first day of the month after the coverage effective date. Before then the page is empty by design.

During the enrollment window

The Enrollment view shows two donut charts. The left one is each employee's enrollment status. The right one is plans selected or declined (enrolled benefits in dark gray, declined coverage in light gray). Click any status to see the employees in it.

The completion percentage for In Progress employees follows fixed milestones:

Categories your package does not offer are skipped, so the steps an employee passes through depend on your package. If the decision-support questionnaire is turned off for your company under Settings > Employer Preferences, employees skip that step too. See Managing Employer Preferences.

Also on this view:

• Plan drop-down. Pick a plan to see its details and who enrolled in it.
• Filter by Class, Work Location, Plan, or Medical Tier. Search for an employee by name.
• Export Data. Download the enrollment summary as a spreadsheet.
• Refresh. The dashboard does not update live. Click Refresh for the latest figures.

Complete an enrollment on an employee's behalf

Use this when an employee cannot complete their own enrollment: no portal access, a disability that needs assistance, or a deadline they cannot meet. Self-service is the norm; on-behalf is the fallback.

Before you start: you need an electronic signature on file in UZIO. The checkout step asks you to sign. If you have not added one, the portal prompts you to do so.

1. Open the employee's record from Employees and choose the action to act on behalf of the employee. You see the portal as the employee does.
2. Walk through the same election flow the employee would: confirm dependents, choose plans in each category, or decline.
3. At checkout, verify the details that go to the carriers, accept the terms, sign, and Submit Application. Your signature is recorded with the employee's name.
4. Use Exit Workflow to return to your own portal.

The enrollment shows as Submitted on the dashboard and syncs to payroll like any other. The same on-behalf route applies to life events; see Reporting a Life Status Change on an Employee's Behalf.

After the window closes

• Pending Coverage. Between the close of the window and the coverage effective date, the dashboard shows pending coverage details.
• Current coverage. Once coverage is effective the dashboard shows current coverage, plus three panels: REPORTS (commonly used benefits reports; see Accessing and Scheduling Reports), NEW HIRE (employees hired in the last 60 days) and STATUS CHANGE (life status change events in the last 60 days, one row per event).
• Financial Overview. Your Benefits Cost by Benefit, Work Location, Class, and Division (where your census specifies divisions), with month-by-month detail per category.
• Two plan years at once. When your broker shares a renewal proposal and next year's enrollment begins, the dashboard shows the current year and the renewal year side by side.

Employees who never finish

What UZIO does with an employee who does not submit depends on the type of enrollment:

• New hire. When the new-hire window closes without a submission, UZIO enrolls the employee in the default plan if your broker specified one in the proposal. Otherwise UZIO declines all coverage on the employee's behalf, except employer-paid plans they are eligible for. The invitation email tells the employee this in advance.
• Open enrollment at renewal. Your broker sets renewal rollover rules in the proposal: roll over last year's elections, enroll in a default plan, or decline all. UZIO applies the rule when the window closes and emails the employee that the system completed the enrollment on their behalf. Rollover applies to medical, dental, and vision only. Tax savings (HSA, FSA, and similar), life, and disability are never auto-enrolled; they always need an active election.

Ask your broker which rule your package uses before the window closes, so you can tell employees what silence will mean.

How enrollments reach payroll

If you run payroll in UZIO, each submitted enrollment becomes deductions and contributions on the employee's payroll record automatically:

• For every benefit type the employee enrolled in, UZIO creates one employee deduction (the employee's share) and one employer contribution (your share) on the employee's payroll record. Both carry the coverage effective date as their start date and the coverage end date as their end date.
• The amounts come from the proposal: the plan's premium split by the contribution strategy. UZIO stores the annual amount and calculates the per-paycheck amount at payroll time from the pay group's schedule. You do not enter these amounts by hand.
• Deductions start with payroll from the coverage effective date. An enrollment submitted in November for coverage starting 1 January produces no deduction until the pay runs that cover January.
• A Declined All enrollment produces no deduction.
• After a life status change, or when an enrollment is reset, UZIO replaces the deduction rows for the affected dates.

The one thing you must set up: a company-level deduction with Auto-Sync set to Yes for each benefit type you offer (medical, dental, vision, and so on). If it is missing, UZIO still records the enrollment but cannot take the deduction, and the Payroll Action Center raises the warning "Benefit deduction not configured" for that benefit type. Create the missing deduction and the enrolled employees resolve in one step. See Setting Up Company Level Deductions and Payroll Action Center.

