When submitting your employee payroll contributions, you have three options for entering that information.
- Manually enter the required data directly into the contribution grid.
- Upload a payroll file.
- Copy from the previously completed payroll contribution submission of the same type, e.g., regular or off-cycle.
In this article, we will review manually entering the data directly into the contribution grid.
Start Submission
1. To begin, navigate to the "Contributions" tab in your employer portal and select Start Contribution.
The contribution grid will be pre-populated with your current active participants plus any participant who has terminated in the current or previous plan years. Make sure to scroll to the right to see all the pre-populated columns.
Understanding the Grid
The grid is broken down into two sections. The Non-Editable columns section contains core information gathered from each employee. The Editable Columns Section of data may or may not need to be updated on a per-payroll basis.
Non-Editable Columns:
- SSN (Social Security Number): Pre-populated.
- First Name: Pre-populated.
- Last Name: Pre-populated.
- DOB (Date of Birth): Pre-populated.
- Pre-Tax Deferral Election Amount: Pre-populated; the amount/percentage elected by an employee to defer in Pre-Tax funds on a per-pay period basis.
- Roth Deferral Election Amount: Pre-populated; the amount elected by an employee to defer in Roth funds on a per-pay period basis.
Editable Columns:
- Pre-Tax Contribution Amount: the amount withheld from the employee’s paycheck for Pre-Tax retirement contributions.
- Roth $ Amount: the amount withheld from the employee’s paycheck for Roth retirement contributions.
- Employer Safe Harbor Contribution: an employer contribution in either a mandatory matching amount or a mandatory non-elective amount based on a predetermined formula within the plan’s rules.
- Employer Discretionary Match: the contribution that an Employer elects to make on behalf of a participant.
- Profit Sharing Contribution: used if your company is contributing profit-sharing funds to your employees’ retirement accounts.
- QNEC: Qualified Non-Elective Contribution.
- Loan Payment: Loan amount being repaid for the pay period.
- Period Hours Worked: Employee hours worked for the pay period.
- Period Gross Pay: Employee gross pay for the pay period.
- Date of Hire: Editable.
- Date of Termination: Include the termination date to update the record-keeping system.
- Date of Rehire: Include the rehire date to update the record-keeping system.
- Address Line 1: Pre-populated.
- Address Line 2: Pre-populated.
- City: Pre-populated.
- State: Pre-populated.
- Postal Code: Pre-populated.
- Country: Pre-populated.
- Work Email: Employee work email. Pre-populated. Editable for updates.
- External Payroll ID (optional) - If your payroll provider uses an identifier other than an SSN, you may choose to include that identifier.
Please Note: Column headers will vary by plan depending on plan features. Only the contribution types that are appropriate to your plan will be displayed.
2. From here, you can add the contribution and loan repayment amounts (if applicable) for plan savers (employees). Please select a box directly in the grid to enter each employee's contribution and loan repayment amount.
Note: Catch-up contributions aren't segregated into a separate column. Please combine catch-up and regular contribution amounts.
3. Once complete, review the contribution totals summarized at the bottom of the screen, then select the Send & Validate button to move on to the next step.
Note: If the Send & Validate button is still grey, it is inactive. Please look over the screen for any red fields indicating an error that needs to be resolved.
You can sort any column on the contribution grid by clicking on that column header (please see the image below). After you enter the contribution values, click on the column header, and you will see an arrow up or down. Click again on the same column header to change the direction of the sorting. This feature applies to all column headers.
- The columns will be sorted by:
- Greatest value to least value.
- Least value to greatest value.
Review Submission
On the "Review Submission" page, you will have the opportunity to take several actions:
- Edit Submission = Go back and make further edits to the submission.
- Cancel Submission = Delete the submission and start over.
- Complete Submission = Fully submit the contributions.
If you do not need to make any edits to the contributions and are ready to submit, select Complete Submission. A pop-up window confirming your successful submission will then appear. From the window, you can select Back to Transactions to return to your "Contributions" dashboard.
The following screen will pop up to confirm that you have successfully submitted the contributions for further processing.
You may also submit contributions with Forfeiture if your plan is integrated.