ACA Year-End Reporting Checklist

ACA Year-End Reporting Checklist

As part of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) Module, employers are expected to review settings within their employee's profiles to ensure that all data is being tracked appropriately. The guidelines provided in this article will outline all of the areas that need to be reviewed for your employees and how to apply them appropriately. 

Step 1: Review Benefit Profile Assignments

The Benefit Profile can be located within the employee's profile either from the ACA Tab (if available) or the Profiles & Manager Assignment Tab.


The Benefit Profile within Elevated drives two primary functions:
  1. Allows the ability to enroll in benefits
  2. Identifies when an employee became eligible for ACA purposes
While the first function is essential to allow the employee to enroll, the second function is even more important and can be tricky to apply. When setting a benefit profile, you will initially have a base record with an effective date of 12/31/1900. If you were to fill in this date it would essentially mean that the employee has been eligible for benefits since 12/31/1900 (which would not be accurate). If this date falls prior to the actual date that the employee was truly eligible for benefits, this may affect ACA reporting. Thus, we must use the + Add button directly below the 12/31/1900 record to add a new record and identify when the employee actually became eligible.



When employees are newly hired, a new record should be added based on the waiting period your company utilizes. As an example, if an employee was hired on 2/5/2023 and the company has a waiting period of first of the month following 30 days, the employee's benefit profile effective date would need to read as 4/1/2023 (2/5/2023 plus 30 days is 3/7/2023, first of the following month being 4/1/2023). 



Status changes should also be taken into account when employee's become eligible for benefits. As another example, if an employee went from part-time to full-time as of 5/6/2023 and the same waiting period mentioned previously applies, the employee would now be benefit eligible as of 7/1/2023. 



As you can imagine, if the benefit profile identifies when an employee became eligible for benefits, it also determines when an employee became ineligible for benefits. When employees are terminated, the benefit profile will need to be updated to reflect when eligibility ended. As an example, if an employee was terminated on 6/9/2023 and your company provides coverage through the end of the employee's termination month, their benefit profile end date would be identified as 7/1/2023 (the first day of the following month where they no longer have coverage.



Status Changes also play a part here as well when an employee was full-time and is now moving to part-time. As another example, if an employee went from full-time to part-time as of 7/6/2023 and the same termination logic previously mentioned is used, the employee would lose eligibility as of 8/1/2023. 



ACA administrators should verify that all benefit eligible employees have the appropriate profile assigned and as of the correct effective date(s). The best way to do this is to navigate to the Employee Information report (Team Tab > My Team > Employee Information) and bring in the columns for Employee Type, Current Benefit Profile (Effective), & Benefit Profile (Effective Date From). It is also recommended to bring in the Hired, Re-Hired, & Terminated Dates for reference of the effective dates.

The Current Benefit Profile (Effective) will identify what benefit profile is currently assigned as of today and the Benefit Profile (Effective Date From) will show the corresponding effective date. Utilizing the employee type, dates, and benefit profile effective dates will allow you to monitor the eligibility dates for employees.



Step 2: Review ACA Profile Assignments

The ACA Profile can be located within the employee's profile within the ACA Tab. To change an employee's ACA Profile, you would need to select the Manage Employee's ACA Timeline link in the upper right-hand corner of the employee's ACA Timeline Overview widget.





The ACA Profile serves as a mechanism to identify when an employee is Full-Time vs. Part-Time and calculates the employee's ACA Timeline so that appropriate codes are populated from month-to-month. You'll need to ensure that every employee who should be included in the Form 1094-C employee counts has an ACA Profile attached to their profile. Please keep in mind that employees assigned to the Part-Time Employee or Non-Employee ACA profiles will not be included in your 1094-C count for the reporting year.

Unlike the benefit profile assignments, the base record can be filled in with the status the employee started with. Thus, if an employee was hired on as full-time, you would enter the Full-Time Employee ACA Profile into the 1/1/2012 effective date. However, when an employee's status changes, the ACA Profile must have a new record added to reflect the changes throughout the year. As an example, if an employee was hired as full-time but was then reduced to part-time hours as of 7/12/2023, you would want to select to + Add a record and identify the change to Part-Time status as of the specified date.



ACA administrators should verify that all employees have the appropriate ACA Profile assigned and as of the correct effective date(s). The best way to do this is to navigate to the Employee Information report (Team Tab > My Team > Employee Information) and bring in the columns for Employee Type, Current ACA Profile (Effective), & ACA Profile (Effective Date From). 

The Current ACA Profile (Effective) will identify what ACA profile is currently assigned as of today and the ACA Profile (Effective Date From) will show the corresponding effective date. Utilizing the employee type & ACA  profile effective dates will allow you to monitor the ACA profile assignments for all employees. 



Step 3: Review Employee Status Change History Widget

This widget stores all of the employee’s action dates ( terminated, and re hired), and the system looks to this when determining which codes to use on Form 1095-C.

If there are any questions regarding Break in Service calculations, please refer to this widget first If the employee has any of the following, manual corrections will be needed:
  1. Two consecutive re-hire dates without a termination date between the two
  2. Two consecutive termination dates without a re-hire date between the two
  3. A re-hire date without any corresponding termination date prior
If you notice a date missing for an employee, please add it to the report and then navigate to the Team Tab > HR > ACA > Employee ACA Actions. Select that same employee then select Recalculate Status Change from the ellipsis.


