In this episode our Director of Audit, Kim Moore, sits down with Karen Hill, our 401(k) Senior Auditor to talk the upcoming October 15 deadline and how plan sponsors can try to speed up their audit process. Kim and Karen will discuss common roadblocks and mistakes that can trip companies up and share some tips to keep the process running smoothly and efficiently.
Summit CPA Group has merged with Anders CPAs + Advisors! Visit our website to learn more about our 401(k) process and pricing: https://anderscpa.com/401k-audits/
“If you delay getting us the information and there's a problem, it can't get resolved. More than likely, your audit is going to be late just because we've got others to work on. It's just the way it is. You have the fiduciary responsibility over the plan. So anything you can do to help us figure out those problems is going to be greatly appreciated by your auditor, but will also save you a lot of time and help you to file on time.”
The finer details in this episode:
Narrator: Welcome to the 401k audit CPA Success Show where we are 100% focused on helping companies across the United States prepare for their 401k audit. If you have 100 eligible participants in your 401k plan, then this podcast is for you.
Kim Moore: Hello there. This is Kim Moore with Anders Minkler Huber and Helm.
If you've been listening to some of our previous podcasts, you know that Anders and Summit moved back at the beginning of April and it is now end of August. So we're, we're well into our transition and working with Anders. I'm joined by Karen Hill again today. She's our audit manager and this is our 401k audit CPA Success Show podcast that we do once a month.
Today's topic. I thought, it's as I mentioned, end of August, as we're recording this. We are getting pretty close now to the October 15th deadline. If you are a plan sponsor or you work with a plan and they are a calendar year plan their original due date for filing, if they needed an audit was the end of July.
They can get an extension which is pretty easy to do, most providers will, will do the extension for their clients. But that extension will take you to October 15th. So we have not quite a month and a half little bit over that till the deadline is a busy, busy time for those of us in the audit world that work on EBP audits. Karen and I have been putting in a lot of overtime, extra time trying to crank out as many of these audits as we can. So we thought timely topic would be, if you are a plan sponsor or you work with a plan and you know, that plan needs an audit, audit isn't completed yet.
Is there anything that you can do as the plan sponsor to help the auditors to make the audit move as quickly as possible, make it as smooth as possible and obviously help to get it done by the deadline. Because we've talked in, in earlier podcasts, if you don't get it done by the deadline, there are potential fines and penalties, and they can be pretty pretty high penalties depending on the situation.
So definitely something you wanna avoid if at all possible. So. We're gonna talk about a couple of different ideas that we've got that you can do to, to help. First one I thought of was just being responsive to the auditor. Karen, any thoughts on that? I'm sure you you've probably got a lot of ideas on that topic.
Karen Hill: Uh, Lots I mean, I recently started an audit. I usually don't do them, but this year I'm doing quite a few of them. And I had the opening meeting at the end of July. And I figured because we were starting so late that this would be one that went into September, but the, my contact person was so responsive to any, any time I said, you know, I, I just would work through the. Send a list of this is what I'm missing. She would upload things usually the same day, sometimes within an hour or two. She was so responsive, I finished the audit in a couple of weeks and it made, it makes all the difference. If you were responsive, if you get things, if it get things to your auditor quickly so they can work through 'em, it helps in a couple of different ways.
One. We don't, then there's less of a chance that we're putting it down. We're continuing to work on it because you're being responsive. And two, if we have to wait a little while before we get that information, once we get it, we have to go back in and try to reorient ourselves to where we were in the audit and what was going on with this?
Why did I need that? We try to leave ourselves notes, but just, you know, There's gonna be things that you don't recall. So the responsiveness is a huge deal. It really helps us in through everything quickly.
Kim Moore: And I it's human nature. I think that you forget, you know, we we've all got a lot going on and just work wise.
I mean, let alone all the things going on outside of work. So to try to remember all the details. Whatever it was, why you needed those specific requests. As you mentioned, it's hard. The, you can leave the best of notes, but you still gotta dig back into it again. So the less picking it up, putting it down, picking it up, putting it down that you have to do the quicker, the audit will go.
