ACA compliance has long been viewed as a reactive task: file your forms, wait for a response, and deal with penalties if and when they come. But as IRS enforcement ramps up and penalty notices like Letters 226J, 5699, and 972CG become more frequent, this approach is no longer sustainable — especially for employers with large or complex workforces.
Forward-thinking compliance leaders are recognizing the need to shift from reaction to prevention. Trusaic’s ACA Compliance Solution enables this shift by empowering organizations to proactively manage risk, ensure data accuracy, and maintain audit readiness year-round.
In this blog, we’ll explore how proactive ACA compliance not only reduces financial exposure, but also saves time, stress, and administrative effort.
The Problem With Reactive Compliance
For many employers, the ACA compliance process follows a familiar pattern:
- Assemble year-end data from payroll and benefits systems
- File IRS Forms 1094-C and 1095-C
- Wait for IRS response
- If errors or penalties arise, scramble to investigate and respond
This reactive model has several major drawbacks:
- Limited visibility into compliance gaps until it’s too late
- Higher risk of penalties due to errors that could have been corrected earlier
- Significant administrative burden responding to IRS notices under tight deadlines
- Increased audit exposure, especially with missing historical data or poor documentation
With the IRS enhancing ACA enforcement and shortening audit response timelines, waiting until a penalty notice arrives is simply too risky.
The Trusaic Solution: Proactive ACA Compliance Management
Trusaic’s ACA Compliance Solution flips the script by helping employers stay ahead of issues — before they become problems. Here’s how:
1. Real-Time Data Validation
Our platform conducts hundreds of automated checks on your ACA data, identifying:
- Invalid or missing codes on Lines 14, 15, and 16
- Incomplete or incorrect plan start months
- Invalid ZIP codes or name formatting issues
- Misclassified employees that could trigger ESRP penalties
With immediate feedback and validation tools, issues can be corrected before submission, reducing the risk of IRS rejections and late corrections.
2. Penalty Risk Assessment
Most ACA vendors wait until a penalty notice is issued to address problems. We take the opposite approach.
Trusaic’s Penalty Risk Assessment tool analyzes your ACA data to:
- Estimate potential ESRP liabilities
- Flag affordability errors
- Identify employees who should have been offered coverage
By surfacing this risk in advance, compliance teams can take corrective action—adjust codes, reclassify employees, and update contribution amounts — before facing IRS scrutiny.
3. Time-Series Tracking for Full Audit Readiness
Traditional systems overwrite monthly data, making it nearly impossible to prove historical compliance during an audit. Trusaic solves this with a time-series database that:
- Captures monthly snapshots of employee status, classification, and offers of coverage
- Maintains visibility across EINs and transitions
- Provides defensible records for audit response or penalty appeal
With this level of historical granularity, your organization is always audit-ready.
4. Automated, Seamless Data Integration
We know compliance starts with clean data. That’s why our solution integrates directly with leading HCM, payroll, and benefits systems — including Workday and UKG Ready — to:
- Eliminate manual data uploads
- Synchronize changes in real time
- Reduce errors due to outdated or disconnected systems
This means no last-minute data collection chaos and no relying on error-prone spreadsheets.
Benefits of a Proactive ACA Strategy
By moving from reactive to proactive ACA compliance, employers gain:
- Penalty avoidance: identify and fix issues before they lead to fines
- Time savings: automate what used to be manual and error-prone
- Peace of mind: maintain continuous compliance and audit readiness
- Cost savings: eliminate surprise penalties and reduce audit response time
For compliance leaders, this shift also means fewer fire drills and more control over outcomes — something spreadsheets and traditional vendors simply can’t offer.
Why Leading Enterprises Choose Trusaic
For large organizations, ACA compliance isn’t just about filing forms — it’s about having a system that works at scale. Here’s why enterprises rely on us:
- Scalable Architecture: Built to handle large datasets and multiple entities without compromising accuracy.
- Compliance Expertise: ACA specialists provide white-glove support for federal and state requirements, penalty letters, and audits.
- Centralized Control: One platform to manage all entities, all employees, and all deadlines.
- Proven Results: We’ve helped enterprise clients save over $1 billion in ACA penalties — and counting.
Managing ACA compliance at scale requires more than a form-filling solution. It requires intelligent automation, accurate data, proactive compliance management, and enterprise-grade support. That’s what Trusaic delivers.