I will try this again. JohnB, please allow us, Quantech users the ability to share our comments in a professional way. Not all things said on this board should be in support of Qtech. Allow the users of this board to comment on my posting. Quantech obviously scans the board and gets very upset when someone has negative feedback about its product.

Below is an e-mail conversation I had with Corbel after I posted a comment on this board about “MY OPINION” “ on how well Qtech handles the needs of a daily shop (see earlier post regarding moving from Datair to Qtech). This board is not affiliated with Qtech and should be available for users to express their opinions. I have taken off the name of the individual from Corbel who sent the following e-mail to my attention in hopes that the moderator of this board will allow the post to stay. Also, below is my reply to that email. Have a nice day!

DailyK

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From: "Daily Operations"

Date: Thu, 24 Jun 1999 07:57:52 -0700

To: "John Doe"

Well here you go. First, I find it quite humorous that you have written me this email. If you are so sure that your product is the best in the market why would you be concerned about my comments? Constructive negative feedback should only be used to make changes that your users need.

To answer you first question. Yes, my shop uses both Quantech & TrustMark. I have used it in the past and I am using it in the present, and I will be using it in the future. I too attend a majority of your users group. Not only nationally but also the smaller regional groups. I am aware of how many shops currently use the product. Simply because you have 110 firms using Quantech for daily recordkeeping does not mean its a great system and does not need enhancements.

1) Forfeitures do not work correctly. They are not included in gain/loss calculations. They are not included in fee calculations. This becomes a manual process. It needs to be the default fund in the current version. To forfeit a participant you need to drop a contribution? Can not forfeit and distribute at the same time (negative units). They require a $1 par fund to be used which must be a cash account on Qtech. When you reallocate at year-end, it pulls the current balance. You can only have one suspense account.

2) Eligibility is horrible. If you elect to check the first box, you change the world. The system seems to calculate correctly sometimes and not correctly on other occasions. My administrators seem to mess with plan specs constantly to figure out the logic behind some of Qtech's decisions.

3) To use the VRU you need to either be eligible or have a balance on the system. Not good for the high tech automated world trying to supply better customer service and allow for online enrollment. Unable to swap the database at the plan level, either all plans or nothing.

4) Qtech does not have a trust accounting report! I know, you have been working on it for quite some time now. This is a must in daily! Cash is not tracked for reporting purposes.

5) Employee census information is sorted by effective date rather than trade date. Trade date is used in daily.

6) Activity tracking is non-existent, or at least not very good.

7) Loan interest updates are manual. Does not allow the user to tell the system what interest rate should be used on new loans. (Ex. prime 1) Should be a global level transaction to populate interest at the plan level. Loan modeling does not use the current payroll schedule. Unable to drop a loan fee and loan distribution at the same time. Loan repayments settle on the loan fund at the time of posting; should be on trade date, this can cause straddled transactions at quarter and year-end.

8) No good reconciliation reports available. Nothing at the omnibus level for daily reconciliation.

9) Takeovers are difficult. Required fields to populate with year to date information for testing is impossible unless you back in to the takeover through transactions. Unable to populate hardship information.

10) Census DER - hard to find the accounts you really need. Fund names are cut in half, no account numbers. Reports for contributions run through the system do not show employer match amounts. Unable to view 32 bit file names. Unable to pick a date to extract out ending balance, units or cost basis etc.

11) After you post a transaction, you loose the ability to scroll within that transaction to see what was done. In order to find out the funds used on a transfer or gain loss, you first must reverse the transaction in order to see what was done.

12) No good hardship distribution capabilities. Needs to be done manually in the current version.

13) No ability to use "as of" dates for transactions. Need to flip back in forth between plan years to run the transactions. Then you need to update the current year to reflect proper balance. Census (name, address, vesting changes, dates, etc.) is not carried from one year to the other if changes are made in the prior year. This happens in daily when running in the last file for the previous year which is received after the new year is established. If investment elections change in the new year via VRU or web, last contribution for the old year will not reflect correct allocation.

14) Not able to drop a negative contribution for employer match.

15) Fund prices are wrong sometimes with no corrections by Qtech if using your download.

16) Unable to identify what trades belong to what transactions.

17) 5500 reports?

