Employer agents

An employer agent or third-party administrator has an agreement with one or more clients to manage their Paid Leave and WA Cares reporting, premium payments, benefit claims or other related tasks. The employer is still responsible for ensuring all employer requirements are met by their agent.

Agents may file reports and amendments and pay premiums for clients while waiting for a power of attorney (POA) request to be accepted by their client. You will need a completed POA before our staff can provide you any information about your client’s account, including reports or employee-level data. You will also need a POA to represent your client in audits or appeals.

If you do need a POA for your clients, submit your request electronically in your Paid Leave employer agent account. Your client will need full access to their account to accept your POA request.

Before you continue: the person who completes this process becomes the account administrator and will need to add additional users to the account before anyone else can have access. Read more about adding additional users. 

You will need an active SAW account and you will need to add Paid Family and Medical Leave to your SAW services before you can log in and establish your Paid Family and Medical Leave account. 

1. On the “Create an Account” page, select Create an Account to the right of “Employer Agents.” 

• If you don’t see this page because you automatically went to a different account page, click + Add/Switch Account in the upper right. 

2. Enter your business’s legal entity name and EIN then click Next. 

3. On the “Enter Contact Information” screen, enter the name, phone number, email address and mailing address we can use for questions about your account then click Next. 

4. Confirm the information displayed is correct by clicking, Submit. If you made any mistakes or need to update anything, click Previous to go back and make changes. 

5. After submission, you’ll go to the “Employer Agent Registration Confirmation” page.

1. Log in to your employer agent account. 
2. Click Manage Clients in the top menu bar then click on Link to a Client. 
3. Search for your client using their ID. Your client’s ID will be one of the following: 

The nine-digit Unified Business Identifier (UBI) number assigned to businesses by the State of Washington and used by all state agencies to identify a business entity or 
A nine-digit alphanumeric Employer Account ID assigned to your client by the Employment Security Department that starts with ER. 

• If you see a message indicating the account cannot be found, and you have verified the ID is correct, your client will need to register and create their employer account. 

4. Enter the required information for your POA request then submit for your client to respond. You and your client will receive an email indicating there is a pending POA awaiting a response.

• Bulk file or amend reports for your clients with an ICESA file. Paid Leave and WA Cares have different bulk filing specifications than other state agencies. 

• Report or amend for individual client accounts using a .CSV file upload or manual entry. 

• Bulk pay using ACH credit (to get the instructions for ACH credit payments, email paidleave@esd.wa.gov with “Request: Bulk Payment Instructions” as the subject. 
• Pay for individual clients by credit or debit card, ACH debit or check/money order.