Employee Benefit Plan Audits

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Rest assured with our year-round support

It’s not just compensation; it’s trust. Your employee benefit plans make your people feel valued and rewarded. And our risk-based audits will help you protect that foundation of trust. Perkins is one of the few regional firms to specialize in employee benefit plan (EBP) audits, and our dedicated team completes more than 70 of them every year. We subtract the worry and add deep strategic expertise to your EBP audit so you can focus on the initiatives that benefit your business and your employees the most.

You can always expect us to…

  • Help you navigate stringent operational and reporting requirements
  • Proactively build solutions to help you avoid penalties for noncompliance
  • Share ideas and recommendations to streamline your processes or strengthen your internal controls
  • Look for opportunities to improve and protect your plans
  • Keep you current on accounting and regulatory changes that may impact your plan and the plan’s operations
  • Alert you to new risks
  • Provide written reports on our observations and recommendations

The quality of our audits is second to none. As a member of the AICPA’s Employee Benefit Plans Audit Quality Center (EBPAQC), we are held to the highest standard of compliance and peer review. Perkins shareholder Jennifer Elder serves on the AICPA Technical Standards Subcommittee, which supports the AICPA Professional Ethics Division. This committee investigates potential disciplinary matters involving CPAs, including those in audits of employee benefit plans through complaints made to the Department of Labor. Her firsthand knowledge of EBP audit problems and errors reported by the Department of Labor gives us timely insight into issues your own plan may face. In addition, we have implemented the following to demonstrate our strong commitment to EBPAQC principles:

  • Significant annual training for benefit plan auditors
  • Having a specialized benefit plan audit team led by a designated shareholder
  • Annual internal inspections using best practices, guidelines, and tools focused on quality improvement
  • Keeping you in the know about EBP trends, news, and issues
  • The highest standards of audit quality, compliance, and peer review

We can help you with…

Audits of Employee Benefit Plans

  • Defined contribution plans, including 401(k), 403(b), profit sharing plans, and money purchase pension plans
  • Defined benefit plans, including cash balance plans
  • Employee stock ownership plans
  • Health and welfare plans

ERISA Compliance Reviews

IRS & DOL Correction Programs

  • Employee Plans Compliance Resolution System (EPCRS)
  • Delinquent Filer Voluntary Compliance Program (DFVCP)
  • Voluntary Correction Program (VCP)

Employee Benefit Plan Audits Leadership

The no-surprises approach

Ensuring compliance with statutory and regulatory requirements comes first. Safety net deployed, we focus on helping you improve efficiencies, operations and costs. Here’s how we do it.

Home team advantage

With the attention and resources of a whole specialized, shareholder-led team,your audit process stays well organized and consistent year to year. Plus you skip the time-consuming auditor “training.” With Perkins, you never need to answer endless questions from inexperienced staff.

Working together

Every year, we give you a head start: we meet with you face-to-face before the audit begins to provide lists of schedules and documents we’ll need from you, such as certified trust reports, payroll and personnel records, the Plan Document, and more. Throughout the audit process we work proactively with your human resources, payroll, and accounting people to customize solutions. You can count on us to:

  • Review your internal controls and those of your plan’s service providers, focusing on areas of common risk. These controls will help keep your plan operating in compliance on a day-to-day basis
  • Perform substantive testing that covers critical aspects of your plan, including contributions, loans, distributions, expenses, and the allocation of earnings
  • Conduct tests of payroll processing—accurate contributions are based on accurate payroll

Reports

We don’t just tell it like it is, we put it in writing. Reports include:

  • Auditors’ report on the plan’s financial statements
  • Written communication of our responsibilities and observations
  • Descriptions of significant deficiencies or material weaknesses in your internal controls that are identified
  • Ideas and recommendations for ensuring compliance with regulatory requirements
  • Recommendations to improve processes
  • Risk alerts

Our 1:6 ratio means more 1:1.

Our ratio of executive team shareholders to staff is unusually low for a full-service regional firm: 1:6 or lower, depending on the service or industry practice group. It means you get the direct, involved attention of our top talent from day one. They proactively offer you strategy, feedback and ideas all along the way.

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