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Enrollment

This guide is an overview of how you can enroll members into First Dollar's system to power your benefits program. We support enrollment through our API or via batch SFTP file exchange.

API enrollment​

Getting Started​

See our API Overview section for a high level overview of how First Dollar's API works.

As a kickoff to your implementation, First Dollar will create a "Partner" in our system for you, representing the top level domain object that employers and individuals will be associated with. Once this is complete and your API keys are provisioned, the following series of API calls allow you to set up organizations, create benefit programs, and enroll individuals in those programs.

Create Organizations​

First, use the createOrganization API to create an employer in our system. This allows you to create unique benefit programs per employer, and enroll employees in those programs as appropriate.

Create a Benefits Program​

For each organization, you can then create a top level benefits program using the createBenefitsProgram. A benefits program is suite of complimentary benefit types that you'd like the organization to be able to offer employees for a given benefits enrollment cycle.

Create a Benefit​

Then, use the createBenefit API to create individual benefits that should be in each program. An example benefit lineup might include an HSA, an FSA, and a Commuter Stipend.

Create Individuals​

Next, you'll create all individuals that need to be enrolled in these benefits. This can be done using the createIndividual API.

For each individual who should be enrolled in the Benefit, call the createIndividual mutation.

Required Data for Individual Enrollment​

First Dollar's philosophy on data collection is to collect the minimal amount of data required to administer accounts for our user's while maintaining compliance. Clients of First Dollar's API should provide the maximum amount of data the client system has available for an Individual.

The data required to successfully enroll an individual in a Benefit depends in part on the underlying Benefit. For example, Benefits that require per-user KYC will not allow enrollment unless a user has name, address, DOB, and SSN defined. On the other hand, Benefits that do not require KYC per account holder only need to specify the minimum amount of user-data.

The following data is required for all Individuals:

  1. First and Last Name
  2. Physical Address (required for card carriers, mail, used for KYC, etc.)

The following data is conditionally required, depending on the account type:

  1. Date of Birth
  2. SSN

The following data is optional for all users:

  1. Mailing address (physical address will be used if unspecified)
  2. Phone number
  3. Email address

Note, if an email address is provided for a user, the email address must be globally unique (must not correspond to an existing user). If the provided email address is already in use, the request will be rejected as invalid.

Enroll the Individuals in a Benefits Program​

Finally, use the enrollIndividualInBenefit API to enroll these individual into the benefits program that was also created earlier. This will kick off the appropriate steps in First Dollar's system depending on the benefit - such as card issuing and marketing outreach - depending on the specifications laid out in your implementation.

Making changes​

All of the APIs cited above have complimentary APIs to update and make changes to benefits programs, organizations, and individuals. See our full API reference for additional endpoints that you can use to manage changes to an organization's benefits.

There is also an unenrollIndividualFromBenefit API to unenroll individuals from benefits as needed.

File based enrollment​

When opting to do enrollment via a file exchange, you will provide a CSV file with the required fields and First Dollar will host an SFTP server for you to push this file to. Alternatively, we also support you hosting an SFTP server that First Dollar will read from on a daily cadence.

As you kick off implementing your benefits solution with First Dollar, you'll work with our implementation team to agree on naming standards for this file. Additionally, we'll cover other topics like the SFTP connection details, setting up a test environment, and align on a launch date.

Data requirements​

The CSV file will contain all participant data needed to open the respective benefits account for the member, in addition to that member's employer data if applicable.

Similar to the configuration of the SFTP server, you'll work with our implementation team to ensure all data is correctly formatted in a test environment before going to production. Our team will also provide a CSV template for this data when you kick off implementation.

File exchange frequency​

First Dollar's system will search this SFTP server Monday - Friday between 10am and 2pm CT. You can send both new member enrollments, updates, or a blank file if there are no updates.