Plan Design

The “Plan Design” step of Digital Onboarding allows you to select various plan features available to your selected Vestwell plant that define how your plan will work once it’s live. 

Based on your plan, you will be presented with one of the following experiences:

1. A digital form that allows you to fill out your plan design selections (with the help of your advisor, if applicable, or your Vestwell sales representative):

2. A calendar link to schedule your plan design consultation where you will meet with a plan design consultant from Vestwell to walk through your design options:

We will walk through how to complete both plan design journeys below. Depending on your presented experience, please click on the link below for a complete walkthrough:

1. 1. 1. The Plan Design Form
      2. Schedule Your Plan Design Call

 1. The Plan Design Form

The plan design form includes 5 subsections to fill out. The sections are as follows:

1. 1. 1. Eligibility Options
      2. Auto-Enrollment Options
      3. Employer Contribution Options
      4. Profit Sharing Options
      5. Hardships & Loans

Below, we'll give an overview of each subsection. Depending on your specific plan, here are a few things to keep in mind:

• The overall questions and outline of the form will resemble those in this article, but certain questions or selection options may vary depending on your plan.
• Certain questions may be grayed out with a lock icon indicating that you cannot make changes to this given plan design feature. Here is an example: 

• For more information and a description of certain plan design features, click on the “i” icon .

Note: As you fill out the information on this form, it will auto-save, so you can always leave and come back to it if necessary. You will see a green pop-up at the bottom of the screen that says, “Your data has been saved.”

Eligibility Options

For the “Eligibility Options” section of the form, you will be prompted to enter general employee eligibility information as it relates to your plan. This information includes:

• What age employees become eligible for the plan - Click on the dropdown to select your desired age from the options.
• How long an employee must work for the company before becoming eligible for the plan - Click on the dropdown to select your timeline from the options.
• When newly eligible employees can enter the plan - Click on the dropdown to select your timeline from the options.
• If existing employees should be allowed to bypass the plan’s eligibility rules - Select Yes or No. If you choose “Yes,” please select if you would like the eligibility requirement waived on the plan effective date or on a custom date. If you select Custom Date, please also add this date. All eligibility requirements will be waived for employees employed on this date, and they will be able to join the plan immediately.

Auto-Enrollment Options

For the “Auto-Enrollment” section of the form, you will select the contribution percentage and/or auto-escalation percentage at which you’d like to automatically enroll employees into your plan. 

This means your employees will automatically be added to the plan once they are eligible and contributions will be taken from their paycheck. They can always opt out of contributing further if they choose not to participate. For more information on automatic enrollment, see our article here. You will fill out the following information:

• Auto-enrollment default setting - This is the percentage of an employee’s pay they should contribute by default. Choose a number from the drop-down. 
• Auto-escalation settings - Choose an amount from the first dropdown box of how much, at the end of each year, an employee’s contribution amount would increase by automatically. In the second dropdown, indicate at what percentage employee contributions should continue escalating until they reach this amount. Employees can turn off auto escalation if they prefer to control their contribution amount themselves. For more information on automatic escalation, see our article here.

Employer Contribution Options 

For the “Employer Contribution” section of the form, you will be prompted to enter information about the types of employer contributions you will make to the plan. This information includes:

• If there will be safe harbor matching contributions made - Select Yes or No. For more information about safe harbor plans, please see our article here.
• How much the business will contribute to employees’ accounts - Select your preference from the dropdown.
• How often the business will fund safe harbor contributions - Select between Each pay period or Annually. If you select “Each pay period,” your business will fund safe harbor contributions to employees each pay period. You will define your pay period in the next step, “Payroll and Payment.” If you select “Annually,” your business will fund safe harbor contributions to employees once per year. 
• If the company will make a discretionary match to employee accounts - Select Yes or No. This is a non-safe harbor match type and is optional for the employer to make at the end of the year. If you select “Yes,” you must choose how often you will fund these discretionary contributions by selecting either Each pay period or Annually.

Profit Sharing Options

For the “Profit Sharing Options” section of the form, you will select if you would like to add any profit sharing contribution features to your plan. A 401(k) profit-sharing plan is a retirement plan feature that allows employers to make discretionary contributions to employees' 401(k) accounts based on the company's profits. For more information on profit sharing, see our article here. You will fill out the following information:

• If you would like to add a profit share to your employees - Select Yes or No. If you select “Yes,” please also fill out the following:
  • Your profit sharing method - Select your preference from the dropdown. 
  • Your profit sharing vesting schedule - Select your preference from the dropdown. For more information on vesting, please see our article here.  

Hardships & Loans

The last section of the form is the “Hardships & Loans” section. Here, you will input your preferences for allowing hardship withdrawals and loans for your plan. Please fill out:

• If you would like for your plan to allow hardship withdrawals - Hardships are a type of distribution available to employees for an immediate and heavy financial need. Please select Yes - All Sources to confirm that you would like to allow all possible types of hardship withdrawals. Otherwise, select No.
• If you would like for your plan to allow loans - Loans will allow employees to borrow from their account balance and pay back this loan through repayments via a payroll deduction. If you would like to allow loans, please select Yes. Otherwise, select No.

Once you have finished filling out all the required fields in the form and are okay with the selections being finalized, you can click Save & Continue.

Once you click Save & Continue, you will move on to the next step of onboarding, the “Payroll and Payment” step. For information on this section, please see our article here. 

2. Schedule Your Plan Design Consultation Call 

If you are prompted to schedule a plan design consultation call with one of Vestwell’s plan design consultants, please do so by clicking on the date and time on the calendar that works best. 

Available times are indicated in blue. Once you have selected your date, select the time you would like to schedule the call for. Then click the blue Next button. 

Next, you will add your contact information, including your name and email. You can also add guests to the call by selecting the Add Guests button and providing their email addresses. In the last field, please also share any notes or messages that will help prepare for the meeting. Once you have finished filling out this information, please select Schedule Event.

Once you have clicked Schedule Event, you will receive a confirmation message with the call details. 

You will also receive a confirmation email with the same details, and the option to cancel or reschedule the call. Please click on the link next to either “Cancel” or “Reschedule” to do so. 

Once you have finished scheduling your call, you can click Save & Continue to move on to the next step of Digital Onboarding, the “Plan Launch Call” step. For information on this section, please see our article here. 

If you have any questions or need assistance during this process, please do not hesitate to reach out to your advisor, your sales representative, or our service team at clientsuccess@vestwell.com.