Employee benefit plan audits performed under AICPA standards and Department of Labor requirements — supporting the Form 5500 and the plan administrator’s fiduciary obligations.
Section 103(a)(3)(C) audits where a qualifying certification is available, and full scope audits where it is not.
What a plan audit asks for and where plan audits most often go wrong — written for HR and finance staff who have never run one.
The Form 5500 deadline, and any extension, sets the calendar. Testing is scheduled around your recordkeeper’s data and your payroll records so the filing is not waiting on the audit.
If we perform accounting services for the plan sponsor, we assess whether independence with respect to the plan is impaired and tell you plainly. Where it is, another firm must perform the plan audit. We settle this before the engagement, not during it.
Generally when the plan has 100 or more eligible participants with account balances at the beginning of the plan year — subject to the 80-120 participant rule, which can let a plan continue filing as a small plan. Counting the right population is where most sponsors go wrong, and we will confirm it with you before you commission an audit you may not need.
Where a qualified institution certifies the completeness and accuracy of certain investment information, the audit may exclude that certified information from testing. It is a permitted audit scope, not a lesser-quality audit — and it requires a proper certification, which we verify before relying on it.
Correction programs exist, including the DOL’s Delinquent Filer Voluntary Compliance Program. Bring it to us early — the options are meaningfully better before a DOL notice arrives than after.
Yes. Plan audits are a standing part of the practice, not something we take on occasionally alongside corporate work.
Plan year end, participant count and whether you are filing an extension. We will confirm what the plan requires before anything is scoped.
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