DOL Issued PINS

[Leopurrd]

Yesterday during the mad rush to file we had a few clients that got their PINS from the DOL and received the "processing stopped" filing status. When they went through and reset their PIN and refiled, it was approved.

Anyone else have this problem? It's very frustrating that the DOL can't take the PIN the first time! ARGH.

BTW, I'm using Relius WebClient.

Thanks!

Vicki

[TPApril]

If I understand your situation correctly, I had a similar situation earlier on. It appeared that the issue was they were using two different means of submitting different plans with the same signer - meaning different software (Relius, FtWiliam, or efast2 directly) for each plan. For future clients with different service providers completing other 5500's, I had them log on to efast2 first to verify credentials.

[ESOP Guy]

Did you talk to the DOL before you had the client reset their PIN?

The EFAST2 help phone line is very helpful. Although I have never called on a day like 10/17 (10/15). They might have been able to help explain what it would have taken to fix the process stop error with less frustration.

But with our clients the more common fact set that caused what you said happen was as follows.

The client set up a Userid, they got the PIN and stopped the process. They had their PIN. But the next step in the process is set up a password. Without a password the PIN is useless. So if they then go out and go through the process to reset the password it gets them a valid password and now the PIN will work.

So we now emphasize to our clients to make sure they have a valid Userid, PIN and password. The best way to do that is to have the client logon to the EFAST2 website under their userid. If they can do that they have a valid userid, PIN and password. We also encourage them to print their user profile page as it has their userid and PIN on it. So that gives them a hard copy of the PIN they can file and reference next year.

[Leopurrd]

Thank you both! These are very helpful hints. I'm going to suggest that we update our correspondence with these suggestions