18) Only one user is allowed in the plan at a time. Should at least offer view only capabilities.

19) Employers with multiple pay schedules can run into problems if the payrolls end on the same date.

There are many more things I could come up with, but these are just a few off the top of my head. Qtech does do some very nice things also, but there are needs for enhancements. Future version may make it the system of choice. Until then I must remain true to my opinion that the system does not handle daily as well as others currently.

Also, just because users are pleased with the system does not mean they do not encounter problems. I am pleased with both TrustMark & Qtech but would like to see enhancements to both.

Best Regards,

Daily

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On Wed, 23 Jun 1999 15:43:31 John Doe wrote:

[Note: several paragraphs have been edited (deleted) by me, the webmaster of these message boards -- please see my message later in this thread -- thanks -- Dave Baker]

[Note: This message has been edited by Dave Baker]

Can a person who has already begun to take substantial equal periodic payments contribute to that IRA even if he has chosen the RMD method?

Plan sponsor neglected to file Form 5500 for calendar plan year 1991 and 1992. Oops!

In 1994, this was discovered, and after discussions with the IRS (who were very amenable to the client sending the forms with an explanation), the client sent in the filings. (let's say this was done in October 1994).

Neither the client nor us received any response from the IRS in Atlanta area after the filing was sent it.

As a practical matter, they are most likely fine.

Technically speaking, what is the statute of limitations beyond which time the IRS cannot assess the $25 per day fine. Is is 3 years, 5 years, 6 years, or other? Does it run from when the filing was due, or when the filing was made?

Technically speaking, any thoughts?

When does Social Security Disability constitute Medicare entitlement, for purposes of a second qualifying event and/or COBRA cutoff? I have heard of a rule that a person receive SS disability payments for 24 months but cannot find this in writing.

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A company has had a profit sharing plan for many years and the contribution made in the January following the plan year end typically equals about $1,000,000.

This year, they had some extra cash sitting around in July and so they contributed $900,000 to the plan which was invested in a money market account. By the time January rolled around, this $900,000 contribution had grown to $1,000,000 which equalled exactly the contribution required under the plan for the previous year (not probable, but just go with it).

My questions are:

1) Is this legal? The $100,000 of earnings in the trust is basically tax free. If the company had put the $900,000 contribution in a corporate checking account and it earned $100,000 there, the company would incur $100,000 of taxable income. If prefunding was legal, it seems like too good of a planning technique for the company - - the company prefunds the contribution early in the plan year and then uses the tax free build up of the earnings to offset the company's contribution. I understand that the company would also be required to make up any difference if the value of the $900,000 decreased during the year, but given the performance of the stock market in the last couple of years, prefunding would have been a good bet.

2) Is the company allowed to use the $100,000 of earnings to reduce their required/discretionay contribution? Or must the company actually fund the full $1,000,000 contribution - - in other words, they make a deposit of $900,000 in July and then another deposit of $100,000 in January. If this is the case, what do you do with the $100,000 of earnings?

3) Must the plan document have enabling language for the company to prefund?

4) What other issues (i.e.-415 and 404) should I be aware of if a company is using prefunding?

Thanks for any help.

ERISA section 3(40)(B)(iii) explains how to determine whehter two or more trades or businesses are treated as employed by a single employer for purposes of a MEWA. The very last section of the parargraph indicates that "except that, for purposes of this paragraph, common control shall not be based on an interest of less than 25 percent." Can anyone explain what the "less than 25 percent" is referring too?

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Can I contribute the max $2000 per year into a Roth IRA and also contribute the max into my company sponsored 401k simultaenously? (I'm not yet participating in a Roth IRA or a 401k)

Say a CB plan provides for allocation credits of 4% and interest credits of 5%. When doing a actuarial val. can it be done directly with those amounts stated above (like a money purchase plan) as the minimum funding requirement or does each credit have to be converted to an annuity and then valued as a present value of the annuity accrual? For example if total compensation was 1,000,000, would the funding requirement be $ 40,000 (@ 4%) plus interest credits or do we have to convert to an annuity.

When providing top heavy benefits is it true that then we need to convert the 2% accrual to a dollar allocation?

I am working on several articles about small businesses. I would like to include first hand experiences dealing with small business human resources.If you would like to include your stories, please email me. You don't have to be the boss or know everything about HR, it's the experiences from those who deal with the issues that I'm after.

