Whether your retirement plan has previously been audited or this is the first year your plan is requiring an audit, there are some helpful items your team can pull together prior to the plan audit:

• Were there any changes to the Plan or the Company during the year that should be communicated to your independent auditor, such as a payroll conversion or custodian transfer? Were there any issues your team ran into during the year, such as a code in payroll was not properly setup to have deferrals withheld on? Communicating these items to your independent auditor at the start of the audit will help with planning the audit.
• Review your permanent file to ensure you have copies of all of the executed and appropriate plan documents on file.
• Prepare the year end census file that includes all employees, their demographic information, and compensation and contributions for the year. Typically this file is also used for compliance testing purposes.
• Internally discuss the timing of the audit. If there are times during the year that are better for your team than others, this will be beneficial to be communicate to your independent auditor to help establish the timeline for the audit.

If your retirement plan has not been previously audited and you would like to discuss the audit process further with our team, we would be happy to have a phone call with you! Please feel free to contact our office at (603) 658-8000 to be connected to a team member.