employee benefit plan audits
Finding the Right Fit
As plan sponsors and administrators, you have a number of responsibilities to your 401(k) or 403(b) plan and its participants.
Selecting and working with the right auditor to meet your 401(k) or 403(b) plan's audit requirements can often be one of the more challenging of these duties.
Common Sense Solutions to Common Issues
As a member of the AICPA's Employee Benefit Plan Audit Quality Center, our commitment to serving the audit needs of plan sponsors and their participants has driven our employee benefit plan audit practice to evolve into one of our firm's primary core service lines.
This commitment to our clients, and the benefit plan community as a whole, has also led us to understand and logically address some of the common issues sponsors face when having a 401(k) or 403(b) audit performed:
- Cost is the Issue - we understand that, along with obtaining a quality audit, cost is one of the primary issues facing the fiduciary during the auditor selection process. By controlling our own overhead costs, we are able to offer fee amounts that are some of the most favorable in the marketplace.
- Capped Costs - we provide a fixed-fee (capped-cost) structure for audit engagements, which ensures that your costs will not escalate during or after the audit. Simply put, we honor our fixed-fee quotes and do not issue addendum billings.
- Fair Pricing - Simply put, we feel that similar plans, with similar audits, should incur similar audit fees. As such, we have developed a standard tiered pricing model based on the criteria affecting the complexity of an audit. The result is that your plan's audit fees will be no more than those of its peers within each tier.
- Your Audit is a Priority - We view employee benefit plan audits as one of our primary core services. As such, we place a high priority on our employee benefit audits; we start them earlier in the calendar year, employ experienced and knowledgeable personnel dedicated to their performance, and provide our clients with in-depth subject-matter-expert (SME) and partner involvement on every engagement we undertake.
- You Are Busy - We realize that the audit of your plan is only one of many projects you are tasked with. Our goal is to minimize the disruptive footprint that an audit can leave on your team's workday. We can accomplish this by working effectively with your plan's third-party administrators, record keepers, trustees and other vendors in order to mitigate the overall impact of the process on your operations.
- Continuity Equals Efficiency - We understand that while you have a number of roles to fill within your organization, training your audit team each year should not be among them. We will have the key members of the team assigned to your audit reoccur on your engagement each year. This continuity of plan-specific experience benefits both your organization and our firm in that it increases our audit efficiency and significantly reduces your workload.
To learn more about audits for your specific plan type, we invite you to visit the following links for additional information:
If our common-sense approach to employee benefit plan audits is of interest, we invite you to contact us to schedule a non-binding consultation.
