Employer agents

An employer agent, or third-party agent, is a business that has an agreement with one or more client companies to manage their Paid Family and Medical Leave reporting, premium payments, benefit claims or other related tasks.

If you submitted a power of attorney (POA) for your client, we will link their account to yours after reviewing your POA.

You can link to a client with limited access to file and pay without a POA or before your POA has been reviewed. Watch the tutorial video.

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. Read more about creating a SAW account and adding Paid Family and Medical Leave to your services.

Once you’ve logged in and selected Paid Family and Medical Leave from your list of services in SAW, you’ll click “Continue” to create your Paid Family and Medical Leave employer agent account.

1. On the “Create an Account” page, select the “Create an Account” button to the right of “Employer Agents.”
2. Enter your business’s legal entity name and EIN and click “Next.”
3. On the “Enter Contact Information” screen, enter the name, phone number, email address and mailing address you would like us to use for questions about your employer agent account.
4. Once you’ve entered your contact information, click “Next.”
5. Confirm the information displayed is correct by clicking, “Submit,” or click “Previous” to go back and make changes.
6. On the “Employer Agent Registration Confirmation” page, you’ll see “Your Employer Agent ID.” Make note of this number. You may need it when submitting power of attorney documents for your clients.

Agents may file reports and amendments and pay premiums for clients without a signed power of attorney (POA). However, you will need a signed POA before our staff can provide you any information about your client’s account, such as reports or employee-level data. You will also need a POA to represent your client in audits or appeals.

Before you can report for individual clients, you need to link your employer agent account to their employer account. Once you’ve done that and you’re viewing their individual account details, select “Submit Quarterly Wages” from the “Wage Reporting” menu.

Learn more about POAs here.

Through Q2 2023 reporting: No payroll? No report. You do not have to file a report for quarters where your client had no employee hours worked or wages.
Beginning with reports for Q3 2023 (Reporting period begins Oct. 1, 2023) : You will need to file for every quarter, even if you did not have payroll.

Go to our reporting page for details on:

• Creating an employer agent account
• Reporting for clients
• Remitting for clients

A Unified Business Identifier (UBI) is a nine-digit number issued by the Washington Department of Revenue (DOR) when a business is licensed in our state. Employers in our state are required to register with DOR. UBI numbers can be looked up by business name on the DOR website.