Prescience vs. your current health plan
Using Square Payroll does not by itself determine your health coverage. Compare the plan you use today with Prescience Diamond and Prescience Choice using the same employee census, coverage date and employer contribution. Your current plan might be arranged through a broker, carrier or PEO; this comparison does not assume Square Payroll sells insurance.
| What changes | Prescience Diamond | Prescience Choice | Your current health plan |
|---|---|---|---|
| How coverage works | A company health plan with an effective $0 deductible and Prescience care navigation, with benefits specified in your quote. | An individual coverage HRA (ICHRA): the employer sets an allowance and employees choose their own individual health plans. | Use your plan documents to identify the carrier coverage and any employer-funded benefits. A broker or payroll brand alone does not identify the plan. |
| Employee deductible and costs | Designed for an effective $0 deductible for covered care under the Diamond benefit terms. Review the quoted copays, coverage limits and eligibility requirements. | Deductibles, copays and networks depend on each employee's selected individual plan. Compare the allowance with the premium and expected out-of-pocket costs. | Compare employee premium contributions, deductible, copays and out-of-pocket maximum from the actual plan, including any employer HRA or HSA funding. |
| Doctors and prescriptions | Carrier network selected for your group, with options such as Blue Cross Blue Shield or UnitedHealthcare where available, plus the Prescience Network and Prescience Extended Network. Confirm the exact network, doctors and prescription coverage in your quote before switching. | Employees compare the local individual plans available to them and check their own doctors and medications. | Use the current carrier's provider directory and drug formulary as the baseline. Keeping a payroll platform does not guarantee keeping a network. |
| Employee support | Prescience provides care navigation and benefits support alongside the quoted health plan. | Prescience helps employees compare plans, enroll and manage their health allowance. The selected insurer supplies the underlying coverage. | Identify what your carrier, broker and benefits administrator each handle today, including help finding care and resolving benefit questions. |
| Employer budget | Request a group-specific quote and compare the full annual employer cost, including the benefits and services in the proposal. Savings depend on the group and plan design. | Budget for the employer allowance plus the administration fee in your proposal. Compare how the allowance works for employees in different locations. | Add premiums, employer contributions, administration and any bundled service costs. Use the renewal offer, rather than last year's price, when comparing a renewal decision. |
| HR and payroll | Confirm the workflow for retaining Square Payroll, employee changes and approved deductions before launch. | Confirm how allowance administration and any applicable deductions fit your Square Payroll account. | Document the existing enrollment and payroll process, plus any broker, PEO or service agreement that affects a change. |
Tell us whether you want to keep Square Payroll for your existing HR or payroll workflow. An outside health plan may require a separate enrollment and deduction process; account compatibility must be confirmed.
- Export your Square Payroll census Use the instructions above and include all current W-2 employees, including people who may waive coverage. Identify owners and contractors separately.
- Upload the CSV and complete your quote request Select the file on this page, then complete company details and account verification. Review the imported employee information in the quote flow.
- Compare the actual offers Have your current plan summary, renewal pricing, employee contributions and must-keep doctors ready for the comparison. Use the same census and start date, then confirm coverage and payroll timing before making a change.
Upload your census to compare options. Read more about Prescience's employer benefits and pricing. Your written quote and plan documents determine the offered benefits and costs.
Start with your Square Payroll account
Square's team roster and payroll records serve related but different purposes. Our census guide starts in Square Dashboard under Staff, Team and Team members, with an export by the account owner. Confirm that the roster includes the people employed by the applicant and the fields requested for a benefits quote. Access to a team-management screen does not establish that every listed person is part of the intended employee group.
For an hourly workforce, review the employee's status and the work information used in the benefit decision. Do not infer eligibility simply from a person appearing in a timekeeping or team list. Keep contractors and employees identified correctly, and ask staff to review unclear classifications. The account owner may need to help because the roster export described in our onboarding guide is not available to every team member.
Confirm that Square Payroll is the system actually paying the employees whose deductions will change. If team management and payroll are handled separately, the payroll owner needs the final approved elections and contribution schedule. Staff-assisted deduction setup should be reviewed against the completed payroll, including employees paid on different schedules or whose employment changes during the transition.
Confirm these details before setup
- Involve the Square account owner for the team roster export.
- Confirm worker classifications and the company responsible for the employees being quoted.
- Identify the actual payroll destination and review deductions across the relevant pay schedules.
Agree on the applicant's legal company name, the employees being considered for coverage, and the person who can authorize payroll changes. If the same administrator manages several companies, identify the exact account in every handoff. An employee list from the wrong company can look plausible while producing the wrong quote or deduction instructions. Keep these decisions with the employer's account records so a different administrator can understand the setup later.
Separate four tasks: preparing a census, choosing and enrolling in coverage, setting payroll deductions, and confirming the completed payroll. They can involve different systems and people. A successful census upload does not enroll employees, and a saved deduction does not prove that a carrier has activated coverage. Name an owner for each task and agree how the employer will know it is finished before announcing the start to employees.
