2015: The Undiscovered Country

January 1, 2015 is going to be the kickoff to some very big changes. The Republican takeover of congress affects us nationally as does continued changes to the ACA (Obamacare). Closer to home for us in the petroleum industry are the Cap-and-Trade and Fuels Under the Cap laws going into effect January 1. Jay McKeeman and our GR committee continue to work very hard to support our members as best we can with knowledge, but so many questions can't yet be answered.

 

Obamacare continues to evolve the healthcare world as we knew it. In fact, it is one of the main reasons I made the decision to move payroll for our four businesses and 40 odd employees to an outside company. My operations manager and I spent over 4 months reviewing many companies, probably investing at least 12 hours combined of our time on each company. We were fortunate to have CIOMA's preferred health insurance/benefits vendor, Maniaci Insurance, help us find non-ADP/Paychex type companies. I'd already done enough preliminary research to realize a large national company was not going to be the fit we were looking for.

 

After all the hours of demos, pricing questions and clarifications, we came down to two excellent companies. A local company, that had come recommended by colleagues and a company that Maniaci ultimately led us to. That company, Coastal Payroll, based out of San Diego, seemed to have the scaleability of the larger national companies, but with more regional customer service and aggressive pricing. They also worked very closely with us over the 4 months to help us find the best software solutions for our needs. Some of those needs included a mobile app for our towing fleet and key fobs for our retail employees.

 

We just finished our first run December 5th, and while you always hope things run smoother, there were no major issues. It was a major leap forward for our small company, moving from in-house Quickbooks payroll to full employee self-service portals with all their payroll and even benefits details listed. We see this greatly helping our office with the burden of managing 40 employees and soon 50 or more.

 

Brittany Huerta of Maniaci Insurance has been our guide first on the payroll proposals and then most recently, taking over our health care plan management. We are prepping for our first company wide benefits meeting and it's coming just in time. Our employees are asking what options they have for themselves and their dependents with the ACA laws changing in 2015.

 

There is much on the horizon of 2015, EMV has an October deadline for inside sales and a major battle is brewing between the likes of Apple Pay and competing e-wallets. I'm planning to cover that in a future article, however there is still a lot unknown. I also want to hear from any members out there on their technical, operational or general questions otherwise. Please e-mail me and I may choose to dedicate an article if I see it helping our members.

 

This information is provided by:

Chris Bambury

CIOMA/POC Board Member

Maniaci Contact:

Daniel V. Maniaci, President Lic. 0441220

MANIACI INSURANCE SERVICES, INC.

500 Silver Spur Road, Suite 121, Palos Verdes, CA 90275

Phone: (310) 541-4824 x 224 

F: (310) 377-2016

Coastal Payroll Contact:

Brian Fleming, Owner/Officer

COASTAL PAYROLL SERVICE

Owner / Officer

Phone: 858-565-2123