Benefit Plan Audit - EE Responsibilities?

[NA2020]

Quick background, I am an accountant and I was previously an auditor at a CPA firm who worked on benefit plan audits (Mostly 401(k)  and Profit Sharing). I have since moved from public to industry and work as an accountant in the general accounting department.

My company is aware of my previous experience so had me reviewing some of the documents for our different retirement plan audits, seems harmless. However this seems to have escalated. They have now tasked me with a lot more responsibilities regarding the plan and the audits which seems odd. I have become the main contact for the audits, am sent the full document requests and am the employee expected to gather the information and relay to the auditors. I am also expected to keep track of the deadlines and make sure i'm reaching out to auditors and submitting whatever is needed. This includes doing the non-discrimination testing and reviewing forms on the servicer website as well as calculating our year end profit sharing contribution for employees. 

As a side note, I don't actually have access to the HR or Payroll system so I have to request a large portion of items from the HR and Payroll. In my experience, my contact with the clients was never someone in the accounting department. Once in a while there were certain things needed from the controller and obviously bank statement requests for remittance testing..but the people I worked with were always the HR/Payroll department.

I already have a significant amount of duties for general accounting so this whole extra responsibility seems completely inappropriate. Am I correct about this or no? I do still retain a decent amount of information from auditing but regulations change constantly and without regular review, in a year or two I could be completely uninformed. It also just doesn't seem like it should be my responsibility at all? Has anyone else ever had the main contact be an accounting personnel for all this?

[Bill Presson]

I don't think it's odd that they might task you with this since, as you say, you have experience with this area. They aren't going to be able to categorize the experience, it's all the same.

But I do find it odd that you are doing testing and calculations. Is the firm handling all the administration internally? Is there no outside TPA involved?

You could always ask for a raise.

[NA2020]

On 10/2/2020 at 12:13 PM, Bill Presson said:

I don't think it's odd that they might task you with this since, as you say, you have experience with this area. They aren't going to be able to categorize the experience, it's all the same.

But I do find it odd that you are doing testing and calculations. Is the firm handling all the administration internally? Is there no outside TPA involved?

You could always ask for a raise.

Doing the testing and calculations is definitely one of my bigger concerns. I apparently missed the deadline for submitting the discrimination testing..which wasn't on my radar at all because I've been preoccupied with our year end closing and financial audit. We do have a TPA but if I'm being honest I never seen then involved with either of the retirement plan audits. They were really involved with our transition of switching servicers and all that, so I'm not sure if that's just the majority of what they handle is high level stuff.

[Bill Presson]

9 minutes ago, NA2020 said:

Doing the testing and calculations is definitely one of my bigger concerns. I apparently missed the deadline for submitting the discrimination testing..which wasn't on my radar at all because I've been preoccupied with our year end closing and financial audit. We do have a TPA but if I'm being honest I never seen then involved with either of the retirement plan audits. They were really involved with our transition of switching servicers and all that, so I'm not sure if that's just the majority of what they handle is high level stuff.

 

Gotta say, that's just very weird. You need to get a TPA to do all that or other things are going to get missed. That definitely shouldn't be your responsibility. The other gathering of "stuff" I think just goes back to you and your CPA experience. They trust you to do the right thing and that's a compliment.

[Bob the Swimmer]

Agree with Bill--- these are responsibilities of the plan sponsor or their delegates not that of an accounting department employee IMHO unless there is some arrangement we're not aware of. And I've seen several thousand of these audits as an executive with a Big Four that audits these plans over 20 years.