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How do I enter 401K Company Match and Company Contribution?

PYohe

Employer matches 4% of my contribution PLUS employer contributes another amount and life insurance.

I can enter the Employer Match, but I don't know if I need to enter the Employer Contribution and the Employer Contributed Group Term Life. Neither one affects the pay stub.
The Group Term Life is listed on the pay stub as Imputed Income.
The Employer Match and Employer Contribution are listed on the pay stub as Additional Information.

I can see both in Fidelity Net Benefits, but I don't know if I should post them or just check the amounts every pay period to make sure they are correct.

I am downloading Fidelity NetBenefits. If I enter Employer Match on the Paycheck Wizard will that affect the Net Benefits downloaded account?

Thanks,

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Accepted answers

Chris_QPW

On the employer contribution.
I think the main thing to consider is matching what actually happens in the 401K account.
Both your contribution and the employer contribution are treated as transfers from the checking account to the 401K account. So, they should line up with the amount contributed to the 401K and used for purchasing securities.

The main difference between the two entries is that your contribution is subtracted from the gross amount of the paycheck, but the employer's sort of comes out of the "air" (in other words from somewhere else than the checking account/paycheck). It doesn't matter if that is the 4% or "other amount", one amount should take care of them both. So, you don't need an extra entry for that one.

On the insurance I would say you shouldn't enter it. The only time I have seen insurance like that actually affect a paycheck is if the amount is great enough to be taxed, and then there is a tax line for it.

PYohe

Ok, thanks.

All comments

Chris_QPW

PYohe

Thank you. I didn't know it the insurance would affect the W-2 since the company considers it as income.

How do I enter both of the employer contributions? They are different amounts.

Is there a reason to keep the 401K Company Match amount separate from the 401K Company Contribution amount?

To be clear...there are 3 contributions, 1 employee and 2 employer.

If I add both of the Employer amounts together and enter under Employer Match, will that affect anything?

If I use Paycheck Wizard, will the register balance with the 401K or will I need to delete or merge any of the transactions?

Is the Paycheck Wizard used mostly to make it easier? It has all the correct deductions and tax line items so I just need to edit the amounts as needed? Then I will need to delete or merge once my bank transactions are downloaded?

If I manually enter the paycheck, do I have to enter every deduction and amount every time? It does not remember from the previous transactions?

Thanks.

Chris_QPW

Yes, I understand the there are three contributions, but Quicken's paycheck reminder only allows for two, so you would have to combine the two employer ones to use it.

And yes, the paycheck reminder is mostly just used to make it easier, under the surface it is a memorized income reminder with splits, but there are some "hidden" aspects to it, and the 401K employer contribution is one of them.

Here is an example for that section in the paycheck reminder.

Image: https://us.v-cdn.net/6031128/uploads/editor/ks/rdvazsydif1s.png

I can right click on a paycheck and create a standard income reminder from it. And that shows some of the hidden works. You can see that the offset the transfer for the employer contribution with one for _401EmployerContrib.

There is also an entry in a hidden tax account, but I'm not sure exactly what that might affect in Quicken or it if just using a regular income reminder with a transfer to a 401K account will do the same.

Judging what is going to happen in the 401K is hard because I don't know what transactions it will download.

For my wife's 401K account with Merrill Lynch, they don't put in any contribution transactions.
So, if I didn't have any transfers from the checking account the balance as they buy transactions came in would go negative.

If Fidelity actually downloads the contribution transactions, then you would want to have the same transactions as transfers from your checking account, and then match to them as they are downloaded.
Will that be 1, 2, or three transactions? I don't know.

There is even another possibility. With some financial institutions they send something that has Quicken use a BoughtX (X being "transfer") where the account is the 401K account. The affect is that the buy doesn't affect the cash balance, and as such in that case you wouldn't want a transfer from the checking account, instead you would just use normal categories in the reminder.

PYohe said:

If I manually enter the paycheck, do I have to enter every deduction and amount every time? It does not remember from the previous transactions?

Thanks.

You definitely want to either a paycheck reminder or an income reminder to have it entered on the right schedule. You could memorize the payee with the splits (Ctrl+M) and when you typed the payee it would bring back this information, but it is better to use a reminder because it remembers when it is supposed to be entered. Ctrl+J will bring up the Bills & Income reminders.

PYohe

Ok, thanks.

Chris_QPW

I was just looking at my comment above and notice that I forgot to include the screenshot of these as just a standard split transaction. Here that is.