Retirement plan administration training is easy to buy badly. Someone inherits a pension plan and takes a 401(k) course because that is what everyone has heard of. Someone else processes loans and distributions all day and takes a broad program when the gaps are narrow and specific. Both finish the course and still feel unprepared, because the training matched the title of the job rather than the plan and the work.

This guide sorts the retirement programs on Payroll Training Center ...

Most RMD content is written for the account owner: how much to take out of an IRA and when. This guide is for the people on the other side of the transaction, the plan administrators, HR and benefits staff, and payroll teams who have to identify who owes a required minimum distribution from an employer plan, get it paid on time, withhold correctly and report it.

The plan's role is not optional. Code section 401(a)(9) is a qualification requirement. A plan that fails to make a ...

A 401(k) loan is approved by the recordkeeper, governed by the plan document and the tax code, and repaid almost entirely through payroll. That last part is where it goes wrong. The loan itself is rarely the problem. The problem is a repayment deduction that stops during a leave and never restarts, a final paycheck that takes the wrong amount, or a repayment that sits in the operating account for two weeks before it reaches the trust.

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SECURE 2.0 changed catch-up contributions for higher earners from a participant election into a payroll classification problem. Since the statutory rule took effect and the IRS's administrative transition period ended on December 31, 2025, any catch-up eligible participant whose prior-year Social Security wages from the employer exceed an indexed threshold must make their catch-up contributions as designated Roth contributions. The participant no longer chooses the tax ...

Every year, a traditional 401(k) plan has to prove that it does not favor its highest-paid employees. The proof is a set of annual nondiscrimination tests, and the most familiar of them, the ADP and ACP tests, the top-heavy test and the coverage test, are run by the plan's third-party administrator or recordkeeper. But the tests are only as good as the data they run on, and nearly all of that data comes from payroll.

That is why the people who know the most about why a plan failed ...

Most late Form 5500 filings are not caused by anyone deciding to ignore the deadline. They happen because the filing sits between three parties who each assume someone else is watching the calendar: the employer, the third-party administrator who prepares the return, and the auditor whose report a large plan has to attach. When the audit runs long or a census arrives late, the due date passes without anyone filing the one form that would have bought more time.

That form is ...

Most comparisons of retirement plans are written for the business owner deciding which one to adopt: how much can be contributed, how much is deductible, who bears the investment risk. This one is written for the people who have to run the plan once it exists. A 401(k), a traditional defined benefit plan and a cash balance plan look very different from the payroll desk and the benefits office. They need different data, run on different calendars, involve different outside professionals and ...

A safe harbor 401(k) is a 401(k) plan that commits the employer to a specific, fully vested contribution for rank-and-file employees. In exchange, the plan is treated as passing the annual nondiscrimination tests on employee deferrals (the ADP test) and, if the match is designed correctly, on matching contributions (the ACP test). In many cases it is also exempt from the top-heavy rules.

That trade is the whole point. A traditional 401(k) plan has to prove every year that highly ...