Retirement plan administration for small businesses
Year-end, without the chasing.
We run 401(k) and profit sharing plans for businesses with 5 to 500 people. Send your census the way payroll gives it to you. The portal fixes what it can, asks you only about what’s missing, and we start testing the day it’s complete.
- 37 rows read from two payroll files
- 217 dates, SSNs, names and amounts repaired
- 4 totals rows and notes left out
What we do
Plan design and documents
401(k), safe harbor and profit sharing plans, written for how your business really pays people.
Annual testing
Nondiscrimination (ADP and ACP), top-heavy and coverage tests, with refunds worked out before the deadline.
Form 5500
Prepared from your census and the recordkeeper’s numbers, ready for your signature.
Distributions and loans
Paperwork for people who leave, retire or borrow, checked against the plan’s rules.
The year-end, for a calendar-year plan
- JanuaryThe census portal opens, with last year’s people on it.
- February 15Census due: everyone who worked for you in 2026, including people who left.
- March 15Last day to refund a failed nondiscrimination test without the 10% excise tax.
- April 15Deferrals over the yearly limit have to be paid back by now.
- July 31Form 5500 due (October 15 with an extension).
Tallowbrook Plan Services · client portal
2026 census
Saltmeadow Dental Group · 401(k) plan · Due Feb 15, 2027
1Send payroll’s files, as they are
Drop Excel or CSV files here, one or several: a register per payroll service, a tab per location, whatever you have. Headings can be anywhere and called anything.
Samples, deliberately messy: New payroll, April to December (Excel, two tabs) · Old payroll, January to March (CSV). Every person in them is made up, and their SSNs start with 9, which Social Security never issues.
Read in your browser: nothing is uploaded.
What Tallowbrook sees
Every client’s census, in one list
| Client | People | Census | Last activity |
|---|---|---|---|
| Saltmeadow Dental Group (you, live) | 22 | Not started | Invited |
| Brightwater Veterinary | 34 | Final | Testing started |
| Keel & Oar Brewing | 61 | 4 questions open | Hours missing for salaried staff |
| Marrow Lane Architects | 12 | Uploaded | Checking columns |
| Northshore Physical Therapy | 27 | Not started | Second reminder sent |
| Ridgeline Electric | 88 | Final | Payroll total matches |
Questions clients ask
Is my file uploaded?
Not in this example: the portal reads your spreadsheet in your own browser, and nothing leaves your computer. In a real portal the clean census goes to the TPA over an encrypted connection, into an account only you and they can see, with every change logged.
Our payroll gives us a PDF.
Ask payroll for the same report as Excel or CSV: nearly every payroll service can export one. If that’s not possible, type the census in on the grid: last year’s people are already on it.
We don’t track hours for salaried staff.
Most small businesses don’t. Many plan documents credit 45 hours for each week worked instead, and the portal fills that in with one click. Check with your TPA that your plan uses it.
We switched payroll during the year.
Send both files. The portal finds each one’s headings, whatever they’re called, and adds up pay, hours and deferrals for each person across them.
Is this only for retirement plans?
No. The fields and checks are a template. The same portal collects a health insurance renewal census for a broker or a 1099 contractor list for an accountant: try the switch above the portal.
Built by AI Web Center
Collect clean data from your clients
Any business that asks its clients for a spreadsheet every year has the same problem: files in every layout, columns missing, dates and ID numbers mangled by Excel, and weeks of email and phone calls before the data is usable. A TPA’s year-end census is the hardest version of it, so this example starts there. The engine underneath is a template: the fields, what each column is called in the wild, and the checks, so the same portal works for a benefits broker’s renewal census, an accountant’s 1099 list, a payroll bureau’s new clients or a school’s enrollment forms.
It comes from experience: Jan Dekkers spent 16 years at NRS and Ascensus (NRS was acquired by Ascensus) and was in charge of the year-end census, which came in as CSV and Excel files, over the phone and on paper, often with data missing or badly formatted. A real portal adds sign-in for each client, encrypted storage, an audit log of every change, reminders, and a direct export into your administration system, built in C# and PostgreSQL.