Are AP's rights in DC plans based on the participant who earned the benefit, as in DB Plans? I have seen DC plans where the AP's money was commingled with their own money, when both parties were participants in the same plan.

The vendors for our 403(B) plan has conflicting answers as to weather a hardship withdrawal can include employer money. The 403(B) plan is in from a public university.

You have until the due date for your 1999 tax return (not including extensions) to contribute to a new Roth for 1999.

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I was assigned 1/2 of a 457 Plan thru a QDRO. I would like to remove the funds from the 457 Plan but told I have no rights as an alternate payee. I'm not sure what action to take, what governs the decision? IRS, ERISA, the Plan, my QDRO? It is thru the State of Michigan. The Plan also states that a participant cannot sell or assign his funds in the 457. I thought the QDRO was an assignment. I also read an opinion by a CPA that earned or accrued income from a nonqualified plan could not be transferred. I'm so confused, all I want is my money. If I got it thru a QDRO shouldn't the plan have to follow QDRO rules? Can anyone help me, offer some answers. I would appreciate anything. Thank you. SandyB

I encountered an interesting situation today. A firm sponsers a SARSEP and the owners of the firm have been excluded as they are union employees. For some reason not made perfectly clear to me, the union owners have been retroactively excluded from the union plan for 1998 (it was amended to a 401(k) plan) and the firms contributions to this plan, on behalf of the owners for 1998 is going to be returned to the firm soon. How late after 1998 can a sponsor amend a SARSEP (or any SEP for that matter)? Specifically, can this plan now be amended for 1998 to allow the union owners to participate? If so, is there any way for them to "defer" for 1998? Lastly, am I correct in assuming that there is no equivalent of the ACP test in a SARSEP? I never work with these things but lately have been getting questions about them.

Sincerely,

Michael Spaid

If a client has a short plan year or a plan year other than a tax year, how should the $5,000 tax year limitation on the exclusion of dependent care assistance reimburements be handled in terms of administering the plan?

For example, if an employer adopts a plan year beginning July 1, and an employee may elect to defer $5,000 for the full plan year, it is possible that such employee will submit claims in excess of $5,000 in the next taxable year. At a minimum, I would assume that the employer, if not the plan administrator, would be required to monitor the limits on a tax year basis, due to its withholding obligations on excess amounts. Any thoughts?

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Here is the situation. Pending divorce and parties want to reconcile. Wife wants husband to give her control over part of IRA by rolling it over to a new IRA and making her the owner. If they were divorcing, and she was becoming his former spouse, this seems to be ok. But how do you do it if they are not divorcing? Other ideas on protecting wife's interest in IRA?

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drdcreek

drdcreek@yahoo.com

Florida charges $.35 on eah $100 for a promissory note executed in FL. My client is a FL company which has its trust located in Florida. Its plan administrator is a Massachusetts company. When individuals want to borrow money from their 401(k) Plans, will the plan be required to pay the documentary stamp tax because the note will be executed in Florida and repaid using payroll deductions from a Florida company. The Florida DOR says yes but it seems to me that this would place an extra burden on 401(k) funds because individuals would have trouble getting there own money -- it seems like it would be preempted by ERISA. Anyway, does the FL documentary stamp tax apply or is it preempted by ERISA? Does anyone know where I can find something in writing that says this. I found a technical advice memo from 1997 which seems to say it does apply, has this been changed?

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Sarah

For those of you who may have attended the Quantech Southern Users Group Meeting in Atlanta, I was curious if there was anything that we might have missed by not coming. Are there any notes or material that might be obtained for those who did not attend?

At a recent local employer's group meeting, I heard a reference made to an

employee who was able to take a tax-free

distribution of his 401(k) while he was

unemployed. Is this correct?

Perhaps it was not necessarily tax-free, but penalty-free? Where would

I find written information on this?

If a full time employee is called up for active military service is he still covered under the employer's health/welfare plan? For how long? Is the employers still responsible for dependents? Also, if the employee and employer are cost sharing and the employee is no longer drawing pay from the employer (he is in receipt of active military pay)does that change the cost or the coverage for either the employee or employer?

[This message has been edited by Jean K (edited 06-28-99).]