Plan Year end change

[Guest Brenda Schachle]

We have a plan with an 11/30 year end that, in December we were notified they were moving the plan recordkeeping, administration and compliance to Payroll Company. The assets moved at the end of December. The client is now looking to us to provide the 11/30 valuation and annual returns -- no problem. The problem is that they also need a short plan year 12/1/2012 - 12/31/2012 valuation and return completed since Payroll Company has amended their plan to be a calendar year end. I asked for a copy of the document indicating the short plan year but they cannot provide this to us.

1. Can we retroactively amend the plan to 12/31 year end just to incorporate the short plan year language? This makes little sense to me since they have already "amended" the plan using the payroll company's prototype.

2. I have tried to explain that this was missed when the payroll company took over. The payroll company contends that the payroll company "does not need to amend our document to reflect the change since the plan started with us 1/1/12 and the plan year will be 1/1/12-12/31/12 . (Payroll Company person), the Document Analyst advised that there was discussion during the technical review of the plan with (plan sponsor) and (advisor) on the plan, that you should have made your prior provider aware that they would need a short plan year from 12/1 to 12/31 for the prior plan. Therefore, the (Payroll Company) plan is in compliant."

3. So the client wants us to:

(1) prepare the 11/30 year end reports,

(2) amend the document to accommodate the 12/31 year end change,

(3) prepare the 12/31 short year end reports.

Any thoughts on this? We are a "non-fiduciary" TPA with no ties to the assets. This may be as "compliant" as it gets for the client -- uh, former client.