I think another aspect of this trying to be timely is that we see situations where I'll, we'll give them our initial sample list. So here are the participants I'm testing distributions on, or here are the participants. I'm gonna test their contributions into the plan, whatever it might be.
And usually, you know, that could be five people. It could be 25 people. Could be large or small. And we're asking for usually more than one thing for each person, for whatever that transaction. And quite often, we'll see I've asked for 20 of something, 20 W2s, 20 I9s and we either get back the wrong thing.
So instead of a W2, I get a W4, or I don't get the whole copy of it. Classic example is we ask for I9s to test the demographic data that we're receiving, make sure that it's a real employee and we use it for a variety of reasons. We only get one page of what are the two pages critical pieces to the I9. So we've got part of what we needed, but not all of it. Bigger thing is that, you know, we asked for 25 people, documentation for say 25 people. And maybe as the, the client is working through those 25, I9s as an example, I can't find two or three of them. Let's just say, so they give you what they have.
They don't say anything. They load it on there. The auditor gets looking at it maybe later that day, later that week, or maybe the first part of the next week and low and behold now I'm missing two or three. I think the client feels that "Well, I gave you what I had. That's all I can do. So I don't need to do anything.
I don't need to say anything. I gave you what I had and, and that's all there is." And the auditor will just have to mark, "oh, they, they couldn't find those." And, and they'll move on to the next step. Mm-hmm but that's not what happens in an audit. We're pulling samples for almost everything. The sample is supposed to represent the whole.
So if I pull 25 more than likely the, the whole, what we call the population, is more like 250 or 300 or 400. And so those two or three that are missing are not really two or three. They could be 50, they could be a hundred, you know, we don't know cuz we don't know exactly how representative that is. Obviously then it causes doubt on, even if we tested the other 20 plus and they were all fine, it still could mean a good percentage of the population has an issue.
We don't know because we didn't see those documents. That's the theory. It's a statistical process and that's kind of the theory behind it. One of the things I always try to, you know, tell our clients is if you don't have something, tell me, and tell me upfront or leave me a note when you're leaving me those 23 that you could find, and you can't find the other two.
Leave me a note with those 23 saying here's what I could find. I couldn't find the I9. I couldn't find the W2. I couldn't find the payroll detail for, you know, participant A and B. That way I know upfront. I might need to pull some replacement sample items, maybe get those to you early, so you can start digging those out.
So I have a full set to work with. Maybe there's something else I can request in lieu of what you're missing.
Karen Hill: The I9 perfect example. Cause we're not doing an audit of I9. We asked the, for the I9s because we're testing demographic data and the I9s, have the birth date, the hire date.
And they're signed by the participant. We're trying to make sure that the system information agrees to what's real or, you know, what the facts are. So there might be something else that we can use in lieu of the document that we asked for. You know, a medical form that they had to sign. Lots of times for the date of hire, we'll get a W4.
Those aren't always exact because sometimes they're not on the, but you know, if the person had terminated sometimes as exit interviews, have the date of hire on 'em.
Kim Moore: There's other information. Yeah.
Karen Hill: Right?
Kim Moore: Yeah. There's, there's usually a work around, I mean, in, in audit, there's usually a lot more than one or two ways of doing anything.
There's usually three, four or five multiple ways. And so you can usually work through missing documentation. We all understand that there's a lot of employee documentation that a company may maintain. Sometimes it doesn't get filed right. Sometimes it truly gets lost. Sometimes you just never did it.
Maybe you just never did an I9 for an employee. We understand that that's possibility. We still have to do the test step though.
Karen Hill: Mm-hmm.
Kim Moore: That's the main thing you need to remember is that an audit is all about a set of processes and you have to work through each one of those activities to verify each individual process going on with the plan, which ultimately leads to the financial statements.