Compare the full setup before choosing a plan
Compare the work and costs the employer will actually retain under each option. A lower-looking health-plan amount is not a complete comparison if changing the arrangement also adds payroll administration or removes a service the employer needs. Ask for account-specific terms and a written quote. This page does not supply vendor pricing, promise savings or establish that an outside plan is compatible with an existing contract.
| Option | What to confirm |
|---|---|
| Keep the current benefits arrangement | Confirm the renewal terms, coverage and employee experience. Keeping the existing workflow can be preferable when it meets the employer's needs and avoids a costly transition. |
| Keep payroll and change health coverage | Confirm that the service agreement permits the change, identify the enrollment and deduction owners, and account for any separate administration charges or manual work. |
| Change payroll or leave a bundled service | Compare the entire replacement arrangement, including payroll responsibilities, access to historical records, employee communications and the effort needed to coordinate the transition. |
Keep unresolved items visible rather than treating them as completed integration features. The employer should know which steps have an agreed owner, which need confirmation from the current provider, and which depend on the final plan selection. Make the coverage decision with those operational facts in view, not only a platform logo or the availability of an employee export.
Prepare the Square Payroll employee census
The following is the starting point used in our employer onboarding guide. Report names, permissions and menus can change or differ by account; ask your platform administrator to confirm the current steps. The goal is a complete employee CSV, not a particular button sequence.
- Sign in as the account owner to Square Dashboard and open Staff → Team → Team members.
- Select Export and choose the employee fields for your census.
- Select Export again to download team-members-YYYY-MM-DD.csv. Review the file and add any missing census fields below.
Include the employer's W-2 employees, including people who may waive coverage, and clearly identify contractors. Use the field list shown in onboarding to check names, dates of birth or requested age information, home locations and work locations. Preserve employee identifiers where available. A list of email addresses alone is not enough to reconcile family coverage, eligibility information and later payroll deductions. If a value is missing, flag it for follow-up instead of inventing it.
Save an Excel export as CSV before uploading it. Check the selected worksheet, remove report headings and totals that are not employee records, and review any dates or identifiers the spreadsheet reformatted. Keep a copy of the original export for the employer's reconciliation. Select your CSV in the upload area above and complete account verification to import it securely. Do not put employee data in a support comment or a shared marketing document. Employees can add spouse and dependent details during the subsequent enrollment process.
Arrange payroll deductions
For Square Payroll, plan on staff-assisted setup unless Prescience confirms another supported workflow for your actual account. The employer's payroll administrator may need to enter or approve the deduction changes. We do not infer automated write access from a vendor appearing in the Finch directory. Agree who makes the change, who reviews it, and which payroll deadline applies before promising employees a particular first deduction date.
Send the payroll owner the final approved elections and contribution instructions. Those should identify the employee, the elected coverage, the employee share, the employer share, the effective date and the pay schedule. Keep employee deductions separate from employer contributions. Ask the payroll and benefits advisers to confirm the appropriate tax treatment for the plan and worker; IRS Publication 15-B describes why benefit treatment and owner exceptions need review. Do not choose a tax code merely because it resembles an old deduction label.
Identify old deductions that should end and existing benefit connections that might overwrite a manual update. Decide how to handle a change made after a payroll approval deadline, an off-cycle check, a final paycheck or an employee starting partway through a month. The monthly contribution does not by itself answer those timing questions. Record the agreed treatment before staff enter the amounts, and avoid taking both the full old deduction and the full new deduction for the same coverage period without review.
A worked payroll handoff
A restaurant's Square team list includes active employees, a former worker and a contractor with system access. The account owner reviews the roster before submitting the census. The payroll administrator later uses the approved benefit elections, not the full team list, to enter and verify employee deductions.
The example concerns the employee's contribution, not the total plan price or a promised saving. If the employer pays part of the premium, that employer contribution must be tracked separately. If the employee changes coverage during the year, recalculate from the approved change and the remaining applicable deduction periods. Do not divide a full-year amount by the remaining checks unless the employer's agreed policy actually calls for that result.
Verify the first payroll and keep records current
Review the first completed payroll, not only the setup screen. Match each enrolling employee to the approved deduction amount and the correct coverage period. Also check people who waived coverage, left the company or ended a prior election, because an unintended deduction can be just as important as a missing one. Compare the employer and employee portions separately. Where there are multiple pay groups, review an affected completed run from each group before declaring the handoff finished.
Record differences and assign an owner to resolve them. A missing employee might reflect an identifier mismatch, a report filter, an approval deadline or an election that was never finalized. A duplicated amount might come from an old deduction or a second benefits workflow. Investigate the underlying record before making a compensating change in another system. Confirm how any correction will appear on the employee's next pay statement and keep the employer informed of the agreed resolution.
After launch, agree how new hires, terminations, location changes and revised elections reach the people responsible for payroll and benefits. A one-time census export is a snapshot, not a continuing synchronization service. Reconcile changes to the current employee roster and the approved plan instructions. If you change payroll providers later, preserve the deduction history and repeat the account, schedule and first-payroll checks with the new administrator rather than carrying forward an unverified assumption.
Sources and scope
Provider report steps come from the census guidance used in Prescience onboarding; your administrator should confirm current menus and permissions. Payroll setup descriptions reflect the supported Prescience workflow. Vendor documentation describes the vendor’s capabilities and does not prove a Prescience connection.
