Record keeping software question

We sometimes have to spend significant time getting a Summary of Accounts produced in our admin software.  We are able to download financial activity into the software on most plans by far.  But there are several record keepers where this does not work well or we just haven't figured it out.  My question is - how many of you do not use record keeping software to produce a summary of accounts?  The only two benefits of the software record keeper link that I can see are top heavy determination and 5500 participant count.  I'd say 90% plus of our plans are either top-heavy already, are safe harbor contribution only plans or are DB combos where the actuary confirms the top-heavy amount.  The very few where we need to watch top heavy continue to be linked with the record keeper and just several without a link are done outside in Excel.  I have a good Excel solution. It takes some time to get all the adjustments in but the benefit is that you really have to think about what is going into the test.  We already have a few clients where their year-end reports are census, contribution summary, all the testing reports and we include the investment company record keeper summary of accounts.  Spending time getting our record keeping to match theirs for some clients can be very tedious not to mention the time in setting up a new plan in the admin system.  My staff will balk at what I'm suggesting here because when fully in the system, it works very well.  But they don't necessarily think about time/billing.  Admin software is invaluable in confirming eligibility, contribution calculations, and all the testing, etc.  But I questions the value of the summary of accounts updating.  We are not daily obviously and are small and work with about 15 record keepers.  We have 3 or 4 record keepers with a large number of our plans but then there are the others with just 1-5 plans so we deal with all the different record keeper processes.  I imagine most everyone in here does as well.

Just thinking here and wondering what others are doing.

Thanks 

You ask a great question(s). I'm nearly fully retired now; just can't wean myself from this board and some direct work activities, but sometimes wondered the same thing towards the end. I couldn't quite bring myself to pull the trigger but we too spent an awful lot of time getting "our" account statements to equal the recordkeepers'. Most of the time it was some kind of import problem, but often enough there was some kind of contribution deposit error or whatnot that wouldn't be caught without going through the whole process, so I always felt that was part of our job (catching such errors) and kept it up.

But it's frustrating when you know others aren't doing that.

It's not exactly "right" but a solution to the TH testing and 5500 count is to import everything from the vendors and not worry too much about reconciling. 

Being forced to deal with crappy systems like FasCor is one of the reasons I got out. And of course the incessant changes in the law.