Company Match on DC Plans

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RBH
Basic Member
Posts: 15
Basic Member

    Hi -

    We decided for 2018 that we would start showing the company match on DC plans on our biweekly employee checks/vouchers.  So, we set it all up nicely except we missed the maximum dollar amount on the company match on BN19.3.  And, therefore, we missed the Balance Type & Balance Amount populating on the PR14.  We also found several instances of the same PR14 record for the match (same effective date, deduction, and no end date). We discovered all of this when we had some bonuses paid out at the beginning of March and people went over the max company match...or didn't have the company match made at all.  So, we went for four pay periods before we noticed we had a problem.

    We've attempted to fix but ended up doing a TON of manual work to ensure yesterday's payroll processing calculated everyone correctly.  Needless to say, we don't want to do that again so I'm reaching out for help. 

    Since we have a company match on both the pre-tax deferral and the post-tax deferral, we are struggling with how to track the maximum company match amount ($11,000).  For example, if I contribute 10% pre-tax and 1% post-tax, my PR14 record has a company match row for both enrollments.  We initially had $11,000 populate on both of the match rows, but that allowed the match to go over $11,000 in total.  We then split the $11,000 between the two enrollments, based on % of total, and that isn't working either, as it will either ignore the post-tax match or it simply doesn't do the math correctly. 

    We are finding that changes made to BN32.1 (and BN31.2) are not making the appropriate changes on PR14.  For example, if someone's deferral percent changes, a new row is inserted on BN32.1 with the new effective date and new %.  A new row is added to PR14 for the company match deduction, but the prior row is not end-dated, and the Balance Amount isn't populated.  There's just some weird stuff going on that doesn't make sense.

    So, all that to ask...does anyone else out in the Lawson S3 world have DC company match set up (for both pre- and post-tax elections) where it works correctly?  If so, can we chat?

    Thanks.

    Ruth Holladay

    Karen Ploof
    Veteran Member
    Posts: 118
    Veteran Member
      I'm going to leave the bigger question about the limit on company match to others, and address only your comment about the PR14 not changing when you make a change to BN32. It sounds like, at one time, someone was creating the match deduction directly on PR14. If a deduction is created on PR14, changes made in BN will not update it. You can verify by running a query against PR14 for this deduction. If it was manually created the seq # field will be blank.
      Keith Anetsberger
      Basic Member
      Posts: 4
      Basic Member

        We were having a lot of issues with descending balances and missing end dates on several of our plans, not specifically DC plans, and worked with support in taking CTP 117337 which addressed all of our issues with 403b, our most popular plan.  We have always had to watch our DC plan closely and will be revisiting extensive testing with this plan in the coming months to see if we can help reduce the amount of monitoring when there are changes/bonuses, etc. and see if the CTP has helped with this in addition.

        Kristie Starzyk
        Veteran Member
        Posts: 76
        Veteran Member
          We match on a pre-tax and post-tax 401k. It's 1 plan with 2 different deductions. We too missed the company match limit on BN19.3 when we implemented Lawson in February 2016. We overmatched some employees that year, and didn't catch it until the beginning of 2017. We needed to work with consultants to correct the issue. We put the match limit on BN19.3, but they had to go in the database to put end dates on all the duplicate deductions that our mess had created. Once we got that resolved, whenever their election changes on BN32, the system adjusts their limit balance/percentage for the match.
          RBH
          Basic Member
          Posts: 15
          Basic Member
            Hello all - I think we've figured it out. I think.
            Our BN and PR setups appear as spotless as they can be.
            Here's the kicker, everything seems to work when we manually key an enrollment change on BN32.1...the PR14 is correct, end-dates the prior company match row correctly, and the descending balance is correct (even if the person has pre- and post-tax enrollments - the company match descending balance is allocated correctly based on % of deferral for each). So, the big old light went off - it's got to be the file we load from our vendor with enrollments. We've always used that file and it did the old "make change on BN32.1 and applicable action will happen on PR14" routine perfectly. However, we didn't use it with a biweekly company match.
            So, we are now reviewing the file and the load process to determine where the issue is (it's gotta be there as we've exhausted all our other options...we think).
            Whew.
            Thanks for your help and suggestions. If it ends up not being the file/load process, I'll be back!!
            TressaG
            Basic Member
            Posts: 8
            Basic Member
              Hey RBH -  I'm currently in the process of researching how to setup our retirement plans - with employee pre and roth contribs and employer match.  We will also have an inbound deferral file from our vendor.  Just curious what the end result was on your issue? Was it something in your file load process?  Any lessons learned are greatly appreciated!   Thanks ~ Tressa