You know, we can't just say, oh, they didn't have any I9, so I'll just skip all this stuff. You know, I'll just skip it because they didn't have it. We can't do that. So it's very important upfront that if you don't have something you let the auditor know and also ask questions. So probably, you know, what an I9 is probably, you know, what a W2 is, but maybe the auditor is asking you for something and you're not quite sure.
We get questions we ask for the planned census or we'll ask for year end payroll. And we try to give as much information around: what does that mean? What does year end payroll report mean? What types of data are we looking for in that report?
We try to give as much of that information as we can when we're making the request, but sometimes it can still be a little bit, I don't wanna say confusing, but we get comments from people that, "I'm going into my payroll. And I have a thousand reports, which, you know, and they're all labeled year end, which one of these thousand do you want?"
That's a very common question and that very legitimate question. So if you ask upfront that very question, we can real quick jump on a call, do it in a regular scheduled meeting and say, "well, let's take a look at one of them. You know, get me one that you think is closest to what I've asked for. And let me take a look at. And then I can tell you yeah, that'll work or no, not quite right. I still need whatever it might be." And then we can try another report that way. You're not giving us a report a week later. I'm looking at it.
"Oh. Nope. That's not the right one." You take a week to go try another one. "Oh. Nope. That's not-" I mean, you could spend a month just trying to get one report where if you sit down and just online, talk it through, you could get that solved. "I've got the information and I can move on." You know, a lot of times I think people feel like I'm just gonna give you what I got and that's it.
Well, you can do that. but it's gonna cause a lot of delays on the audit. So you know, that's, that's a big part of what can cause an audit to be delayed. The other thing I like to point out, I mentioned audit is process. It's a process that we've gotta work through from beginning to end. And we can't just because it's September 30 say, "well, I'm in step six, out of 10 of my audit process. And I'm working through, I know I'm down to the deadline. I'm just gonna skip step seven through nine and I'll just write the report and move on." We're not allowed to do that. That that would be a violation of our standards. We could get in a lot of trouble for doing that.
It would obviously be a problem internally for our company, but it also from an audit standards perspective, Karen and I are both CPAs, that would cause us to potentially lose our license. Just upfront. I'm just telling you we're not gonna do that. That is not an option. Certainly we wanna do things as efficiently as possible, and we don't wanna drag things out, but we do need to do those steps.
So it doesn't matter if it's February or it's the end of September and the deadline's October 15th, those steps still gotta get done. They've gotta be done, completely. We've gotta feel comfortable we've covered everything. And if that means the audit's gonna be late, then that's what's gonna happen.
So it's on you as the plan sponsor to do everything you can to not get into that position where it's now down to the wire, the auditor doesn't have everything they need, or you gotta remember, we're not doing one audit or, you know. Here just on my team, we're doing 150 audits in a very short period of time.
So we gotta keep moving. And if you delay getting us the information. There's a problem. It can't get resolved more than likely your audit is gonna be late just cuz we've got others to work on. So it it's just the way it is. I mean, there there's, there's no solution for that. It's just the reality of situation.
So definitely don't delay. It's a big, big part of what goes on. Another thing I, I had on my list was organization. Karen, I don't know if you wanna talk a little bit about that. What's what's the difference between me giving you a list that's in an orderly set up versus I just throw a bunch of stuff at you.
Karen Hill: Well, I can work through it easier if I have, if like all of the I9s are in one's place, all of the W2s are in one place, then I can easily work through them rather than trying to figure out where everything is. I once had through an audit, had a client who they'd still had paper forms. He uploaded everything where for each selection he had included in the same little packet, the W2 the enrollment form, any of the change forms, everything was all together for each individual person. I got through that audit so fast because it just, that's just a lot of it is just trying to find the information so you can look at it and, and check it and do your and do your testing. And it just it's. Yeah.
Kim Moore: Organization makes a huge, a huge difference. And you gotta remember there's thousands of pieces of information for each audit and an auditor could be working on five or 10 audits at a time. So do the math. That's a lot of stuff to work through. So anything you can do to help keep the items organized.
