Form 5500 Filing Service — We Prepare, Sign and File
Your Form 5500 and its schedules prepared, signed by an ERISA 3(16) fiduciary and filed on time. The extended deadline for calendar-year plans is October 15.
Request my free Form 5500 check →- Prepared, signed and filed — not prepared and handed back to you
- Late or missed filings corrected through DFVCP
- Schedules and large-plan audit coordination handled
- Independent of your recordkeeper — no platform change required
Request your free Form 5500 check
Takes about 30 seconds. Send the plan name and EIN and we read your filing history before we call.
Form 5500 preparation and filing, step by step
Form 5500 is the annual return your retirement plan files with the Department of Labor and the IRS. It is public, it is machine-read, and it is the first place a regulator looks. A filing that is late, incomplete or inconsistent with prior years is the most common reason a plan draws attention.
- Data collection — trust and valuation data from your recordkeeper, participant counts from the census, contribution detail from payroll.
- Reconciliation — beginning and ending assets, contributions and distributions tied out before anything is drafted.
- Form and schedules — the 5500 or 5500-SF prepared with the applicable schedules: C, H or I, R, SB or MB, and A for insured arrangements.
- Large plan audit coordination — where your participant count crosses the audit threshold we work directly with the independent qualified public accountant and attach the opinion.
- Signature and filing — we sign as your 3(16) plan administrator and transmit through EFAST2, then send you the filing receipt and the filed copy.
- Summary Annual Report — the SAR is prepared and distributed to participants inside the deadline that follows the filing.
Missed or late Form 5500? DFVCP correction
Civil penalties for a late Form 5500 accrue per day, per filing, and they are assessed against the plan administrator. The Department of Labor’s Delinquent Filer Voluntary Compliance Program lets a plan file late returns at a dramatically reduced, capped penalty — but only if you come forward before the DOL contacts you about the missing filing.
Reconstructing the plan-year data, preparing the delinquent returns and filing them through EFAST2.
We calculate and submit the penalty payment and document the sequence for the plan’s permanent file.
Send the plan name and EIN — the filing history is public and we will read it for you at no charge.
401(k) compliance testing and the 5500
The Form 5500 is the last step of an annual cycle, not an isolated task. What gets reported on the return is the output of the year’s compliance testing, and a return that is accurate but sits on top of failed or untested compliance work is still a problem.
Our compliance testing runs alongside the filing: ADP and ACP nondiscrimination testing, coverage under 410(b), top-heavy determination, annual additions limits under 415 and deferral limits under 402(g). Failures are identified with enough runway to correct them inside the statutory window — refunds, qualified nonelective contributions, or a design change for the following year — rather than being discovered when the return is already due.
Who signs matters: a 3(16) fiduciary, not your HR manager
Most providers prepare the Form 5500 and send it to you to sign. The person who signs it is the plan administrator, and the plan administrator carries the penalty exposure for a return that is late, inaccurate or incomplete. In practice that signature usually lands on an HR or finance manager who had no way to verify the numbers.
Admin316 is appointed in the plan document as 3(16) plan administrator and, where you want the broader role moved, as 402(a) named fiduciary. We sign the filing. That is the difference between a preparation service and a fiduciary service.
Form 5500 deadlines
If you are reading this in the weeks before October 15, send the plan name and EIN today and we will tell you where the filing stands.
- July 31 — original deadline for calendar-year plans (last day of the seventh month after plan year end).
- October 15 — extended deadline for calendar-year plans that filed Form 5558.
- Nine and a half months after plan year end — deadline to distribute the Summary Annual Report, or two months after an extended filing.
- Non-calendar plan years — the same seven-month plus two-and-a-half-month extension pattern applies to your own year end.
of Form 5500 filings for plan year 2023 landed after the extended October 15 deadline — 16,287 filings covering 15.7 million participants, per Admin316’s analysis of the DOL/EBSA public filing data.
Get a free read on your Form 5500 history
Send your plan name and EIN. We will read your plan’s public filings and come back in writing — whether the filings are on time, whether anything is missing, and what it would take to get the plan current and keep it there.
Request my free Form 5500 check →