How-To: Short Plan Year Ends

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When a plan's year end date changes, or when a plan terminates, it might be necessary to file for a short plan year. This article is meant to serve as a guide for handling these situations in PensionPro.

 

Tier Availability: Business

 

Article Contents

 

 

Types of Short Plan Years

 

Generally, there are two scenarios which may necessitate a short plan year end:

 

Change to the Plan Year End

When administration needs to be performed for a shortened plan year following a change in the Plan Year End date, PensionPro recommends the following:

 

  • Changing Plan Year End on the General view of the Plan tab to correspond with the updated date. This new date will be used for Annual Administration Projects, Plan Cycles, and Employer Data.
  • The Annual Administration launched for this plan year will need to be given Period Start and End dates representative of the short plan year.
    • If using the Business tier, refer to the section Short Plan Year Ends for Projects.
    • If using the Team tier, the Period Start and Period End dates can be set to match the short plan year when creating the new Plan Cycle.

 

Terminating Plans

When a final 5500 needs to be filed due to the termination of the plan and removal of assets, PensionPro recommends the following:

 

  • The Annual Administration launched for this plan year will need to be given Period Start and End dates representative of the short plan year.
    • If using the Business tier, refer to the section Short Plan Year Ends for Projects.
    • If using the Team tier, the Period Start and Period End dates can be set to match the short plan year when creating the new Plan Cycle.
  • Do not change Plan Year End on the Plan tab.
  • It is common among ftwilliam.com users to create a copy of the plan in that application for this final plan year. If using the integration between ftwilliam.com and PensionPro, remember to unlink the PensionPro Plan record from ftwilliam.com, then re-link to the copied plan. Refer to the article ftwilliam.com - Creating and Linking Records from PensionPro for instructions.

 

Warning: Some functionalities associated with the ftwilliam.com integration features are not available for short plan years.

 

 

Short Plan Year Ends for Projects

 

Security Rights Required: Add/Edit Project

 

Special attention will need to be given when launching an Annual Administration Project for a short plan year end. For example, Project Templates might be set up with Start Date and External Deadline Offsets that assume a full 12-month period. Before launching from an existing Template, it may make sense to make an alternate copy with adjusted offsets for short plan years so that the External Deadline is appropriate.

 

Regardless of the Template used, the following steps will need to be performed when launching the Project to adjust the Period Start and End dates to align with the short plan year:

 

Warning: Do not manually create Employer Data or Plan Cycle records prior to performing the following steps. If the records have already been created, remove them before continuing.

 

  1. Open the Add Project window by any means and begin launching the Project normally.
  2. For Project Type, select Annual Administration.
  3. For Template, choose the desired Annual Administration Project Template. The Period Start and Period End fields should populate automatically based on the Plan Year End and any prior Annual Administration Projects.
  4. Edit the Period Start and Period End dates as necessary to match the short plan year.
  5. Select Save.

 

If an Annual Administration has already been created to reflect a full Plan Year, but needs to be changed to facilitate a short plan year, updating the Period End date from either the Project, the Plan Cycle record, or the Employer Data record will also update the Period End date in the other two locations.