Testing & 5500 for plan with brokerage and vendor accounts

Noob 2024 testing & 5500 SF questions here:

1. For a 401k plan (accrual basis, Basic match SH w/ Proft Sharing contributions ) with both vendor and brokerage accounts - if a brokerage account includes only one participant out of 30 employees on census and  deposits to that account  total $68000 for example -  is the entire $68,000 included in with the total of the vendor/recordkeeper total contributions on 5500-SF or just the max allowable annual limits by source? In this example 30,500 Roth and max  SH match. The  plan hasn’t decided on PS contribution amount for 2024  

2. How do you determine the contribution source if the brokerage account statements list only ‘deposit’?

This is my first plan with both vendor and brokerage accounts, and I’m unsure how the two are handled together on the 5500, and how the brokerage account deposits are broken down by source  

Thanks!

9 hours ago, user001 said:

if a brokerage account includes only one participant out of 30 employees on census and  deposits to that account  total $68000 for example -  is the entire $68,000 included in with the total of the vendor/recordkeeper total contributions on 5500-SF or just the max allowable annual limits by source?

All of it. If it exceeds limits you have some corrections to do, and you those should also be on your 5500 for the appropriate year.

9 hours ago, user001 said:

How do you determine the contribution source if the brokerage account statements list only ‘deposit’?

You are scratching the surface of issues of SDBA only plans...  You need more information to determine contribution sources, like a ledger or payroll report. 

9 hours ago, user001 said:

This is my first plan with both vendor and brokerage accounts, and I’m unsure how the two are handled together on the 5500, and how the brokerage account deposits are broken down by source  

The brokerage account isn't going to track it by source because that  is not what it is designed to do.  You need to do source level accounting of contributions, distributions, fees, earnings, etc. outside of the brokerage account.

Do you have software that will do this for you?  If not, are you an employee of the plan sponsor or advisor trying to do this without a TPA?  If so, you need the assistance of a professional.

We use FT Williams for testing and 5500. I did trust accounting to sort out the earnings, distributions, fees. etc. and added the data to FTW along with vendor file for other participants' data. Thank you...this is helpful.

50 minutes ago, user001 said:

We use FT Williams for testing and 5500. I did trust accounting to sort out the earnings, distributions, fees. etc. and added the data to FTW along with vendor file for other participants' data. Thank you...this is helpful.

Ok so you are importing it using a vendor upload.  Are you doing a manual allocation of earnings, fees, etc and importing that using a vendor upload?  Why not let FTW do that allocation for you?  

If you set up accounts and sources properly in FTW, you could have as many sources as you want and you would just enter the total for the year as a manual transaction.  If you have a lot of participants you can  import/export that data as well.  Lets say you have 401k, Roth, SH, and PS.  you have 1000 in earnings. let FTW calculate how much of the 1000 is 401k earnings, Roth earnings, etc rather than telling the system what belongs to each source.

Does that make sense?

Yes, I did a manual transaction batch upload for each SDBA and separate batches uploaded from vendor. That does make sense! Thank you.