If you recently changed or are planning to change payroll providers, you’ll want to let Guideline know in order to avoid service interruptions for your plan.
It’s important to keep in mind that changing your payroll provider may result in variations to how we can service your plan. See a list of our payroll integrations and their access levels here.
How to notify us about your payroll provider update
Log in to your Guideline administrator dashboard.
Click on your company name in the top right corner and select Payroll
Click the "Change provider" button.
Complete the workflow to provide all necessary details about the change.
Here are helpful hints on completing this step:Your last pay date corresponds to the last pay date that you have or will process with your prior provider.
Your first pay date corresponds with the first pay date you will process (or have processed) with your new provider. (This is not the transition date, but the actual date your employees will be paid.)
How to complete the process
Depending on the payroll provider you selected, you may need to complete a specific task on your Guideline dashboard to finalize your new payroll provider.
Connecting a 360˚integrated payroll provider
If you are switching to a 360˚ integrated provider, a task will surface on your Guideline administrator dashboard to connect your payroll provider with Guideline. You’ll need to complete the task to establish a connection.
Providing third-party access to a 180˚ sync partner
If you are switching to a payroll provider not fully integrated with Guideline, a task will appear on your admin dashboard to grant us third-party administrator access to the provider to help us properly manage the plan.
If you don't connect it in time, you will have to manually upload your payroll report to your Resource Library.
Frequently asked questions
Why hasn’t a task appeared on my dashboard to connect or provide access?
Guideline will surface a task to your dashboard once we have received and processed your final payroll run with your prior provider (which would have been noted in the “last pay date” field above). Once processed, a task will then appear on your dashboard with next steps.
How far in advance should you complete the payroll change workflow above?
If you are moving to a 360˚ integrated payroll provider, please notify Guideline by submitting a payroll change request at least one week prior to your first payroll with your new provider.
If you are moving to a 180˚ sync payroll provider or a self service payroll, please notify Guideline by submitting a payroll change request at least 2 weeks prior to your first payroll with your new provider to ensure our team can manage your employees contributions without any service interruptions.
If you’ve already had your first payroll with your new provider, please complete the workflow as soon as possible. Additionally, please reach out to us and provide the payroll report(s) for any payroll processed with the new provider to ensure all contributions are collected.
Why does Guideline need third-party administrator access to our payroll account (for 180˚ payroll sync providers)?
Most payroll providers require their users to have administrator access to manage payroll deductions and pull payroll reporting. We ask that you provide us third-party administrator access to your payroll provider’s site to allow us to also manage contributions and pull reporting.
What if I do not feel comfortable providing third-party administrator access to Guideline?
Guideline must have third-party administrator access to any non-integrated providers (180˚ payroll sync). If you do not feel comfortable providing third-party administrator access, your plan must move to a self-service model. In self-service plans, administrators must manage payroll on their own and manually upload payroll reports after every pay period for contribution processing.
You can learn about the responsibilities of a self-service plan here.
How long will it take to complete a payroll change request?
The payroll change process can take up to two weeks, depending on your new payroll provider. Therefore, it is imperative to notify Guideline as soon as you have finalized your new payroll provider.
My payroll provider said they emailed an invitation to gain access to their site. How can I confirm that you have received the invitation?
After you initiate a payroll change request, a task on your dashboard will appear with instructions on how to provide access. Please complete the task after an invitation has been sent to alert our team to review our access and permission levels.
Once you have completed the task, you will see the task status change to “Waiting for review.” If any additional details are needed, the task status will revert back to “Start” with a message from our Payroll Team with next steps.
If we successfully gained access to your account, the task itself will no longer appear on your dashboard, and you can expect to see contributions on your next payroll run. Please allow 72 hours after you have provided access before following up with our team.
When should I expect to see Guideline data sync to my payroll provider?
We won’t attempt to connect your new payroll provider until your first pay date with the provider gets closer. If the payroll change task has been completed, you will see the data sync on your first pay date with the new provider.
What does it mean when my task says “Waiting for review”?
If your task shows “Waiting for review” as a status, our Payroll Team is currently processing your request. This status will change depending on what is found in their review.
What happens if a connection is not established or access has not been confirmed in time for my next payroll run?
If you are still processing payroll and have not yet seen a successful connection to your integrated provider (or have not completed the correct access to non-integrated providers), you can work with your payroll provider to add deductions to your employees’ paychecks before processing. You can find your employees’ elected deferrals by running the “Deferral Rates Report” in your Guideline administrator dashboard.
If you already processed payroll and deductions correctly appear on employees’ pay stubs, please upload the payroll journal for that pay period to your Shared Files section within the Resource Library of your Guideline administrator dashboard, and kindly notify us of your upload by sending an email to clients@guideline.com.
If deductions appear, we should be able to manually process the deductions.
If you have already processed payroll but no deductions appear on employees’ pay stubs, please upload the payroll journal for that pay period to your Shared Files section within the Resource Library of your Guideline administrator dashboard, and kindly notify us of your upload by sending an email to clients@guideline.com. If deductions do not appear, we’ll need to review journals to determine what corrections might need to be processed.