What to do if your plan has a bank failure
Updated over a week ago

If Guideline is unable to collect 401(k) contributions or monthly fees from the bank account you have on file, there are important steps you can take to remediate the failure. Failure to timely remit 401(k) contributions will result in excise tax penalties imposed by the IRS, as well as payment of lost earnings to participants.

To resolve bank failures, you can work with your bank to update the current bank account on file or you can authorize a new bank account under “Manage Payment Methods” in the Settings section of your administrator dashboard.

Updating your current bank account

To help clear blockers within your account, you may need to “whitelist” Guideline’s ACH codes with your bank. This allows your bank to be aware of any upcoming ACH withdrawals.

If you intend to use the current bank account on file, please confirm the below items with your bank:

  • All of our ACH codes have been whitelisted and Guideline is authorized to submit ACH pulls from the account.

  • There is no ACH limit on the account.

  • The bank account is a checking account and not a savings account.

  • The account and routing numbers have been entered correctly into Guideline.

Please provide the following whitelist codes to your bank to allow for transactions to be processed from Guideline:

  • Invoices from WFMSTRIPE1 Whitelist:

    • 3270465600

    • 1800948598

    • 2270465600

    • 4270465600

  • Contributions from SSBTrustOps or Guideline 401(k) Whitelist:

    • 0431848772

    • Important note: If the code 0431848772 above is unsuccessful, please also have the bank whitelist the same code with the zero removed and a space (just one spacebar keystroke) in its place, like this: [SPACE]431848772

Notify our team at clients@guideline.com once you have resolved your bank account issues so that we’re able to collect the funds in a timely manner.

Re-processing missed contributions and payments

Once you have confirmed approval with your bank, Guideline will re-process your failed ACH according to the failure type.

Contributions:

  • Our finance team will re-trigger the ACH collection for any missed contributions upon your confirmation that bank issues are resolved. You can expect to see this debit from your bank account within two business days.

Invoices:

  • Guideline will roll any outstanding invoices into the next month’s billing cycle. You can expect to see that invoice by the 10th business day of the following month.

  • Please note that Guideline is unable to process ad-hoc payments for monthly invoices outside of the normal billing cycle.

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