Step 4: Review Employee Benefit Plans

ACA looks at your employees' benefit plan assignments to see whether the employee is enrolled in coverage or to see if a record exists that indicates the employee was offered coverage but waived enrollment
Best Practice Suggestion: Always enter waive records to easily show that coverage was indeed offered, even though the employee declined enrollment.
Ensure that Coverage Effective From and Coverage Effective To dates are reflected accurately for all enrolled employees.
Tip: An easy way to accomplish this step is to use the report found at Team Benefits Benefit Plans



Step 5: Review ACA Timelines

The Employee ACA Timeline allows you to view your employee’s ACA status, profile details, and alerts and maintain the data The ACA Timeline is a month by month account for each employee that shows where they stand in the current lookback period, identifies active compliance alerts, shows the user what will be reported in Lines 14 16 in Part II of Form 1095 C, etc. 

Ensure hours for variable employees are inputted on a month by month basis for proper calculation of average hours worked per month

Tip: An easy way to accomplish this step is to use the ACA Data Detailed report under Team HR ACA

ACA Timeline Widgets

Each widget on the ACA Timeline will have an Info hyperlink that will pull up the ACA Rule Debug Information, which walks you through how the system came up with the values in this employee’s ACA Timeline.  The Rule Debug Information will help you determine what reasons an employee appears to have any kind of alert.

It is important to audit this timeline data frequently to ensure your employee’s are being offered coverage when needed and to provide accurate data for your year end Form 1095 C



This widget will show what codes will be populated on the employee’s 1095 C Fields are populated based on your ACA Profile rules, but can be adjusted if something seems off Review the codes for each of the
following lines to ensure the correct information is populated.

Line 14 Codes (Series 1) - The Code Series 1 indicator codes specify the type of coverage, if any, offered to an employee, the employee’s spouse, and the employee’s dependents.
  1. Note that codes 1L through 1U will not automatically be generated by the ACA Manager, but can be selected via the drop downs as well as updated via the ACA Employee Data import
Line 15 (Employee Only Lowest Cost) - Enter the amount of the Employee Required Contribution, which is, generally, the employee’s share of the monthly cost for the lowest cost, self only, minimum essential
coverage providing minimum value that is offered to the employee.

Line 16 Codes (Series 2) -  For each calendar month, enter the applicable code, if any, from Code Series 2. Enter only one code from Code Series 2 per calendar month

Tip: For a listing of codes see https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/i109495c.pdf

Status Widget



This widget will show the statuses of hours and part-time (PT) or full-time (FT) statuses. The hours, depending on your ACA Profile Rules, will auto-populate based on the given month and provide you the
month status based on the hours. If you are a Multi EIN company, all combined hours will appear in this widget as well ACA Status represents the status assigned in your employee’s ACA Profile, or the current
status of the employee based on the completed prior measurement period.

Measurement Widget



This widget will display information from your various measurement period metrics including the Waiting Period, Initial Measurement Period, and Standard Measurement Period Fields will populate for those employees based on which measurement period they fall in. Additionally, your Limited Non-Assessment Period will be populated with Yes or No based on your ACA Profile Limited Non Assessment Rule.

Alerts Widget



This widget will show any alerts that need to be addressed when auditing your employee’s ACA data. This includes Affordable and Minimum Value Plan offerings, Compliance Alerts, Employees approaching ACA FT
Status, and any possible downgrades.

Step 6: Review ACA Reports

There are several reports available in Elevated that will help you through ACA reporting and filing as well as auditing throughout the year. Each of these system reports can be accessed depending on the security profile assigned to the user. You can view the reports available in the menu under the Team Tab > HR > ACA. 

These five reports available that will help assist with the ACA auditing process include
  1. Employee ACA Actions
  2. ACA Data Detailed
  3. ACA Data Summary
  4. ACA Status Change
  5. ACA Forms
If you cannot see one of these reports, please contact your system administrator to verify your access.


Employee ACA Actions
This report also gives you the opportunity to mass recalculate, clear an ACA Timeline if needed, and import historic data. The W-2 Safe Harbor process can be run from this location as well.



ACA Data Detailed
This report will give you a month-by-month report of data from the ACA Timeline.



ACA Data Summary
This report will give you a month by month summary of employees and indicates any compliance alerts as well as the employees who will need to be tested in the following month to determine ACA status.



Form 1094-C Employee Count
This report will give you a month-by-month count that will appear in Part III of Form 1094-C.



ACA Account Status Change History
This report will automatically group by employee and will show you the dates as they appear in each employee’s ACA Employees Status History widget.





This concludes the ACA Year-End Checklist. All information provided above are best practices outlined by Green Leaf for our clients to maintain their own data from year-to-year. If at any time you have any questions regarding the reviews mentioned above or have trouble making updates, please reach out to our hrtechsupport@greenleafbizsolutions.com email. While Green Leaf will be in contact with you about your reporting at the end of the year, it is expected that all data will be reviewed by your company's designated ACA Administrator each year to ensure compliance. 

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