This guide shares answers to all your Form 5500 questions.

While you may file your own Form 5500, Guideline offers this service to plan sponsors at no additional cost. If you decide to file on your own Form 5500, we ask that you let us know at filing@guideline.com. We’d also appreciate it if you could share the reason you decided to file it on your own.
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Guideline files the Form 5500 for the years that the plan has been in service with us. If your plan was with a different provider for any part of last year, we cannot file the Form 5500 for that year because we were not the record keeper at that time. Therefore, we do not have the necessary information to complete the filing.

If the plan was with Guideline for the year that the IRS notice references, please upload a copy of the full IRS notice to your Shared Folder for us to review and kindly follow up with us by email at filing@guideline.com so that we can review. The most common explanation we see is a change in EIN.
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Guideline files on a cash basis. This means that we will only report funds that settled in the plan year. Any profit sharing contribution made this year, will be added to the following year’s Form 5500.

402(g) refunds are reported on the Form 5500 in the year they are distributed because we report on a cash basis.
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You can find a full breakdown of how to read Form 5500-SF here or view a copy of it here.

Guideline prepares the Form 5500 on the cash basis. This means we don't report the funds on the Form 5500 until the cash has settled into the account.

In contrast, the reporting in your dashboard reflects contributions and balances based on contribution dates, not settled dates. The values that are most likely impacted are the final contributions to the plan for this year and the year before. For example, the last payroll of a year may be missing from the beginning of the year balance as it did not settle until the second or third day of the next year.

A participant includes any eligible employees who may or may not be actively contributing to the plan as well as terminated or deceased employees with a balance.

The total number of participants includes:

Previous employees who are deceased or terminated employment but still have a remaining vested balance in the plan​.

Guideline prepares the Form 5500 on a cash basis, while the Contribution Report is based on an accrual basis. This means that we report funds on the date they settle in the account, not on the payroll date.​

Typically, the last payroll run of the year is not reflected in the current year's Form 5500, and instead will appear on the Form 5500 for the following year.

This is the net sum of all dividends, gains/losses (realized and unrealized), interest, and loan interest in the plan year.​

This is the net total interest, unrealized and realized gains and losses, and dividends. The negative value reflects a downturn in the market.

Your BTC Trust Report may show the closest values. To access this report, click on your company name from the main navigation, then navigate to the Resource Library > Account Documents > Trust Statements. The values will be found under "Schedule of Payments to Participants."

Please note that Guideline reports on the settled dates, while BTC (the plan custodian) reports on the date the transaction was initiated, so there may be slight differences in the values.

Line 10a will be marked “yes” if at any time during the current plan year, employee deferrals and/or loan payments were not deposited within seven business days after the pay date for a plan with less than 100 participants. For larger plans, Guideline uses five business days.

This may also be marked “yes” if the plan had late deposits from a previous plan year that have not been fully corrected or were corrected in the current plan year.

The total of all late deposits will be listed in the amount column.

If the late contribution includes employee contributions or loan payments, you will typically owe excise taxes, which must be paid to the IRS. In this event, we will prepare a Form 5330 on your behalf and notify you once it is available in your Resource Library. The excise tax is calculated as 15% of the lost earnings owed, and it is your responsibility to sign, file, and submit payment for the excise taxes to the IRS directly. Learn more about late contributions here.

You can find the “Late Transactions for 20XX” report in your Resource Library with the pay dates affecting this value for the year.

This is the value of the fidelity bond that Guideline holds for all of our plans and covers the plan for potential losses caused by fraud/dishonesty by Guideline. This number does not need verification from you. The reason why the value is so high is because the bond covers all Guideline plans as a whole, not on an individual level.

If your plan itself (as opposed to the plan sponsor or administrator) is a named insured under a fidelity bond from an approved surety covering plan officials and that protects the plan from losses due to fraud or dishonesty, please let us know the amount of coverage and we can add this information to the Form 5500.

Company name, address, and phone number changes do not require an amended filing. However, please update your information in your Guideline dashboard so our records are up to date. The new information will be reflected on the next Form 5500 filed for your plan.​

Log into your dashboard and click on your company name in the main menu, then select Settings. Within the “Company Information” section, click “Edit” to update the necessary fields.

You’ll then be prompted to upload support documentation for the change. If you are not the Trustee of the plan, any company information changes will automatically be sent to the Trustee’s dashboard to be approved. The company information will show as “Pending” until the Trustee completes the dashboard task confirming the change.

Please note: Form 5500 will not be filed until the Trustee completes the dashboard task. Once the edit has been made, please notify us at filing@Guideline.com to update your form.

Please review the "Understanding Form 5500 values and lines" section of this FAQ to confirm there is not a specified reason for the discrepancy you are seeing in your form. If you believe there is still an error in your Form 5500, please notify us as at filing@guideline.com.

No, there is no penalty for filing the extension for the form 5500.
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Depending on the design of your plan, the legal effective date may be January 1, even if the actual start date was later in the year.

In general, if the plan has matching contributions or no per pay period employer nonelective contributions, Guideline uses a January 1 effective date so that the maximum matching contribution and profit sharing can be based on compensation for the full calendar year. Plans with nonelective contributions made per pay period most often have mid-year start dates to help prevent the plan from needing to make up contributions at the end of the year for compensation earned before the plan started.
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Your plan may have changed to include Guideline as a 3(16) fiduciary since last year.

If Guideline is your 3(16) fiduciary, we can sign Form 5500 on your behalf. Therefore, you will not receive a signature request task.​

However, if Guideline is not the plan's 3(16) fiduciary, a signature task will be sent to the plan’s trustee. The Form 5500 will not be filed until the trustee signs the filing.

The pre-Guideline task asks for information about three different areas: the prior plan admin, your prior plan assets, and any losses incurred with the prior provider.

Your prior provider should be able to guide you in obtaining this information. Please note, this information captures activity between January 1 and your plan start date with Guideline:

¹ Eligible assets: These are assets that have an easily determinable fair market value, are not employer securities and are held or issued by a regulated financial institution ​
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