One of the keys, especially as you're getting down to the end is, you wanna chew through as the auditor, all of the component parts as quickly as you can to get down to the problems.
Karen Hill: Right.
Kim Moore: So you can focus your time on what additional items am I gonna need to resolve these issues that I have, because without resolving those, there isn't gonna be, you can't even get to an opinion, so you can't even figure out what do I need to do next? How do I get this to the finish line? You you've gotta get through all of that initial work and that organization can help the auditor do that as quickly as possible. So so very, very important. As much as you can and you know, we here on the Summit team, we use a tool called Smartsheet.
I'm not advocating for Smartsheet here, but one of the reasons we use that is because it's line by line asking the client for specific things, and then they can attach things directly to that. So I know I asked you for information to do this particular test. This is the information they gave me. I can really quickly look at it and say, that's, you know, that's a W4, not a W2.
I can't use it. So it, it helps us to stay organized as well. You know, I would bring that up with your auditor. What, what can I do providing this information to, to help it be as organized as possible if it's not built into their process. So we try to build it into our process, but some folks may not have that.
Another thing that, that I put on my list was if you can as you're putting together your documentation for this year's audit, we found a lot of clients keep a folder and I don't mean a paper folder, but electronic folder, somewhere with wherever they keep their, either their audit work or their plan saved items. Here's what I give the auditor for this audit. And they keep that. And the next year more than likely if it's the same auditor, they're gonna ask for the same types of information. So rather than every year, I gotta go figure out that year end payroll report that you asked for, which one of those thousands is it?
You know, keep, keep some notes of it's called this in my payroll system. Even it's it's on the third screen. It's the second one down. Not, not to say that they can't change things, but that'll give you a. Keep a copy of the report. That way, when you go in this year, you can run it, look at last year's and say, yep, that looks like the same thing.
That will kind of help speed your process up and you don't have to reinvent the wheel every year there. It's not to say that the auditor isn't gonna change the processes, not to say that the requirements can't change. But you know, it more than likely a lot of this stuff is gonna be the same.
So if you can kind of keep little cheat sheet notes, or keep a file of here are all the documents, the, the types of reports I provided them. You know, I think that won't be really helpful. And the last thing I had on this is just double check your work. So if the auditor, and again, it goes to how the auditor is requesting items.
We, I mentioned we use Smartsheet sometimes they'll send you a, a word document, which is just a list, you know, a number, number one, number two, number three. Sometimes it's a, an actual portal where they're asking you to load documents on and there maybe a list in the portal. I don't know. Some may even still be sending paper forms.
I don't know that would be very old fashioned, but I'm sure it probably happens. Double check your list. So if they, you know, check off your list. Make sure that if they've asked you for 20 items, you've addressed all 20 items before you tell 'em. Yep. I gave you everything and you move on something else.
We have a spreadsheet that we use to gather information about internal controls and internal processes at the company. It's a, it's an Excel workbook. It has multiple tabs. We always tell everybody at the beginning, "now make sure you look at every tab because there's multiple tabs. It's easy to miss one."
And inevitably every time somebody misses one of the tabs. So we've gotta have them go back and, you know, finish it, finish up the stuff that you missed. Anything that you can do to double. You know, it only takes a couple minutes to just double check each tab and say, did I address everything or is there a big blank spot in there?
Doesn't take you very long to have a list and just cross it off. And that way you'll make sure that you've addressed everything. You didn't miss anything. That the auditor is immediately gonna come back and say, well, off of your list of 20, you didn't gimme anything number five or number six. So so that helps.
Another area, Karen: TPA requests or service provider requests, cuz we don't get everything from the client anymore. We used to be able to do that, but not anymore.
Karen Hill: No, no. And this varies by the TPA. There's some TPAs where we can make the request ourselves and it'll come, we'll get an email and let us know that it's ready.
Or sometimes we don't get an email, but we can, since we have access, we can go and upload it. But sometimes we have to go through you sometimes. And there's one provider that we'll fill out the form. We send it to you and you have to sign it and then send it on to the provider for the information that we're requesting.
