The Million Dollar Question most employee benefit brokers are considering currently is should our firm try to perform this ACA reporting via an in-house technology solution that we purchase, or recommend having our clients use an outside vendor. The reality is that every operation is different, has different needs and have promised their clients different things. Some brokers take a full service approach and look to take administrative burdens off of their clients. Other brokers take a more consultative approach. Neither avenue is ‘wrong’, but each works for different type of benefit broker operations.
Regardless of which option you choose, here are some things you should be thinking of as you consider the question:
- Do we have the necessary resources internally to do a good job with this IRS form filing function?
- Do we have the knowledge internally to complete the job well?
- What approach will be most comfortable to our clients?
- What are the security ramifications of the solution we choose? (Knowing that having employee social security numbers compromised could be a disaster for your company.)
- If you decide upon an outsourced solution, will you want to refer your clients to someone who also competes with your company as a benefit broker?
- Do we need a solution to talk with employers about right now? What is gained or lost by waiting longer into the year before bringing a good solution to the table?
- How much time, money and staff will it take to deploy our solution?
- Would our time be better spent prospecting for new clients during this time using this issue as opposed to trying to manage the process internally?
- Which option is more profitable to our business?
- What is the logic of the system we intend to use? Are the codes and amounts for 1095c lines 14, 15 and 16 automatically generated? Will our staff or clients be responsible for completing these fields without the assistance of smart technology to intuitively figure out what the codes should be?
- How will customer service be handled for this whole process?
Often the reality for an employee benefit broker is that a mixture of different solutions makes best sense for their operation. When it comes to full service ACA 6056 reporting and efiling, we are here to help.