With the deadline for required submission of Payroll-Based Journal (PBJ) quickly approaching, the lack of preparation throughout the industry is a bit intimidating.

Currently we are seeing long-term care providers pursuing one a few different options:

Option 1: Do it yourself

Some administrators are considering taking PBJ reporting on in-house with a combination of payroll data and manual data entry. The core factor to consider is if you have the bandwidth to manually enter this data on your own.

It is estimated that up to two FTEs are needed to maintain the data for every 100 employees. Since this is a costly and time consuming approach it doesn’t come highly recommended.

Option 2: Get help from payroll and/or time management vendors

Some administrators are asking payroll providers to offer an application or custom report to simplify this undertaking. Many are being told “Maybe” or “No.” Many payroll companies are just becoming aware the PBJ need urgently exists (we know, they are calling us!).

For Administrators who are here, they are considering the time and cost to overhaul an employee time management system – or to just hire a new provider. Both are costly investments.

Option 3: Develop a custom software system

Finally, some Administrators are hunting for a vendor to develop a customized program to tackle this challenge. This approach also has challenges. CMS is updating the requirements and any custom development will have to be revisited and redone in perpetuity.

If your developers are not familiar with the industry or the regulations, the costs will rise.

Your best PBJ option

We are from the senior care industry. Our architect lives senior care every day. We built ezPBJ to provide a low cost alternative for the industry – and one that evolves with the constant change of government regulations and requirements.

Best of all, since ezPBJ works with the data from your current payroll or timekeeping system, customers are already months ahead of the deadline!