Non-safe Harbor Vestwell Plans: How to Enter Your Company Match Formula
If you choose a non-safe harbor 401(k) plan with Vestwell, you (as the employer) can choose to make a voluntary contribution to your employees’ retirement accounts. Because this is up to the employer’s discretion and subject to change, Patriot does not receive a company contribution formula from Vestwell. If you have indicated to Vestwell that you do intend to give an employee match, Patriot will still automatically set up company-level contributions, but they will all be set to a default of 0%.
If you choose to give a match to your employees, where the employee must contribute their own money to the plan to receive a match, you must edit the company-level contribution that Patriot has set up for you.
How to enter your company match formula
First, go to: Settings > Payroll Settings > Deductions & Contributions
In your Contributions list, you’ll see match contributions already set up. Enter your match formula on all four contributions for all of the variables that your employees may elect—either percent or dollar amount, and pretax or after tax (Roth):
- VW 401(k) $ = Pretax, dollar amount
- VW 401(k) % = Pretax, percent
- VW Roth 401(k) $ = After tax, dollar amount
- VW Roth 401(k) % = After tax, percent
Click “Edit” at the end of the row of the first contribution.
The contribution is set to allow a multiple-tiered match formula. If you only use a single formula, you can just enter your match formula on the first row and leave the other two rows blank. This gives flexibility in case you do use multiple tiers.
For example, if your match formula is 50% of the first 6% of pay, your page would look like this:
For a further explanation with match formula examples, see Using Company Contribution Formulas.
Unless you have a specific annual limit you want to apply, you can leave the monthly and annual limit fields blank.
Company match is not required to be reported on Form W-2, so you may leave that setting blank.
Click “Save.”
The changes you make for one contribution will be automatically applied to the other three contributions. So you only need to make the change once.
Confirming your changes
The contribution formula you add to each contribution will automatically be applied to employees with a 401(k) deduction. There’s nothing further you need to do.
You can confirm your employee settings by running the Assigned Contributions report under Reports > Payroll Reports > Deductions & Contributions > Assigned Contributions > Select only the Vestwell 401(k) contributions > Run.