AZ USA: Saturday, November 03 - 2007
COBRA Solutions announce the release of COBRA Administration Manager version 11
COBRA Solutions, Inc. is very excited to announce the release of our new Version 11 COBRA Administration Manager (CAM) on November 1, 2007. We continue to re-invest in our software to provide our customers with leading edge technology that has made CAM the industries number one-selling COBRA Administration software. The program has been updated with over 50 new changes and overhauled with enhanced capabilities designed to simplify the administration process. This month’s COBRAinReview will explain some of the changes made so you can take advantage of the software’s new capabilities and features.
We would like to thank you, our customers for the support you have provided over the years. We value your input and ideas and have implemented many of them into our software products. The partnership we have enjoyed with our customers over the past 20 years has been a huge part of our success.
New Features
Newly-designed Navigator – The Navigator has been changed to be an independent form that can remain open, housing the Things-to-do list and new icons. There are four tabs (located on the left side of the form) that you may click on to change employee status (i.e. Qualifiers, Participants or Active Employees). To select a procedure, place your mouse over the icon (which will turn the icon to a gray background) and click.
You will notice each tab’s background is a different color. The forms associated with the different COBRA designations have also been changed to offer greater awareness of the procedure being performed. Towards the bottom of the Navigator are Quick Reports. These are common reports used in the administration of COBRA. When you click on a Quick Report, the report will be shown with the current month’s information. If you want a different timeframe, you will need to click the report under the Reports Menu and select the desired timeframe.
Active Employee Form – The Active Employee form has been slightly changed. The Dependents tab has a new format, offering the ability to save more information on dependents. To enter dependents, click on the Add button and complete the information on the newly developed form. (This dependent form will be used for Active Employees, Qualifiers and Participants.) To edit dependent information, click on the dependent’s name in the list followed by clicking on the Edit button. In addition to changing the Dependent tab, a File Cabinet has been added so you will be able to see (and easily reproduce) an employee’s General Notice. Lastly, the Notes tab has been redesigned to offer the ability to enter as many Notes as you wish on an employee while tracking who entered the note, the date it was produced and categorize it for easy retrieval.
Qualifier Form – A key change to the qualifier form is that when you select a dependent qualifying event (i.e. Divorce, Employee’s Death, Medicare Entitlement or Loss or Dependent Status), the Insurance Plan section asks you to enter the coverage the qualifier is eligible for. (We received numerous phone calls where users did not know how to enter plans). The File Cabinet has been redesigned whereby all group letters will be housed in the Archive’s folder (eliminating the issue with different drive mapping in a multi-user environment). Not only will documents be housed in the file cabinet, but invoices and coupons will be displayed as well. Lastly, a Medicare Tab was added so that you may notify the system if and when an employee will become entitled to Medicare.
Participant Form – A new feature of the Participant form is the ability to track the insurance plans the Participant was enrolled in during their COBRA time frame. The Plan History tab will show and change when COBRA Participants change/drop or add plans as well as track which coverage tier (i.e. Single, Family, etc.) they were enrolled on. As with the Qualifier form, the File Cabinet, Medicare and Notes tab were changed.
Notes – Not only has the Notes tab changed, the system will automatically enter notes of procedures being performed. It tracks who entered a qualifier, the date entered as well as documenting when a file has been changed. This will come in handy in a multi-user environment when someone has a question about an entry.
Printing – It seems that the COBRA notices continually are getting longer and postage continues to increase. To help to offset the cost of postage, the system will now let you duplex (if your printer is capable) the notices to decrease the number of pages being mailed. On the Print Dialog Box, you would click the Duplex checkbox, click the Advanced tab and select if your printer produces documents “Face up” or “Face down.” For those of you that have multi-tray printers, you place letterhead in one tray and tell the system to pull the first page from that tray and the remainder of the document from the plain paper tray. We hope all users will take advantage of this new print feature.
Certificate of Mailing form – In an effort to provide valid proof COBRA notices were sent, we have included a Post Office Form 3877. Although not required, Administrators who want proof that a document was mailed Form 3877 can be produced, printed and taken to the Post Office whereby they will stamp and sign the form signifying it was mailed. (Additional postal charges may apply.)
Events Menu – The options available under the Events Menu have changed to offer a new way to perform tasks which were more difficult in earlier versions. One new menu item is a procedure to handle when a COBRA Participant dies. In a situation where there are dependents, one of the dependents (usually the one taking care of the others) will replace the deceased Participant as the new Participant. The other option is the ability to remove the Participant or a dependent from coverage and produce a notice detailing this removal from coverage.
HELP – Under the Help Menu or if you press the F1 key, a newly designed Help Menu will assist you in the operation of the software. We recommend you search for your answers here prior to calling Technical Support. In addition to this new Help system, we have the new Software Manual available on the internet (which may be obtained by selecting the ‘Download Software Manual’ option under the HELP Menu.
In addition to the above changes, the following are enhancements that will not only ease the administration process but will increase your productivity.
- In a situation where your insurance plans have different ages determining a “loss of dependent status,” plans will be tracked separately.
- For dependents added at open enrollment, there is a checkbox on the dependent form specifying that they do not have the rights of a “qualified beneficiary.”
- Increased the last name field length from 20 to 30 characters (for longer last names).
- Increased the Check Number field from 10 to 12 characters.
- The system will allow a termination from COBRA date that differs from the Paid Through date
- When a COBRA Participant (or covered dependent) is removed from a health plan, a termination letter will be produced.
- You now have the ability to change the COBRA start date in a Participant’s file (when an incorrect qualifying event date was entered).
- Paid Through dates will reflect future dates (so if a Participant pays up through December, it will be reflected in the Paid Through date).
- A paragraph will be added if renewal rates have been entered but the person’s qualifying event date is prior to the renewal explaining the rates will be increasing.
- Coupons and Invoices will now be stored in the Participant’s digital Filing Cabinet.
- If you click the button to send “All Letters to Printer” and you experience a printer problem, the system will replace the non-printed letters back in the Things-to-do list.
- Mailing labels have been changed so information does not fall to another label.
- System now tracks an Active Employee, Participant and Dependents ages and will notify you in the Things-to-do list when the person reaches that age. This is designed to assist users administering with age-rated plans.
- Version 2 of the COBRAImport program allows the user to import COBRA Participants and Retirees as well as Active Employees and Qualifiers.
- If the system performs an incorrect import (either because there was missing information or a problem occurs during the import) a restore procedure will allow the user to restore the date to the point prior to the import.
- If your firm offers a Medical FSA, the new Qualifying Event letter will detail how an FSA differs in COBRA from other group plans.
- System will track if a COBRA Participant has a credit balance at the time of their termination and asks if you want to reimburse them.
- The Qualifier Wizard has been removed because of duplication of the New COBRA Qualifier procedure.
- Under the Notifications Menu, a new option has been added called “Check for Newer Letters.” If you had performed a Software Update via Internet (under the File Menu) and elected not to update the notices in your groups, this procedure will search to see if newer letters exists and updates your groups. (This procedure does not check our website; it merely reviews the documents in the root directory.)
- On the Options form located under the Billing Menu (on the Print/Save Options tab), you may select how you want the documents in the digital filing cabinet to be stored; either as a word processor document or a PDF. If a company logo has been added to your notifications, a PDF usually will be a smaller file and will save hard drive space.