COBRA Maintenance Procedures

Follow the steps below for adding and maintaining COBRA records in the Employee Benefits System:

1. Use the Add New item in the COBRA Information page to create COBRA records. These records are identified by a combination of employee ID, benefit code, and dependent Social Security number, if applicable. In addition to codes and dates related to the administration of a benefit, this page contains billing and payment information. When you create a COBRA record, you also create the initial billing record for an employee/benefit/dependent combination. After that, all billing and payment functions can be maintained with the New Bills Processing and Post Payments options. Refer to the next step for an overview of the billing process.

2. Use the New Bills Processing option to generate COBRA billing records. Billing can be done individually or for groups of employees and benefits.
   This option sets the current amount due and due date in the COBRA Information page. If needed, the system adds any amount unpaid from the last billing to the Delinquent Balance field, adds a date to the Date Delinquent field for new delinquencies, and updates the page's Total Billed field.

3. Use the Post Payments option to record payments for COBRA benefits that were billed either initially or with the New Bills Processing option.
   When you enter a payment for an employee/benefit/dependent combination, the amount paid is first applied to any delinquent balance, and then to the current amount due. Posting a payment also updates all of the payment related fields in the COBRA Information page.

4. Use the COBRA Status Report option to generate a report on the current amount due and delinquent balance for employee/benefit/dependent combinations. You can select records as needed or run a report on all the payments in your database.

5. Use the End of Eligibility Listing option to generate a report showing all the employees and dependents whose eligibility for COBRA benefits has expired or is set to expire. To be included in this report, employees' benefit records must contain a stop date.

6. Use the Payment History Maintenance option to change the amount paid in payment records. Since changing a payment amount only adjusts the COBRA Information page's Total Paid field, you must adjust the other payment fields in this page accordingly.

7. Use the Payment History Report option to generate a listing of selected payment records.

8. Use the COBRA Activity Report option to generate an audit trail of changes made to payment records in the Payment History page.

9. Use the COBRA Information page to look up and maintain COBRA records for employees and dependents. Changing or deleting these records has no effect on the regular benefit records stored in your Employee Benefits database.