Flex plan contributions

There are ways to define contributions for a flex benefit plan that may result in negative, zero, or positive employee costs. How you define contributions depends on how you want to set up the costs of the plan, how you want the cost of a plan to print on election forms, and how you want costs to be displayed on employee paychecks.

You can define contributions in these ways:

• Credits offset by an employee cost

• Net effect of the contribution

Regardless of how you define contributions, the result at benefit entry is the same. You can define contributions in a similar way on rate tables.

Example of Credits Offset by Employee Cost and Net Effect

These examples illustrate how you can offset flex credits by an employee cost to result in a negative, zero, or positive employee cost.

Result	Example
Negative employee cost	If an employee elects single coverage, they receive $1,000 in flex credits and pay $500, so they receive a net of $500 in flex credits.
Zero employee cost	If an employee elects single + spouse coverage, they receive $1,000 in flex credits and pay $1,000.
Positive employee cost	If an employee elects family coverage, they receive $1,000 in flex credits, and pay $1,500, so they pay a net of $500.

When you enroll an employee in a plan with a negative contribution, the plan's pre tax contribution is displayed as a negative number.