Payroll Order of Operations

Not the most ideal situation but trying to create a solution to help support some operational failures.

our base plan document allows us to add on an administrative policy around the order in which deductions are withheld from payroll to avoid under deferring or over deferring. We also have plans that are missed as sometimes there is not enough of a person's pay to allow for their mandatory and voluntary deductions.

This does not appear to be a big item in plans documents or that a lot of plans have this. The thought is to adopt a policy in case the deductions are more than their pay, but I do not see any official ERISA guidance. Our plan compensation and to make our plan work, we need to have employees making deferrals. 
 

any thoughts or challenges? Anyone see where if not enough funds, 401k loans are withheld before their elective contributions? 
 

thank you

Here’s two earlier discussions in BenefitsLink:

https://benefitslink.com/boards/topic/38395-401k-elective-deferral-hierarchy/

https://benefitslink.com/boards/topic/69466-gross-pay-insufficient-to-deduct-401k-deferrals/