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Submitting First Payroll Contribution Submission (Integrated Plans)

  • Updated

Your first payroll contribution submission is an integral part of successfully getting your plan up and running with Vestwell. Below is an outline of the first payroll contribution submission process. 

  1. Provide Vestwell with complete and accurate census information for your plan
  2. Make sure your integration setup has been completed with your payroll provider 
  3. Complete the setup of any payroll specifications once your integration is up and running, (i.e. deduction codes, payroll groups, etc.)
  4. Submit Your First Payroll

  5. Review responsibilities (i.e. informing us of employee status changes) that you, as the employer, are responsible for, even though your plan is integrated  

Census Information

Providing a complete and accurate census is very important and will help make payroll submissions and reporting easier. A census is a list of every employee currently employed or employed at any time during the current plan year. Learn more about what is needed and why we need a Census File. 

Setup Your Integration

Set up your payroll integration based on your payroll provider. Learn how to set up Integrations.

Vestwell currently offers four different types of payroll integration:

  1. 180° Integration - This is a one-way integration in which Vestwell has the ability to retrieve information directly from your payroll system; however we cannot send information back.
  2. 360° Integration - This is a two-way integration in which Vestwell can automatically retrieve information from your payroll system and automatically send deferral information back.
  3. Payroll Concierge - With this type of integration, Vestwell's team of payroll experts accesses your payroll system so we can transfer the information between Vestwell and your payroll provider.
  4. No Payroll Integration - If your provider is not listed under our payroll integration list, Vestwell has designed our own proprietary payroll processing tool to make your experience as painless as possible.

Setting up payroll integration steps, deferral election change dates, and responsibilities can vary per payroll provider.  Please look for your specific payroll integration here. Please be sure that you review and understand the requirements specific to your provider. 

Setup Payroll Specifications

Once you have an active payroll integration you will have to set up your payroll specifications and send these to your payroll provider:

  • Deduction codes: Specified codes provided by your payroll provider that employers use to identify withheld wages on pay stubs.
  • Payroll Groups: Make sure any pay groups in your payroll system are also set up at Vestwell and vice versa. Setting up payroll groups will allow you to set a payment schedule, set a payment frequency, and select the bank account contributions will pull from.
  • Safe Harbor: Set up safe harbor plans if applicable.

After setting up the above, a payroll specialist will reach out to confirm your Integration is set and ready to run the first payroll. 

Submit your First Payroll

Please note that all first payrolls will have a manual submission run, after this initial payroll submission the rest of them will be integrated, with the exception of ADP Run, Quickbooks, Gusto, and Onpay which run the integration on the first payroll submission. 

Submitting your payroll manually can be done from the Vestwell portal through the 'Contributions' tab.

Learn how so submit your payroll here.

So your first payroll has been submitted, now what?

Now that your first payroll has been submitted your responsibilities are the following:

  • Employee Deferrals: Maintain employee deferral rates in your payroll system (depending on the integration level)
  • Employee Status Changes: Make updates in your payroll system when employees are hired, terminated, rehired, etc.
  • Employee Personal Information: Maintain complete, accurate, and up-to-date personal information within your payroll system. This includes the date of birth, social security number, and email address.
  • Pay Frequency/Schedule Changes: Report any pay frequency or pay schedule changes to Vestwell.
  • Review Payroll Data: We rely on you to provide us with correct, updated, and complete data about your employees regardless of whether we receive that data directly from you or from your payroll provider. Regular audits and spot checks of the data provided to us will help you quickly identify and rectify any discrepancies.

Your 'First Payroll' Walkthrough Call

At a designated time before your first payroll date, a Vestwell representative will contact you to set up a walkthrough, where we will go over the steps for submitting your first payroll contribution. This is a good opportunity to ask any questions you may have on the contribution submission process. As a precursor to this call you can review the following articles and videos to familiarize yourself with the contribution submission process:

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