For tax-savings products (HSA, FSA, DCAP), the per-paycheck amount depends on how many paychecks remain in the plan year, which UZIO reads from your payroll calendar's cutoff dates. See How Per-Pay-Period Deductions Are Calculated.

If you run payroll in Paycor, the Paycor integration pushes the mapped deduction codes, amounts, and effective dates when an employee enrolls, again after a life status change or renewal, and sets amounts to zero from the benefit end date when an employee is terminated. If you run payroll anywhere else, use the Payroll Deduction Report to load deductions into your payroll system.

When an employee asks "why is this on my paycheck?"

The deduction is the employee's share of the premium for the plan they (or you, on their behalf) elected, divided across the paychecks in the plan year. Point the employee to their Benefits page in the Employee Portal, which shows each plan, who is covered, their cost per pay period, and your contribution. Common reasons the amount changed: a new plan year's rates, a life status change, or a coverage tier change such as adding a dependent. For a tax-savings product, a mid-year change also changes the per-paycheck amount because fewer paychecks remain. See Understanding Your Pay Stub for the employee-facing explanation.

How enrollments reach the carriers

Enrollment data goes to the carriers through files that UZIO and your broker generate and manage. There is nothing for you to produce:

• Your broker sets up the enrollment format per carrier in the proposal (an enrollment PDF, a carrier Excel template, or an EDI 834 feed) and releases the enrollment package to the carriers after the proposal is approved.
• UZIO also generates a weekly enrollment file, containing all submitted and approved enrollments to date, which your broker uses to reconcile with the carriers.
• Insurance cards come from the carriers, not from UZIO. Employees who have not received cards a few weeks after the coverage effective date should be raised with your broker, who can check file status and correct records.

The schedule on which a specific carrier receives and loads your data depends on that carrier's setup. Ask your broker for the expected timing.

Common problems

Why does the dashboard say there is no enrollment data? No benefit package has been shared with your employees yet, or the open enrollment period has not been set. Both are done by your broker. If your broker confirms the package is shared and the page still shows no data, click Refresh; if it persists, see Still stuck? below.

An eligible employee is not on the dashboard at all. The employee is not in the census, is in a class the proposal does not cover, or has a hire date that puts their coverage date outside this proposal. Check the employee's record under Employees (class, date of hire, status). Correct it, then ask your broker to refresh the employee's eligibility.

An employee submitted with the wrong elections, or their census data was wrong when they enrolled. The enrollment has to be reset. A reset permanently deletes the employee's enrollment for that plan year, refreshes their eligibility from the current census, and opens a fresh window: the remaining open enrollment window if it is still open, otherwise a new 10-day window. Correct the census (hire date, class, date of birth) before the reset, or the new enrollment inherits the same error. Ask your broker to reset the enrollment. If a Reset Enrollments action appears in the employee's Action menu in your portal, it does the same thing. Payroll deductions from the deleted enrollment are removed and recreated when the new enrollment is submitted.

The Payroll Action Center shows "Benefit deduction not configured". A benefit type has enrolled employees but no company-level deduction with Auto-Sync. Create it on the Company Level Deductions page in Payroll setup for that benefit type. The warning clears for all affected employees at once. See Setting Up Company Level Deductions.

An employee says they cannot log in to enroll. Enrollment invitations go to the email on the employee's record. From Employees, use Send Registration Link for an unregistered employee. Registered employees use Forgot password on the login page. Enrollment is desktop-only: the UZIO Mobile App shows benefits but cannot enroll.

Deductions did not change after my broker corrected a rate mid-year. UZIO adjusts the premium in each affected employee's latest enrollment, but paychecks already processed are not corrected automatically. Review the affected employees' deductions with your payroll administrator and adjust future paychecks if needed.

Still stuck?

Plan, rate, window, and eligibility questions belong with your broker. Contact UZIO Support when the platform itself is not behaving: the dashboard shows no data after your broker has confirmed the package is shared and you have refreshed, an on-behalf enrollment fails to submit, or an enrollment shows as Submitted but no deduction appears in payroll despite an auto-synced company deduction. Please reach out to us at support@uzio.com or call +1-571-601-1752. Include the employee's name or ID, the proposal name, the screen you were on, the exact message you saw, and the date it started. Do not send dependents' Social Security numbers or medical details by email.

Related articles

• Viewing Your Benefit Proposals
• Reporting a Life Status Change on an Employee's Behalf
• Setting Up Company Level Deductions
• What Happens to Benefits When an Employee Is Terminated
• Employee experience: Enrolling in Benefits