EBP Auditing HAS NEVER BEEN EASIER

We believe in affordable, transparent pricing with no hidden fees, so we offer a flat-rate price. The price of your audit will depend on your plan type, plan size, the assets held, and your plan’s provisions, which will be discussed during your free consultation. Our goal is to provide you with a 5-Star audit experience that delivers great value and makes your life easier.

While rare, additional fees could arise due to events such as significant plan corrections, plan mergers, changes in service providers, and availability of an investment certification. We promise to clearly communicate any additional fees to you, and we will obtain your authorization before we provide any additional services.

Generally, a plan must be audited when it has more than 100 participants with balances on the first day of the plan year. If the plan hasn’t been audited, then you use the 80-120 rule. Plans that have between 80 and 120 participants with balances on the first day of the plan year are permitted to file their Form 5500 in the same way they did the prior year. If you filed a 5500- SF (short form) in the prior year and your participants with balances count remains below 120, you can continue to file a short form without an audit. Once you reach above the 120 participants with balances on the first day of the plan year, the audit requirement is met.

The audit must be completed prior to the Form 5500 filing deadline as your audited financial statements are submitted with your Form 5500.

The Form 5500 filing deadline is the last day of the seventh month following your plan’s year-end, which is July 31st for calendar year plans. You may apply for an automatic extension by filing a Form 5558. The extension extends the due date 2 ½ months. For calendar year plans, the extension extends the due date to October 15th.

The audit process takes 6-8 weeks on average; however, this range is heavily influenced by response time. We’ve completed audits in as short as 3 weeks.

If you have received a notice from the Department of Labor due to an incomplete filing and need an audit as soon as possible, we will work diligently with you to get your audit completed as soon as possible without sacrificing quality.

We will send you a request list at the beginning of the audit process that contains the information we need to start and successfully complete your audit. We also work with your plan’s service provider(s) to securely access information directly from them (or their site) for efficiency and to reduce the burden. Our commitment is to make your life easy!

• ERISA Section 103(a)(3)(C) Audit – Formerly called a limited scope audit, Plan management can choose to exclude from the audit certain investment information that is held and certified by a qualified institution (as long as an investment certification is available and the institution is qualified under Department of Labor rules and regulations). All other balances and transactions are subject to the same audit procedures as a non-Section 103(a)(3)(C) audit.

• Non-Section 103(a)(3)(C) Audit – Formerly called a full scope audit, this audit requires all the major account balances and transactions to be audited, including audit procedures over the investments.

• Eligible compensation that is excluded from the calculation of participant and employer contributions.
• Untimely (and missed) remittances of participant contributions to the plan.
• The failure to update participant deferral elections, or changes to them, in the payroll system.
• Participants eligible to participate are not made aware of their eligibility or ineligible participants are participating in the plan.
• The failure to enroll automatically enrolled participants timely and the failure to auto-escalate participants.