So if, if there's something that we have to request from the provider, you need to, you, you may need to follow up for us, you know, don't just assume that if if we tell you, "Hey, you know, I need these things from the provider," and you send them on. If you don't hear anything, don't just assume, oh, well, they, they got to it and sent it directly to the auditor.
Make, you know, ask the auditor. Did you receive those things? Follow up with provider. Have you sent those yet? When do you think you'll be able to get them? Because there's lots of times there are several audits this year that were almost finished and we were waiting for a few things from the TPA and that held up the audit for another three or four weeks. Just waiting for that.
Kim Moore: Yeah. It it's a problem anymore because so much. If you, if you think of how your plan works the vast majority of our clients are using a service provider and it, it don't, don't get hung up on the, you know, we, we like to use the term TPA just cuz it's a real quick abbreviation, but don't get hung up on, "well, I don't have a TPA."
You use more than likely you use a service provider for mm-hmm different aspects of your plan. So whatever, whatever setup you have, that's, that's really what we're talking about. You know, it's great when you think, oh, I don't have to manually process all the distributions. I'm not going to have to manually do the contributions cuz I've hooked my payroll system to the provider that I use. So it, their, their systems are talking. So I'm just running my payroll, the payroll sense systems send the inform, so I don't have to do anything. So I'm all good. I mean, that's all great. But when it comes to the audit, we still need the information.
So just because it's with a provider doesn't, you know, again, we can't say well that provider can't get me information about participant loans as an example. They more than likely are doing almost all the processing on participant loans, other than the deductions you're taking out of their payroll.
If you're allowing them to pay through payroll. Other than that, probably all the function is with the provider. Well, if the provider can't get us or won't get us information about the loans, we can't just say, "well, they won't give us anything. So I just go skip it and move on." Nope. I mean, we ultimately either that will hold up your audit or worst case scenario, we will have to give.
Some type of lower opinion, like a disclaimer opinion, we might have to disclaim an opinion on your financial statements. If the loans are material quite often, they are, and we can't get any information about the loans that you don't have anything. It doesn't mean. We just say it's okay. We're gonna have to say I don't.
I don't know if it's okay. I can't say, and because that's a material component of financial statements, I have to disclaim the whole financial statements. That's a problem for you. You're gonna get probably a fine from the department of labor over that. So it's very important, ultimately, that you are res you understand you're responsible for everything that goes on with the plan.
And just because you've hired a third party... yes, you've hired them to do the work, but ultimately you are still responsible. So if you're not getting the information that you need, you know, or your auditor's not getting it, you need to follow up and make sure that. You know, you're working with your provider so that they can get you the stuff. You know, get involved that that's all we can say is they will listen to you more than they're gonna listen to us.
You know, we don't, we don't have a relationship with them usually. So. I don't wanna say they don't care, but in a lot of ways they don't, but they care about you because you're, you're their client and you're paying their, their, their salaries. So, so they do care. Another thing I would, I would say on this topic, that's changed a little bit this year, and we've talked about this in previous podcasts is the form 5500.
Here at Summit, we always got the 5500. We always reviewed it. No change there, but with the new audit standard, now we are not allowed to give you, our client and the plan sponsor, the draft copy of the audit report. That's not even the final copy, but I can't give you the draft for you to review until I've seen what's called a substantially complete 5500.
And that pretty much means everything on the 5500 from our perspective has to be okay. So if I'm seeing things on there that need changed and especially on what we call the schedule H, so that's where all of the financial information is. That's where the information about the audit report is gonna be. Compliance questions.
So things were there late deposits. Did you have a, a fidelity bond? What was the amount of the bond? Did you have a blackout period? That's where all of those questions are, is on that schedule H this year, every single audit we've had has had to have 5500 changes. Part of that's due to changes we've had, as I mentioned that merger with Anders, but a lot of it's because they're using the old format from the limited scope audit, which changed. And we did a podcast around the changes with the new audit standard, but that changed what opinion we're gonna be giving on most of our audits. Which changed the opinion markings on the schedule H. So even without our structural change, probably every single 5500, would've had to have a change.
