Census Support Hub

Once a year, just after your plan year ends, Plan Design Consultants, Inc. will need to gather certain information and census data to complete your plan’s necessary compliance and administration work. To gather this information we send a Census Collection email to a contact at your firm. It involves completeling a downloaded Census spreadsheet template and completing an online Plan Reporting Questionnaire.

100% yes. If you tell the form to save it will email you a recovery link.

Use our secure upload system to ensure we got it:

1: Fill out census spreadsheet and save as a spreadsheet (XLS, XLSX or CSV) somewhere you can find it again.
2: Go to: http://plandesign.com/censusupload
3: ‘Browse Files’ and find the census you saved on your computer and ‘Submit Census’.

We ask that completed census be returned to the Census Collection Team within 30 days after your Plan Year End. There are several Plan Year End deadlines that need to be met in order to comply with IRS and DOL regulations.

A blackhole opens in the center of the Earth and sucks everything into it.

In order to ensure your plan’s continued compliance with the Internal Revenue Service and Department of Labor regulations, Plan Design Consultants must receive a complete and accurate Plan Reporting Questionnaire and Census Spreadsheet form no later 30 days after your Plan Year End. Please be aware, if your plan is subject to ADP/ACP compliance testing and your plan fails to satisfy these tests, contributions may need to be returned to certain plan participants. The deadline for returning these “excess contributions” is 2 ½ months after the Plan Year End.

Any excess contribution returned after this deadline is subject to a 10% excise tax by the Internal Revenue Service. This excise tax is payable by the Plan Sponsor. Plan Design Consultants cannot insure these deadlines will be met if complete data if not submitted by the 30 day deadline.

Yes. After you submit, you will get a confirmation email. In that email there is a link to edit your submission. You can go back in, make your changes and submit it again.

Just tell us in the comment area of the form, so we know it needs to replace the previous one.

For tracking purposes we require the submitted census to be uploaded with the Plan Reporting Questionnaire. 

If your Census Collection spreadsheet is not 100% complete or not in proper electronic format we will reach back out to you via email to let you know that you will need to resubmit. We will not begin Plan Year End Compliance work until complete data is received in a way we can imported into our system.

Below are a few options, all capable of opening an XLS and exporting it as a .CVS or .XLS spreadsheet.

Free online:

Google Docs (docs.google.com)

Numbers (iCloud.com)

Free for download:

OpenOffice (openoffice.org)

The spreadsheet likely opened inside an internet browser in preview mode. 

For Internet Explorer, you can right click on the link and, ‘Save target as…” and store the file in a place you can find it and open it directly with the Office program.

Microsoft has a quick fix that will disable this browser preview problem, https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/162059/how-to-configure-internet-explorer-to-open-office-documents-in-the-app

This is because PDC utilizes a standard format spreadsheet for all clients, you should only complete the columns that are applicable to your plan. The columns in ORANGE are applicable to all plans and should be completed by all clients.

As an example: If your plan is a salary deferral only plan with no employer matching contribution, then you would not need to complete the columns titled Safe Harbor, Employer Match or Employer Profit Sharing. If you have questions about which of the columns are applicable to your plan, you can refer to your plans Adoption Agreement or contact your Client Account Manager for assistance.

Plan Design Consultants offers a broad range of retirement plan types and customized design. Many of our clients have special custom eligibility hour requirements. As an example a plan may have a 500 hour in 6 month requirement, this means that a participant must complete 500 hours within the 6 month eligibility to become eligible for the retirement plan. An employee that works 6 months for the company but only worked 350 hours would not be eligible to participant in the retirement plan. Other examples of customized Eligibility Hours requirements are: 250 hours in 3 months, 500 hours in 6 months, 83 hours in 1 months and 1000 hours in 12 months.

It is also important to understand that in many documents when an employee does not reach the special hour requirement initially, a second eligibility check of 1000 hours within the first 12 months should be used. Example: In a plan with 3 months and 250 hours requirement if an employee works only 200 hours in their first three months of employment they would not be eligible for the plan, however if you then were to look at the employees first 12 months of employment and this same employee worked 1000 hours in that period they would have reached eligibility for the plan.

If you have questions or want to understand your plan’s specific eligibility requirements, contact the Census Collection Team or your Client Account Manager.

All employees must be reported on the census regardless if they are eligible or not. However, if your plan excludes certain employee classifications in the Adoption Agreement, include them on the census and complete the “Excluded Employees Y/N” column on the Census Collection Spreadsheet.

Commonly excluded employee classifications include, Collectively Bargained, Leased, and Non-resident Alien employees.

It is very important to include all employees that were employed during the plan year. Upon providing us your Plan Year End Census, we read it into a system that checks the data against what was provided the year before.

If you have rehired employees, make sure the original hire date is in the “Hire Date” field, the termination date is in the “Termination Date” field and the rehire date is in the “Rehire Date” field in the census. All three fields must be filled in. Do not put the rehire date in place of the original hire date in the “Hire Date” field as this may result in the loss of prior service that may count toward meeting eligibility.

If an employee was on the previous census and not on the current one, PDC will assume this employee is terminated and input a default date to the last day of the previous plan year. Alternatively, if an employee is on the Plan Year End Census with compensation and hours but was terminated in a previous year PDC will assume that the person is rehired and will default to a first day of the plan year date.

It is the employer’s responsibility to provide all employees who worked during the plan year.

Please refer to your Plan’s Adoption Agreement and Basic Plan Document for the specific definition applicable to your Plan. Generally, it will be one of the following:

• W-2 Compensation
• 415 Safe Harbor Compensation
• Code Section 3401 (a) Wages

In general, Compensation means Total Gross Compensation (earned income if a sole proprietor or partner) for the Plan Year for ALL employees during the relevant testing period before any deductions (including any excluded compensation).

However, if your company is taxed as a sole-proprietorship or partnership please work with your income tax advisor/preparer to obtain your Schedule C or Schedule K-1 compensation (prior to any pension contribution deduction).  This is the compensation that should be provided on the census.

We will use this information to calculate the Earned Income which is used in lieu of compensation for self-employed individuals.  

The compensation earned after the participant’s plan entry date through the last day of the plan year. If your Plan has such a provision in the Adoption Agreement, enter this amount in the “date of entry compensation“ column of the Census Collection Spreadsheet.

If you have part-time employees and the Adoption Agreement for your plan requires one year of service prior to entry, you must indicate if they have met the plans eligibility by completing the “Eligibility Hours Met Y/N” column on the Census Collection Spreadsheet.

Your entire employee population must be considered for testing and reporting purposes. Therefore, it is essential that the data you provide includes every employee who was on the Company’s payroll at any time during the Plan Year, regardless of their eligibility status or participation in the plan.

More information on Fidelity Bonds can be found here:

https://www.plandesign.com/erisabond