Retirement Plans for Small and Medium-Sized Businesses

If you would like to come on board with CSI’s payroll and would like to keep your current 401(k) provider, our payroll service will still work with them, provided they are not tied to your previous payroll provider. If they are tied to your previous payroll service provider, we can help you make the change away from that situation. Retirement plans tied to your financial planner can still be used with CSI.

To maintain your retirement plans through our payroll service, our payroll specialists will report your contribution amounts every pay period. While each 401(k) program’s process is different, this typically involves your dedicated payroll specialist manually entering the numbers or uploading files. 

Our retirement plan partner offers an integration that reduces manual work; it helps you automate processing employee contributions, adjusting any contribution changes, making personnel updates for new or prior employees, as well as assisting in completing year-end census and reporting. This relieves a lot of the administrative burden that would generally land on the plate of your already-busy admin or HR staff.

Rest assured, your retirement plan contributions and payroll are in good hands. CSI Accounting & Payroll has been serving small business owners for over 50 years, and our payroll division has been around for over a decade.

Our payroll specialists go through continuing education to ensure they are always aware of relevant laws and tax requirements – staying on top of the latest guidance from the Department of Labor and the IRS. Our payroll specialists also work under the same roof as our accountants, so relevant knowledge is easily exchanged.

Large payroll providers are known to outsource their retirement plans and white label them as their own, where they have an on-staff financial planner who will typically deal with their retirement plan provider. 

When you try to switch to a new payroll provider, you may feel extra pressure to continue using their retirement plans because you will otherwise face high conversion fees. Luckily, our retirement plan partner reimburses a generous amount of these fees.

Ultimately, the choice is up to you. However, we believe these benefits make offering retirement plans worth it for most small businesses:

• Attract and retain talent. Offering any 401(k), even without a match, is a great way to gain the attention of job applicants and to keep quality employees around. Both of those things can be hard to do at times! Profit sharing or an employer match can make it even more attractive. Consider the cost of offering a match versus how much money and effort it takes to constantly try to hire new employees or replace employees who leave. 
• They may be expected. Retirement plans are expected in certain industries that require higher education, such as small law practices. If you’re in one of these industries and don’t offer this benefit, your competitors who do offer retirement plans are more likely to hire and retain quality employees who may have otherwise worked for you.
• You, as the owner, will get retirement plan benefits as well. This alone should show the value in offering these plans as a small business. You get to help your employees, and you also get to help yourself in the process.