Managed Benefits · Architecture
In most studios, benefits administration belongs to a principal or the office manager, wedged between deadlines and client calls. BEG Managed Benefits, powered by isolved, takes enrollment, changes, and ACA compliance off the firm's plate while your broker keeps doing what brokers do.
Your monthly estimate on screen - no call required
The Architecture Firm Benefits Problem
Source: U.S. Department of Labor, COBRA continuation coverage.
Benefits Admin for Architecture Firms
Most firm owners like their broker and worry that fixing the admin problem means blowing up that relationship. It does not. Your broker keeps advising, quoting, and placing coverage at renewal. What moves to BEG is everything after the placement: building the plans in the system, running enrollment, processing changes, feeding carriers clean data, and syncing deductions to payroll. The principal stops being the middle layer between employees, the broker, and three carrier portals.
A studio that wins two big commissions and hires eight people can cross the 20-employee federal COBRA line and start marching toward the 50 full-time-equivalent ACA reporting line in the same year. Each threshold changes what a departure or a missed offer of coverage costs. Benefits administration that tracks headcount, hours, and eligibility continuously means those lines get crossed knowingly, with the notices and filings that each one requires.
Architecture went remote-friendly early: designers in three states, a BIM specialist in a fourth, project architects who relocate mid-project. Every state adds its own continuation and notice wrinkles. One system administers the same benefits program for everyone, wherever they sit, with the state-by-state details scoped on your discovery call instead of discovered during a dispute.
The talent a growing studio wants is also being recruited by national firms whose benefits enrollment is polished and self-serve. Self-service enrollment with AI-guided plan recommendations gives a 25-person studio the same first-week benefits experience as a 2,500-person firm, without hiring anyone to run it.
Benefits cost is one of the largest line items after salaries, and most firms cannot answer basic questions about it without an afternoon of spreadsheet archaeology. Real-time reporting shows enrollment, cost, and utilization on demand, and on the Fully Managed plan a Benefits Auditing Analyst checks elections against carrier bills so the firm stops paying for coverage nobody has.
How It Plays Out
A 17-person studio wins a hospital commission and hires six people to staff it, crossing 20 employees mid-year. Nobody adjusts the benefits process, because nobody realized the federal COBRA threshold had a headcount trigger. Three months later a senior designer leaves. Because eligibility and headcount are tracked continuously, the firm already knows it owes a federal COBRA notice rather than the shorter state-continuation process it used at 17 employees, and premium billing for the elected coverage runs in the same system alongside active enrollment instead of getting invented on the spot.
Who This Serves
Principal-led practices where benefits administration competes with billable design leadership for the same hours.
Two or three offices, one benefits program, and carrier updates that have to land correctly everywhere.
Seasonal project rhythms, field staff, and part-timers whose hours drift near the ACA full-time line.
Lean studios with high-touch clients, where the office manager is also the benefits department.
Licensed professionals across disciplines and states, with the eligibility bookkeeping that mix creates.
Office design staff plus field project teams, two work patterns on one benefits program.
How You Buy It
Benefits Admin Software puts enrollment and changes in one self-service system. Software + ACA Compliance adds eligibility tracking and Forms 1094-C and 1095-C. Fully Managed adds a dedicated Managed Benefits Specialist and a Benefits Auditing Analyst who run it all. Full detail on the managed benefits overview.
Your monthly estimate on screen - no call required
Payroll eating the other half of the admin week? BEG's core service is managed payroll for architecture firms. Handbook and HR questions? See HR outsourcing for architecture firms.
Questions
Plan setup, open enrollment, new hire and life-event changes, carrier updates, payroll deduction sync, and ACA eligibility tracking with Forms 1094-C and 1095-C, handled in one system instead of a principal's evenings.
No. Your broker keeps advising the firm and negotiating renewals. BEG Managed Benefits handles the administration behind those plans: enrollment, changes, data, and compliance filings. Brokers usually welcome the help.
It changes the administration, not the service. One system tracks eligibility and enrollment for every employee wherever they sit, and continuation rules are scoped to the states that apply on your discovery call. Coverage is national.
No. There is no co-employment and no employer-of-record change. The firm stays the employer, your plans stay your plans, and your broker relationship stays intact. Powered by isolved.
A monthly per-employee cost that lands far below one internal admin hire. Answer five questions in the estimate form and your monthly range appears on screen; exact pricing is confirmed on your discovery call.
On the Fully Managed plan, COBRA administration, including premium billing and collection, runs in the same system alongside active enrollment. The election, notice, and payment tracking live in the same system as active enrollment, which matters at a firm crossing the 20-employee federal threshold for the first time and unsure what the obligation actually requires.
Not the health and welfare administration itself. Professional liability and state licensing board requirements sit outside the benefits program, but firms tracking them alongside payroll and HR often want the same eligibility and headcount data feeding both, which is where a combined managed payroll and HR outsourcing relationship helps.
Ready?
Answer a few questions, get your exact number in about 90 seconds. No call required, no commitment.
Your monthly estimate on screen - no call required
