Relius Web Client

[TPAMan]

Anybody know if/why Relius Web Client fell off the face of the earth today? Nothing I have published showed up on Web Client. No response to incident submission from RA.

[YankeeFan]

Anybody know if/why Relius Web Client fell off the face of the earth today? Nothing I have published showed up on Web Client. No response to incident submission from RA.

We're actually having the same issues. We published plans to webclient more than 7 hours ago and they have not yet appeared. One plan that was published around 11:30am appeared around 6:30pm.

Just curious, how many planbook do you have pending?

We have attempted to contact Sungard on several occasions and have not heard back from them.

[TPAMan]

Only have two we are waiting for in Web Client. Still would be nice to head home sometime tonight.

[Guest grzesiu]

we have over 100 plans in submitted status. Nothing has gone through to EFAST since 7 this morning. Planbooks that have been republished this morning have not been updated on Web Client. I'm getting worried!!

[Rai401k]

i thought it was just us! We are slowly getting forms that we published early this morning..now! Still plenty of forms we published that are not out there

This is the response we received from them when we submitted the incident:

Web Client is currently experiencing slow publishing and transmission times due to today’s 5500 deadline. Currently the publishing wait time is about 3 hours, but should improve as the volume of plans published dies down. We will continue to make low impact changes that will improve publishing speed throughout the day. Please do not try republishing the plan if you have already submitted it for publishing, it will eventually go through.

Once plans are published, signed by you or your client, and Submitted, we will closely monitor it so that it makes the deadline. We expect every plan that will be signed and submitted by 12 am EST to make the deadline.

We apologize for the inconvenience

3 hours more like 8 hours!

[Guest grzesiu]

Now I am getting timeout issues. Nightmare!

[Guest Marge]

We have been waiting up to 8 hours for plans we published to show up in Relius. We have approximately 15 large plan filings for which we received the accountants' opinion during the day today that are still not out there. Our clients can't even view the filings to e-sign. This was the response I received from Relius this afternoon. They seemed almost relaxed about it. This is a disaster for us.

"Web Client is currently experiencing slow publishing and transmission times due to today’s 5500 deadline. Currently the publishing wait time is about 3 hours, but should improve as the volume of plans published dies down. We will continue to make low impact changes that will improve publishing speed throughout the day. Please do not try republishing the plan if you have already submitted it for publishing, it will eventually go through.

Once plans are published, signed by you or your client, and Submitted, we will closely monitor it so that it makes the deadline. We expect every plan that will be signed and submitted by 12 am EST to make the deadline.

We apologize for the inconvenience."

[Guest Marge]

Meanwhile, everytime a filing shows up out on Web-Client, I click the "E-file" button to see if any errors pull up. I cringe when there's an error in that I have to fix and re-publish, crossing my fingers that it doesn't take 8 hours for the new one to get out there. I'm so exhausted at this point, that I'm about to cry, "Uncle" and let the chips fall where they may... Someone in our office will most likely have to write a tear soaked letter to the DOL to get our clients out of this $2,000 DFVCP per large filing mess that was created today.

[Rai401k]

We have been waiting up to 8 hours for plans we published to show up in Relius. We have approximately 15 large plan filings for which we received the accountants' opinion during the day today that are still not out there. Our clients can't even view the filings to e-sign. This was the response I received from Relius this afternoon. They seemed almost relaxed about it. This is a disaster for us.

"Web Client is currently experiencing slow publishing and transmission times due to today’s 5500 deadline. Currently the publishing wait time is about 3 hours, but should improve as the volume of plans published dies down. We will continue to make low impact changes that will improve publishing speed throughout the day. Please do not try republishing the plan if you have already submitted it for publishing, it will eventually go through.

Once plans are published, signed by you or your client, and Submitted, we will closely monitor it so that it makes the deadline. We expect every plan that will be signed and submitted by 12 am EST to make the deadline.

We apologize for the inconvenience."

same exact response, probably using that to respond to everyone.

[Guest grzesiu]

Im going to stay up until midnight and run a report as of 12:01 AM to see what is left in queue (submitted, processing, not e-filed). I suggest everyone to do this.

[Guest Marge]

I'm thinking this must be occurring all over the U.S. with Relius clients. ...And I'm not seeing any activity out there from our clients to e-sign the filings that are showing up. I think they all gave up...

[Guest grzesiu]

Web Client is completely down.

[Rai401k]

ugh! unbeleivable! our clients are actually trying to efile this late at night after they have waited all day to get the cleint invitation and now the website is down with less than an hour to midnight!

