Free employee benefit comparison template.

What an employee benefit comparison template needs to include

A comparison is only useful if every plan is described with the same fields, in the same order, from the same kind of source document. The templates above are built around the field list below. If you would rather build your own, this is the structure worth copying.

Every tab in the Excel templates ends with a source row. Record the document and page number each value came from. It takes seconds while you are reading the document and saves an afternoon when someone questions a number in a renewal meeting.

How to fill in the comparison

1. Collect the documents first. One SBC or benefit summary per plan, plus the rate sheet. Working from a quote email or a carrier portal screen instead of the document is where most errors start.
2. Set up one column per plan. Keep the incumbent in the first column so every alternative is read against what the client has today.
3. Work down a single column at a time, not across a row. Reading one document end to end is faster and more accurate than jumping between four PDFs for each field.
4. Leave a cell blank when the document does not state it. Do not infer a value from a similar plan. A blank is an honest prompt to go back to the carrier; a guess becomes a number in a client proposal.
5. Enter the rates by tier, then set the employer contribution. The employee cost per month and per pay period calculates automatically.
6. Check affordability for the lowest-cost employee-only plan that provides minimum value, if the employer is an applicable large employer.
7. Read the comparison back against one source document before it goes anywhere. Pick a plan at random and verify four or five fields.

Modeling the employer contribution

Plan design comparison answers what the plan covers. Contribution modeling answers the question the employee actually asks, which is what comes out of the paycheck. The Contribution tab takes either an employer percentage or a fixed dollar amount per tier and returns the employee’s share per month and per pay period.

A fixed dollar contribution and a percentage contribution behave very differently as rates rise. A percentage keeps the employer and employee shares proportional through a renewal increase; a fixed dollar amount holds the employer cost steady and pushes the whole increase onto the employee. Model both before recommending one — the difference shows up most sharply on family tiers, which is usually where a client’s enrollment is concentrated.

Pay periods matter more than they look. A plan that costs an employee $180 a month is $90 per pay on a semi-monthly schedule and about $83 on a biweekly one. Always state the number of periods on the page; the templates calculate both 24 and 26 so you can present whichever matches the client’s payroll.

Checking ACA affordability

An applicable large employer must offer at least one plan that provides minimum value and is affordable, measured against the employee-only cost of the lowest-cost such plan. The comprehensive template includes a worksheet for the three common safe harbors: rate of pay, W-2 wages, and the federal poverty line.

The affordability percentage is an input cell in the template rather than a fixed number, because the IRS resets it every year. Enter the figure for the plan year you are quoting from current IRS guidance before relying on the result. The worksheet then compares the employee-only monthly cost from the Contribution tab against each safe harbor and tells you whether it clears. Treat it as a working check, not a compliance opinion — confirm anything consequential with the client’s counsel or tax advisor.

Using the template as an HR or benefits manager

The templates are built around a broker’s workflow, but nothing in them assumes you are one. If you handle benefits in-house, the same structure works for reviewing what your broker or carrier has sent you.

Two adjustments help. First, put your current plan in the first column and treat every other column as a proposed change, so the comparison reads as a decision rather than a catalogue. Second, fill in the Contribution tab early, because the employee-cost figures are what your employees and your finance team will ask about long before anyone asks about coinsurance.

If you are preparing something to hand to employees rather than to evaluate options yourself, an employee benefits booklet template is the better starting point — it is written for communicating a decision that has already been made.

Common mistakes

• Comparing plans from different document types. An SBC and a carrier marketing sheet describe the same plan with different rounding and different footnotes.
• Dropping the out-of-network column. It is the field most likely to separate two plans that otherwise look identical.
• Mixing composite and age-banded rates in the same comparison without labelling which is which.
• Presenting a total premium without the employee cost. The client cannot act on the total alone.
• Losing the source. Six weeks later, nobody remembers which version of which quote a number came from.

When the spreadsheet stops working

A spreadsheet is the right tool for two or three plans for one client. It stops being the right tool somewhere around the point where you are re-keying the same carrier’s SBC for the fourth client this month, or when a quote is revised after you have already built the comparison and every downstream figure has to be checked by hand.

That is the work benefit comparison software takes over: the carrier documents are read into a case, the comparison and the contribution modeling are built from them, and each figure stays linked to the page it came from — so a revised quote updates the proposal instead of restarting it.