Washington Workers' Compensation

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.

To administer workers’ compensation  in Patriot Software

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:

Payroll > Settings > Payroll Settings > Workers’ Comp Settings

  • Click “Add Code” to add a new code.
  • Enter 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 rate (employer + employee) in the employer rate box, and enter “0” in the employee rate box.
  • Click “Save.”
  • To edit an existing workers comp code, click the Edit icon in that row.  You can now make changes in the appropriate fields for that code.  Click either Save or Cancel.
  • To delete an existing workers comp code, click the Delete icon in that row.   If this code was used in a payroll, it will still show in your Workers’ Comp Wages Report.

Now you will need to add a workers comp code for each employee.  See Adding Washington Employee Workers Comp Information.

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.  In order to prevent the insurance from calculating on non-worked hours, you can indicate this when adding or editing your hours types.  Note that 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 hours to exclude the insurance calculation:

Settings > Payroll Settings > Hours & Money Types > Add or Edit
Check the box for “Track Non-Worked Hours” and click “Save.”

Marking Your Company Exempt from 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.  You will not be required to add workers’ comp codes and assign to employees.

Settings > Payroll Settings > Tax Exemptions 

  1. For Washington Worker’s Comp field, click “Add Workers’ Comp Exemption Status.”
  2. Select Exempt.
  3. Enter an effective date.
  4. Click Save.

Related Articles
What is Workers’ Compensation?