[Rai401k]

Does anyone know what the late filing penalty would be for a large plan, we published an audit at 7pm and i don't think there is anyway the plan book will show up before midnight. I thought it was $25 a day so if they file tomorrow that woudl be it. However is it true that the extensio is not counted when a filing is late? Therfore this client will receive a late penalty from 7/31 not 10/15? i feel like i'm loosing my mind!

[MoShawn]

Did anyone have issues with any other software vendor? FT William? ASC?

Just wondering.

[Guest Marge]

As far as the late filing penalty, it is my understanding that it's $25 a day from the original due date (7/31/12). The IRS has indicated that the 5558 extension can't be used towards this penalty, so the DFVCP fee of $750 ends up being more economical for Small plans. I'm thinking everyone should see how this shakes out with Relius. Relius indicated in their last e-mail:

"We apologize for the inconvenience, and we have taken a snapshot of the

database to identify the plans that were submitted and waiting to be filed

with the DOL, and the plans that were published and waiting to be made

available on Web Client. We are working on defining next steps for

potential late filings and will update you shortly."

[Tom Poje]

none that I'm aware of at FT William, and we filed at least 30 forms yesterday. I was able to track the progress of filings anytime throughout the day (there is a report that shows all your plans and filing status)

For a short time on Friday there were some minor log on issues, everyone received the following e-mail from FT William

"As you may be aware, we have had some issues with our website today from approximately 12:40 pm to 1:15 pm central time. We believe the issue has been solved. This should not have negatively impacted any of your 5500 data or filings.

We apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused. "

but that would appear to be unrelated to anything you folks have reported.

[Guest Marge]

F.T. William was down for a whole 35 minutes. I'm jealous... It's just a blip on the screen compared to the debacle we experienced yesterday with Relius. We have been in contact with F.T. William over the past few years and will moving our entire block of business (4,000 plans) from Relius to F.T. William in 2013. Enough is Enough.

[Tom Poje]

Marge-

we only use the govt forms at FT Williams (since e-fast2) and run all our plans (DB and DC) on Relius, so I can't speak for their admin system.

I should have said the issues we had Friday were not filing issues, but log-in issues into the FT William system. Other than that, no problems with the 5500s in the last 3 years

sorry to hear you had so many problems.

[Guest Marge]

I received an e-mail this morning from a peer who uses F.T. William. Their office has approximately 3,000 plans with F.T. William.

"We had no issues at all with FTW (save for Friday, there was 45 minutes of downtime due to high system volume) but yesterday went wonderful. No website issues, no issues with slowness, it went great. This year we had a lot of clients signing and filing last minute (around 122). We have about 9 clients that didn't sign their 5500's, but not because of the system or anything. When the downtime did occur on Friday, FTW was right on top of it and notified us immediately what was going on."

[Rob P]

We've been with Relius (and Corbel) for about 25 years and have never had a major problem like this. Even though their products and support have definitely slipped over the last few years, we’re still very happy with them. However, if they don’t do the right thing here, we will be definitely shopping for a new vendor.

From the above threads I would assume that FT Williams is going to be a popular booth at ASPPA.

Has anyone heard from Relius since 8:30 this morning? We still have about half-dozen plans that were published yesterday but never signed. I have a couple of irate clients looking for answers.

[Bill Presson]

We've been with Relius (and Corbel) for about 25 years and have never had a major problem like this. Even though their products and support have definitely slipped over the last few years, we're still very happy with them. However, if they don't do the right thing here, we will be definitely shopping for a new vendor.

From the above threads I would assume that FT Williams is going to be a popular booth at ASPPA.

Has anyone heard from Relius since 8:30 this morning? We still have about half-dozen plans that were published yesterday but never signed. I have a couple of irate clients looking for answers.

I really like Relius and have been happy with everything we've used. But I can't tell you how happy I am that we decided not to use Web Client. We just extract the plan from Relius Govt Forms and upload directly to the DOL site. The client logs in and signs, then we go and submit the file.

In three years, we've not had a single major problem with the site.

I really think Relius needs to end the web client and use those resources for other purposes.

[Guest Marge]

After you extract from Relius and upload the plans directly to the DOL, the client logs into the DOL website and e-signs? Very interesting option. Something for TPA's to possibly explore.

Another consideration for us to make the change to F.T. William from Relius was that F.T. William is half the price of Relius. We're not looking forward to making the change to a new vendor, but it will be well worth the effort in the end.

[Guest PensionFairy]

THIS JUST CAME FROM RELIUS...