That's gotta go back to the provider, usually through their compliance group. That takes time. Sometimes it can be day or we've seen, I dunno, Karen, a couple weeks, three weeks? For those changes. So as we're approaching that October 15th deadline, keep in mind and I mentioned we've gotta process, gotta work through the process.
Part of that process now is I gotta see a substantially complete 5500 before I can even get you the draft. Then there are steps that have gotta, that have to. You know, once I give you the draft for you to get the final, to do the filing. So don't, don't think, oh, I can, you know, we can, we can be doing all this on October 13th, 14th, no, this year that will not happen.
You will be filing late if you do that. So it's another area I know you're not doing the 5500, but ultimately having that be delayed can really can really bog you down. So so get with your, get with your service providers. If, if that becomes an issue.
Problems. So Karen, I'm the auditor. I'm doing the audit. They got me, all my stuff. I work through all my testing and I can't get deferrals to work out. My census doesn't tie out. I got problems on the loans. Now what?
Karen Hill: Well, we have to come back to, we have to come back to the client and say, Hey, what happened here? You know, I, I try to give as detailed of an explanation of what I'm seeing as possible.
I say, okay. So- and- so had deferrals of 5% for the whole year. I did my recalculation. I came up with this, I saw per payroll that it was only this, what am I missing? What's going on here? Census tie outs, I mean, we've had instances where we've had trouble tying out the census and we found out, "oh, wait a minute.
There's another payroll report that wasn't included that you need." So, yeah, we, we will toss those questions back to you because it's gonna be a lot, you're gonna understand a lot better what happened than we are, because you were the ones that actually processed all of these things. So if you're be responsive, look into, 'em try to get that information back to us as soon as you can. That's, that's very helpful.
Kim Moore: Yeah. And it's you know, it, it certainly, it, it leads to being able to complete the audit, but it also can as Karen mentioned that situation where we found, oh, there's a whole other payroll report, then we've gotta go back and look is the work that we already did sufficient.
Karen Hill: Correct.
Kim Moore: I mean, maybe that means we missed a company. We didn't know there was this third company out there. And we didn't pull samples from any of the people in that company. Which may be a problem, maybe not. It depends, the auditor's favorite phrase. It always depends on the situation. Right. But it may mean that we thought we were done with deferral testing.
We did all of our stuff and that all worked out. We were just waiting on the census tie out, come to find out there's a whole other payroll company. Now we gotta pull more people. Not that we have to start over, but we have to do a lot more work than what we were planning on doing. So it's important that you respond as quickly as possible and anything you can do to help figure out the issue. I know a lot of people feel like, well, the audit that's the auditor's responsibility. Well, it is. But at the end of the day, you filing on time and filing a good audit, an audit that's been done the way it's supposed to be done, is ultimately your responsibility. I know that doesn't sound fair.
You know, you've hired these auditors, they're accountants, they're auditors, that's their job. But the way the DOL looks at it, it's still your responsibility. You have the fiduciary responsibility over the plan. So anything you can do to help us figure out those problems is, is gonna be greatly appreciated by your auditor, but we'll also save you a lot of time, help you to file on time.
So it's, it's important. I, I know it's hard. Sometimes it's hard. We get a lot of responses back. "I don't know why that happened." I don't. And maybe you really don't know initially, but you have the information. We don't have it. So we can give you suggestions of, "can you look for this? Can you try this?
Maybe if you, if you give us this, we can look and see if that'll fix it," but we don't really know either. We're triaging a situation and trying to figure it out, but we don't know either. So, and we don't have the information to figure it out. You do. So, you've gotta be involved. If you're not involved, you're not gonna get an audit report at the end and you're definitely gonna file late. So anything you can do to help on that will, will be very helpful.
Karen Hill: Yeah.
