Managing Validation Errors On Integrated Payroll Contributions

In this article, you will learn about a variety of validation errors that could occur on contributions that are submitted via an integration from your payroll company.  Even when bypassing the employer portal and relying upon an integration with a payroll company, employers are still responsible for managing validation errors that occur. Please read on to learn more about validation error handling and your responsibilities for remediating any errors. This article will review what happens when an error is detected in a contribution file and what steps an employer is responsible for taking in response. 

If you are integrated through your payroll provider

• When your contributions file gets automatically submitted from your payroll system, we do our best to ensure the quality of the submitted data.
• While our primary goal is to process everyone’s contributions, when we encounter issues with some of the records, we are forced to hold those back and ask you to review them.  
• The good news is that these issues are rare, and the rest of the records are processed without delay. 
• Bad records are dropped from the submission. You will be notified via email and redirected to the portal to view these validation errors.  If you receive this email notification, review the portal immediately and take the required action.     

 Sample email:

 

Contribution Adjustments - Action Needed

From the contribution detail, you will be able to see each employee contribution that was subject to an adjustment due to a validation error.  Each adjustment will reference the adjustment reason. 

Employers are responsible for taking appropriate action for each adjustment. For suggested action for each validation reason type, review the validation information below. 

Employee and Contribution Validation Types

Employee Identification Validations:

• Missing Social Security Number
• Invalid Social Security Number
• Bad Social Security Number Format
• Duplicate Social Security Number
• Missing Names
• Invalid DOB/DOH combination 

Validation Purpose: Various issues with social security numbers or names make it impossible to correctly and uniquely identify an employee. We cannot process a contribution if we don’t know who the employee is.

Action Taken: Record(s) are automatically removed from the contribution submission 

Employer Remediation Steps: 

• If there was no contribution associated with the record, you may:
  • Ignore the error OR
  • Add this person with a valid SSN/Name to the employee roster via the Employee Management tool on the portal. see our article on Adding New Employees OR
  • Correct the issue on your payroll system so that it can get properly processed next time
• If there was a contribution associated with the record, you may:
  • Update this employee’s SSN/Name and resubmit their contribution via an off-cycle submission tool found under the ‘Other Options’ menu on the Contributions landing page OR  
  • Return the funds to the impacted employee if the contribution was deducted in error. No other action is necessary.
• **In case of duplicate Social Security Number error, all the duplicate records are dropped and should be reviewed, consolidated, corrected, and resubmitted, if appropriate. 

Unrecognized Employee Validation:

Validation Purpose: Employees cannot contribute to the program unless they have met eligibility requirements, including a 30-day waiting period before the first contribution.

Validation Logic: A properly formatted and valid SSN was submitted, but the employee is not found on the company’s employee roster 

Action Taken: Record(s) are automatically removed from the submission.  

IMPORTANT! New employees cannot be added to the company roster via an integrated contributions submission. 

Employer Remediation Steps: 

• If there was no contribution associated with the record, you may:
  • Ignore the error OR
  • Add this person to the employee roster via the Employee Management tool on the portal
• If there was a contribution associated with the record, you may:
  • Manually resubmit the contribution for an enrolled employee via the off-cycle submission tool found under the ‘Other Options’ menu on the Contributions landing page OR  
  • Return the funds to the employee if the contribution was deducted in error. No other action is necessary OR
  • If this employee should be enrolled in the program, add the person to the employee roster via the Employee Management tool on the portal. You must wait 31 days before submitting contributions for newly-added employees.

Invalid Contribution Validation:

Validation Purpose: Ensure that all contributions are $0 or more.

Validation Logic: An employee contribution cannot be submitted for an amount less than $0

Action Taken: Contribution amount gets rejected and updated to $0 

** IMPORTANT! Negative contributions are not supported

Remediation Steps: 

• If the negative contribution was submitted in error
  • Manually resubmit the corrected contribution via an off-cycle submission tool found under the ‘Other Options’ menu on the Contributions landing page. 
• If the negative contribution was submitted as an offset to prior contributions
  • Please note: you cannot correct a previously submitted contribution by sending in a negative contribution as an offset. Once funds are deposited to an employee’s IRA account, only the employee can withdraw those funds. 

Contribution Over the IRS Limit Validation:

Validation Purpose: Contributions above the IRS annual contribution limit are not allowed.

Validation Logic: An employee’s contribution takes them over the current year’s IRS limit. If the employee is 50 years old or more at the end of the calendar year, an additional catch-up contribution is allowed.  

Action Taken: Contribution amount gets rejected and reduced to $0 

** IMPORTANT! The contribution will get rejected even if it’s over the limit by $0.01

Employer Remediation Steps: 

• If a wrong contribution amount was submitted
  • Manually resubmit the employee’s correct contribution amount via an off-cycle submission tool found under the ‘Other Options’ menu on the Contributions landing page. 
• If the contribution was correct and the employee did overcontribute
  • Figure out the overcontribution amount AND
• Refund the excess contribution amount to the employee AND
  • Manually resubmit a contribution with the allowed contribution amount via an off-cycle submission tool found under the ‘Other Options’ menu on the Contributions landing page 

Contribution by Ineligible Participant Validation:

Validation Purpose; Contributions by employees who are not eligible are not allowed.
Validation Logic: An employee’s contribution was submitted, but the employee is not eligible to contribute.  Click here for more information about employee eligibility status. 

Action Taken: Contribution amount gets rejected and reduced to $0 

Employer Remediation Steps: 

• Refund the payroll deferred amount to the ineligible employee
• If you believe the employee should be eligible:
  • Reach out to Colorado SecureSavingss Client Services to review eligibility rules to understand why the employee was considered ineligible by the platform AND  
  • If the employee is indeed eligible, work with Colorado SecureSavings Client Services to update the employee's eligibility status and then resubmit their contribution manually via an off-cycle submission tool found under the ‘Other Options’ menu on the Contributions landing page.
  • If the employee is not actually eligible, refund the rejected contribution amount to the employee.

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