Last night (October 15, 2012), the Relius Web Client experienced a catastrophic system failure which may have prevented or delayed the electronic filing of Forms 5500 and 8955-SSAs. This morning, we had a conference call with both the DOL and the IRS and they agreed to permit those who were delayed or prevented from filing to file by midnight, October 16, 2012 (time zone of the plan administrator) with no penalties and with no need to attach a reasonable cause explanation. The arrangement we made with the DOL and IRS is as follows:

Filings processed after midnight, October 15, 2012. If your Form 5500 or 8955-SSA has already been processed but the processing occurred after midnight of October 15, 2012, you do not need to do anything more.

Filings not yet submitted. If you attempted to submit your filing last night and were not able to file because of the system failure, you must file by midnight this evening (October 16, 2012). You will not need to include a reasonable cause explanation with the filing. The DOL and IRS agreed to abate any penalties for such filings.

Filings filed after October 16, 2012. If you were prevented from filing because of the system failure and you do not file by midnight, October 16, 2012, you will need to attach a reasonable cause explanation with your filing. You may contact us and we will provide you with a reasonable cause explanation to attach. Note: If you file more than a day or two beyond October 16, 2012, the DOL and IRS probably will not consider the filing to be covered by this arrangement to abate the late filing penalties.

If a penalty letter happens to be sent to your client, please contact SunGard and we will contact the DOL or IRS. We apologize for the inconvenience this may have caused you or your clients

Sincerely,

Ken Simons

[Bill Presson]

After you extract from Relius and upload the plans directly to the DOL, the client logs into the DOL website and e-signs? Very interesting option. Something for TPA's to possibly explore.

Another consideration for us to make the change to F.T. William from Relius was that F.T. William is half the price of Relius. We're not looking forward to making the change to a new vendor, but it will be well worth the effort in the end.

Yes, ma'am. Worked like a charm for 3 years. Have to give some credit to the DOL for having a stable site.

[Guest Marge]

IT'S A MIRACLE, I SAY! This 1 day extension from the DOL and IRS is a dream come true! Thank you to everyone at the IRS and DOL. We are forever grateful on our end!

[Guest AG-ASC]

We, at ASC had no reports of any interruptions from our clients. And no internal alerts, errors or issues occurred in our proactive logging.

[EBDI]

I had trouble with FT William for about 40 minutes on 10/15 and then it was fixed. Everything went through fine.

[commishvp]

FT Williams is awesome!!!!! We switched from Relius for the PYE 2011 and could not be happier. Was worried about the transition as far as inputting data on the forms but FT will import last years 5500 info from the EIN. Also concerned with educating our clients on new system, but that was also super easy. 1000% better than Relius Govt Forms. . . we still use Corbel for our docs and are very happy.

[BG5150]

Someone in our office will most likely have to write a tear soaked letter to the DOL to get our clients out of this $2,000 DFVCP per large filing mess that was created today.

DFVCP penalty for late filing is $10/day late up to $2,000 for a large plan. Filing on 10/18 (today) would be 79 days late for a fee of $790. The full $2,000 would not be hit until mid-February.

Note, that is the DFVCP penalty for fessing up your lateness. If the DoL and/or IRS get to you first, it's the $25 and $1,100 a day fine.

[TPApril]

I am noticing a handful of 5500 filings filed on 10/16/14. Not a lot, but more than i'd expect. Was there a similar breakdown of transmissions this year? Even if not, how long generally do they wait for a DFVC submission before sending out letters?

[Bill Presson]

_{We don't use Relius for 5500's anymore, but I got this email earlier today:}

<sub>SunGard prides itself on providing the highest level of service and solutions that the retirement industry expects. During the recent October filing period, Relius Government Forms Web Client successfully electronically filed over 50,000 Form 5500's.

For the majority of our users, Relius Government Forms provided reliable and timely filing services. There were a small subset of clients who were affected by latency issues which occurred sporadically over a three day period from October 13-15. Our executive management team, incident response team and network infrastructure teams have reviewed the information and timeline of events, and are in the process of taking action to ensure issues will be resolved as we move to our Relius Government Forms ASP release in January 2015.

We understand October is an important time for your business and our highest priority is ensuring that our systems remain accessible to you and your customers, and that user requests and transmissions are completed in a timely fashion. We know that any filing issues can cause frustration, and recognize the important role our applications and services have in your business.</sub>

<sub>Thanks your for your business and your patience.

Sincerely,

Misty Austin-Wessels
Executive Vice President
SunGard Relius</sub>

[TPApril]

Thanks Bill for sharing. That letter is gobbledygook. I for one appreciate being treated as a professional and being told upfront whatever it is that happened. Not some marketingese.