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Complete listing of June 1996 reviews
By Joel T. Patz
Every small business needs to know about required employee insurance coverage, including the ins and outs of comprehensive liability and workers' compensation insurance. The issues involved certainly can affect your bottom line.
The employer-oriented Workers Compensation Consultant 4.2 examines the factors contributing to insurance costs with an eye to lowering overall expenditures. When considering job changes and personnel or compensation packages, for example, it lets business owners see how different scenarios impact the costs of insurance and liability coverage.
The program provides a file with appropriate class descriptions and workers comp rates for all 50 states; you enter applicable liability rates manually. Companies using multiple jurisdictions with many rate changes can also purchase rate updates.
The program lets you set up your company with state-specific factors such as maximum and minimum chargeable payroll and premiums. It offers a central place for making many personnel-oriented calculations and charts, and builds a previewable report with the details you've provided. Reports will include employee-specific numbers and an Audit Grand Total.
The Workers Compensation Consultant can track pertinent employee information including name, job title, the amount of company stock owned, if they are included in the policy and their job's class description. The program automatically updates premium changes as you modify payroll information, which you can enter manually or import from various payroll applications. Although the documentation hinted at wider accounting program support, the only options available in the version I examined were Computer Associates' AccPac or simple ASCII.
The documentation, while helpful, needs careful proofreading; I found mathematical errors. Nor could I print the full list of classifications and rates as promised in the manual. International Business Saveware says it's aware of the problems and will fix them by the time you read this.
A few pluses and minuses can influence the bottom line. The Workers Compensation Consultant, with mostly pluses, fills its niche well.
Info File
The Workers Compensation Consultant 4.2
Price: $49.95 (street)
Pros: Unique; money saving
Cons: Documentation
Platforms: Windows 95, 3.1x
Disk space: 7.39MB
RAM: 80KB
International Business Saveware
800-444-5889, 604-873-2331
WinMag Box Score: 3.0
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