Q.   If I am a third-party administrator, do I need a separate checking account for each flex-plan I administer?  What if the client company wants to use their own checking account for reimbursement payments?  What reimbursement payment options do I have with Fast-Flex Plus?

A.  With Fast-Flex Plus, you have many options in the way you choose to handle payments for the reimbursement of flex-plan participant's qualified expenditures. 

Most Sec. 125 TPA's (Third Party Administrators) administer their clients out of a single checking account that they own.  Each pay day, they collect the paycheck-withheld funds from the client employers, deposit it all into their own checking account, and issue reimbursement checks that are drawn on this checking account to all flex-plan participants with their (the TPA's) name and logo on the reimbursement checks.  This is the way Fast-Flex Plus is usually operated.  It keeps everything straight between client companies and employee participants, even though there is only a single checking account. 

The bottom line: it is not a requirement that you have separate check stock or a checking account for each client company that you administer.  In fact, your TPA operation will likely be more efficient if you administer all of your client's reimbursement plans out of a single checking account.

For example, are you going to have a separate checking account, and separate reimbursement check stock, for even a small client with only 10 flex-plan participants?  If the client wants to "own" the checking account, are they going to feel any more secure if you are issuing (printing) checks from their checking account than if you owned the checking account?  

Still, some clients will prefer that you print the reimbursement checks for their employees on check stock that the client company supplies to you, and they will want to be the one to sign and distribute the checks to their employees.  Other companies will just want you to tell them what the reimbursement amounts should be and then they will want to print and distribute the checks.  That is all fine, and Fast-Flex Plus will work in all of these cases.  (It's just more work for the client company if they want to deal with printing reimbursement checks themselves.)

If you want or need to have separate check stock and a separate checking account for each client's FSA plan, Fast-Flex Plus can export its data in the Quicken *.QIF format that can then be imported into Versacheck Premium, an inexpensive piece of software that will create completed reimbursement checks from blank paper in one pass.  For more information, see:  http://www.g7ps.com/scripts/vc2005features.asp  

So we do have a way for you to create client-specific check stock on-the-fly, and several of our customers do this rather than keeping dozens of sets of pre-printed checks on hand.   Refer to Exporting to Quicken, p. 105 in our User's manual, for more information on interfacing to Versacheck.

Another reimbursement payment option is direct deposit.  Use the *.QIF option in conjunction with this website:  http://www.ezdd.com or, best of all, use the debit card features in Fast-Flex Plus:  See this page:  http://www.flexaccounts.com/debitcard.html