Startup Idea: Automated Interface for Payroll and Retirement Plan Recordkeeping

Startup idea to develop an interface that connects Payroll and retirement plan recordkeeping systems. The platform should flag inconsistencies in the retirement plan contributions and participant data before payroll is processed. It intends to eliminate manual checking of Excel reports and ensure accurate withholding of retirement contributions.

I was a retirement plan contact for a company and worked closely with Payroll to ensure the accuracy of the retirement plan contributions being withheld from plan participants before being transmitted to the plan trustee. Anyway, it's normal for participants to drop out of participation and then jump back in every few pay periods. Sometimes this would cause a problem because payroll would be run in advance before a new effective contribution rate was entered into the system, so the contribution totals and the number of participants didn't match between Payroll and the plan recordkeeper. The only way to find the difference was to run Excel reports and manually review the individuals and totals.

What we needed was an interface between Payroll and the recordkeeper that would automatically flag the inconsistencies. In this case, if a new contribution rate was entered 5 days before the paid date, then their system would flag that individual and report the issue back to us before the payroll was run so that we could make any necessary adjustments or notify the participant that they won't see the deduction for another pay period.

We had ways to work around this but they were all based on downloading Excel reports and, if someone was out that day, they might just not get looked at for a day or two. We needed an automated process.