Employee benefit plan audit and Form 5500 support

A standard engagement for one defined contribution plan covers four workpapers. The first is a participant data tie-out: the census from the plan sponsor, payroll registers by pay date and the recordkeeper's contribution and balance reports are matched, and every difference is listed with a probable cause. The second is contribution timeliness testing, with each pay date, the date deferrals were withheld, the date they were deposited and the number of business days between them. The third is the audit request list, built from the plan's structure and the auditor's standard template, with received and outstanding items tracked. The fourth is a draft data pack for the Form 5500, with the numbers the filing needs from the plan's financial statements, ready for the administrator's review.

Where the plan has a trust statement, we also reconcile it to the draft financial statements so the audit starts from numbers that agree. Everything is delivered in Excel or in your practice-management workflow, with the formulas left visible.

We start by confirming scope with the firm: plan type, plan year end, recordkeeper, payroll system and which of the four workpapers are wanted. The firm or plan sponsor then sends source files through its own secure channel. We load the census and payroll data, run the tie-out and send back a list of exceptions within the date agreed at kickoff, so the sponsor can fix data problems before the auditor arrives.

Contribution timeliness comes next. DOL regulation 29 CFR 2510.3-102 treats participant contributions as plan assets as soon as they can reasonably be segregated from the employer's general assets, and no later than the 15th business day of the month after they were withheld. Plans with fewer than 100 participants have a safe harbor of seven business days. We test each pay date against both and flag late deposits with the number of days late, so the firm can decide how the late deposit is corrected and reported. We never decide that for the plan.

The buyer is a firm, not a plan sponsor. TPAs with a filing season that outgrows their staff use us for data prep and workpapers. Accounting firms with an employee benefit plan audit practice use us when fieldwork and request-list building fall in the same weeks as their other deadlines. Firms that audit a handful of plans a year and cannot justify a full-time hire use us for the testing and tie-out layer only.

It is not a fit for a plan sponsor looking for someone to be named as the plan administrator, or for a firm that needs the audit report itself written. We prepare, you review and sign.

Census files that do not match the payroll register are the most common problem, usually because of terminated employees, rehires or a mid-year payroll change. Second is the audit request list built from scratch every year, because last year's list lives in one person's inbox. Third is deposit dates taken from a recordkeeper summary that shows the date the money was invested, not the date it left the employer's account. That distorts the timeliness test. Fourth is a Form 5500 data pack that is assembled the week of the deadline with no tie-out behind it. Fifth is loan and distribution testing left to the auditor's sample when the firm could have caught the exceptions in advance.

We work in the files and portals your firm already uses. Census and payroll data arrives as exports from ADP, Paychex, Gusto or the sponsor's own system, and balances arrive from the recordkeeper's reporting portal. Workpapers are built in Excel, with a clean copy placed in Karbon, Canopy or your practice-management tool. The Form 5500 itself is entered and filed by the plan administrator, or by the firm acting for the administrator, on the Department of Labor's EFAST2 system. We do not hold EFAST2 credentials and do not file on anyone's behalf.

Plan data includes Social Security numbers and account balances, so we ask for the minimum fields the test needs and for data to arrive over your firm's secure channel. Where tax return information is involved, the signing preparer obtains the client's written consent before it is shared with a service provider, consistent with IRC section 7216, and we treat Form 5500 engagements the same way. Files are returned to you, and retention follows your engagement letter. Details of the controls we apply are on our security page.

Pricing is per plan and depends on the number of participants, the number of payroll sources and which workpapers you want. We do not publish a per-filing price, because a plan with one payroll and a clean recordkeeper file takes far less time than one with three payrolls and a mid-year recordkeeper change. We quote after seeing a sample of the census and one payroll register, in writing, before work starts. Capacity for firms with many plans is scoped as a recurring engagement and covered on our pricing page.

Setup takes about a week: we agree scope, match your workpaper templates and run a test on one prior-year plan so you see the output before the busy season. After that, each plan runs on a calendar tied to the plan year end. EBP fieldwork clusters in the late spring and the weeks before the October extended due date, so we ask firms to book capacity early. For similar capacity beyond benefit plans, see review support and PBC lists.