Pay As You Go Workers Comp From Intuit

Intuit, Inc. has launched an interesting "pay as you go" Workers Compensation insurance service for small employers, utilizing the services of twenty insurance companies. The whole idea of "Pay as you go" WC is to avoid what we call "shock audits", where the annual premium audit generates an unexpectedly large additional premium. Pay as you go uses actual payroll information, rather than an initial estimate. The Intuit service, for instance, uses that company's Quickbooks payroll data to develop WC premium charges in real time.

Of course, these kinds of "pay as you go" programs can only address one cause of Shock Audits--that is, fluctuations in payroll. But payroll isn't the only cause of these painful audits, and pay as you go doesn't address those. Changes in classifications, changes in payroll allocation, or use of uninsured independent contractors can still ambush employers with unexpected bills. But programs like the Intuit service (and Intuit is far from the only provider of this kind of service) can offer small employers access to voluntary market coverage, when so many other sources of WC are focused on larger accounts and leave smaller employers to the mercies of Assigned Risk plans.