Washington Workers’ Compensation (Industrial Insurance)

Background

If you are a Washington state employer, you will need to enter information about your Washington workers’ compensation (also known as Industrial Insurance) when you run payroll in Patriot Software.  You should have received a “WA Workers Compensation Rate Notice” that contains your business’s class codes and hourly rates for employer and employee withholding.

For more information, see the Employers’ Guide to Workers’ Compensation Insurance in Washington State.

How to Add Company WA Workers Comp Codes and Rates

You will need to set up your workers comp codes at the company level before you can assign them to each employee.  To set up at the company level:

1. Go to Settings > Payroll Settings > Workers’ Comp Settings
2.  Click Add Code.
3. Add each six-digit code, an optional description, your employer hourly rate, and employee hourly rate as listed on your rate notice.  
   • Note: The employer has the option to pay both the employer and employee share of the rates so that the employees will not have payroll deductions for these premiums.  If you choose to pay the entire amount on your employees’ behalf, enter the entire total rate (employer + employee) in the employer rate box, and enter “0” in the employee rate box.
4. Click Save.
5. Next, you’ll add a workers comp code for each employee. See Adding Washington Employee Workers Comp Information for step-by-step instructions.

How to Edit a Company Workers Comp Code Setting

1. Go to Settings > Payroll Settings > Workers’ Comp Settings
2. Click the edit icon at the end of the row in the code you want to edit.
3. Make the updates necessary.
4. Click Save.

How to Delete a Company Workers Comp Code

• Go to Settings > Payroll Settings > Workers’ Comp Settings
• Click the Delete icon in the row of the code you want to delete.   
  • If this code was used in a payroll, the code will be shown in the Workers Comp Report and the Tax Liabilities report.

Marking Non-worked Hours Exempt from Industrial Insurance

When calculating Washington Industrial Insurance, the number of hours worked should not include any non-worked hours, such as vacation or holiday hours.  To prevent the insurance from calculating non-worked hours, you can indicate this when adding or editing your hours types.  The default hour types Vacation, Sick, and Holiday are already set to “Non-Worked Hours,” so they will not be included in the calculation.  

To set up other custom hour types to exclude the workers comp insurance calculation:

1. Go to Settings > Payroll Settings > Hours & Money Types
2. Click name of hour type.
3. Click the radio button Yes for the question “Is this a non-worked hour?”
4. Click Save.

Marking Your Company Exempt from WA Industrial Insurance

If your company is exempt from carrying workers’ compensation coverage for all of your employees, you will need to mark your company exempt. 

1. Go to Settings > Payroll Settings > Tax Exemptions 
2. Click Add Workers’ Comp Exemption Status
3. Change to Exempt.
4. Enter an effective date.
5. Click Save.

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