Kim Moore: Couple of the last things that I had just real quick at the end of the audit we always ask our clients to, to really review the report. I know it's, you're not maybe a CPA and you're not a financial person. And so maybe that's not your expertise, but still you should review you the, the report. You know, the plan.
So, and you've got the reports just, just like we do of that came from your providers. So double check things. We're not asking you obviously go redo the audit or anything, but take a look at it. The footnotes describe how the plan. So, if I'm saying, "Hey, this plan has auto enroll and it works this way."
And you're looking at you're like, "what are they talking about? Auto enroll. We don't have auto enroll." You need to say something cuz you don't, you don't want that auto report going out saying the plan works one way when it really works a different way that that can get you into big problems again with the regulators.
So review the report, do the best you can with it. Again, I'm not asking you to redo the audit. We're not expecting you to be experts. But if there's anything that, that you don't understand, you think may not be right. Ask the auditor. We'd rather you do that, even though it might mean we have to go back and revisit some things.
We'd rather you do that versus it going out incorrect. So, so take a minute, take a look at it and pass any feedback back to the auditor. Also ask your auditor. If they don't give you a memo at the end of the audit, they should be that describes the work that was done. But also gives you, what are now called reportable findings.
So if we find things through the audit, that impact controls, that impact participant accounts, that impact the financial reporting process, that impact the financial statements themselves, any of those buckets, we should be giving you a description of what happened, what we saw in the audit, maybe what we think happened, what was wrong and a suggestion on how to fix it.
It doesn't mean you have to take action on it. Doesn't mean you have to do what, what we've recommended. You might find a different way to correct the problem, but definitely you should ask for that if you don't get it, take a look at it. If you have questions on, you know, I don't ex I don't really understand this.
Why, why is this wrong? Ask the auditor. Cause they should be able to explain that to you. Then you can take the corrective action that will make your audit next year go much smoother and will help get your plan in better stead with any regulatory authorities and also in just general compliance.
So it's a good, good, best practice to do. Definitely, definitely something you should, should be doing already if you're not, but if you're not, you should be doing it going forward. Karen, anything else you can think of as we look to wrap up here?
Karen Hill: Don't, don't hesitate to ask us questions or follow up with us.
If you haven't heard with us for, for a while, the, the saying that this squeaky wheel gets the grease. It's true for auditing as well. If, if, if we're not hearing from you, it's easy for us sometimes, cause we're juggling a lot of different audits at the same time,. It's easy for it to be kind of put to the back burner, especially when we have a lot of people that are clamoring to get things done.
Reach out to us. Ask us, how's it going? Yeah. How's the audit going? Is there anything that you need from me to kind of keep us keep that in the forefront of our minds.
Kim Moore: Yeah, absolutely. I think that's the, you know, the, what I would would leave everyone on is keep track of what's going on. Ask questions, ask for statuses, follow up, you know, keep on top of it.
That will help keep us, you know, going on your audit versus working on someone else's, it'll make sure it gets done on time. It'll make sure the issues get resolved. That's kind of my best my best advice to, to, to everyone out there. If you're, you're worried, your audit's not gonna get done on time.
With that, I wanna throw out my me email address in case you have any questions about what we talked about today if you'd like to consult about an audit issue that you have. Maybe need an audit in the future, or you have an idea for a future podcast. You know, we're doing these once a month and we're, we always wanna try to tailor these two topics that may be of interest to anyone out there.
That's listening. My email is letter K, then M O O R E again. K M O O R E. At Anders cpa.com. That's A N D E R S cpa.com. Feel free to drop me a note. Let me know what you're thinking of the podcast, any ideas for the future, any questions you might have. Otherwise, thanks Karen. We're gonna wrap it up and we'll talk to you again next month on the 401k audit, CPA Success Show.
Thanks everyone for listening.
Narrator: Enjoy this podcast? Visit our website@anderscpa.com/401k. To get more tips and strategies for achieving 401k audit success. We're here to be a resource with ever changing rules and regulations.