Typically, an employee is ineligible to participate in your 401(k) plan because they don’t meet the length of service or minimum age eligibility requirements for your plan. In addition, non-resident aliens with no US-sourced income, union, or leased employees may be ineligible.
What to do if an eligible employee is showing as ineligible
If you believe an employee meets these requirements but is showing as ineligible, you will likely need to update their hire date, compensation details, and/or birth date in your payroll system.
If you use Gusto or a Gusto Embedded payroll provider, it will take up to 24 hours for the changes to sync to your 401(k) after they are made in the payroll platform.
If you have a self-service plan (for non-Gusto payroll), you must update the employee’s record directly in the Roster tab of your 401(k) administrator dashboard.
How to change the eligibility terms for your plan
If you would like to change the length of service or minimum age requirement, please submit a support ticket and include “plan change” in the subject line. Plan changes can take up to 10 business days to be processed.
For new plans, please note that all plan changes and amendments will require a new plan document to be signed. It will likely change your plan’s anticipated start date to a later date, due to the 30-day enrollment notice requirement.
You can learn more about eligibility here.