Wife started contributions into her 401k on last pay period, they get paid on the 1st every month. Her 10/1 contribution showed on paystub but has yet been deposited into her 401k account. Before having her contact an HR rep, I did some digging and read employers have 15 business days the following month to make deposit, see below from DOL.
Just to be clear, does that mean October or Novermber? Also employer is over 100 employees and they have the standard M-F 5 day work week.


"Department of Labor rules require that the employer deposit deferrals to the trust as soon as the employer can; however, in no event can the deposit be later than the 15th business day of the following month. Remember that the rules about the 15th business day isn't a safe harbor for depositing deferrals; rather, that these rules set the maximum deadline. DOL provides a 7-business-day safe harbor rule for employee contributions to plans with fewer than 100 participants."

The companies I've worked for, the 401K contributions are usually sent to the administrator a couple of days after payday. So a month end payroll would usually see the 401K contributions sent the first day or two of the following month. I'm not sure how long it would take to be credited to the individuals account after that.

Yes, it is a 401k, probably 2k+ employees.

Who's the payroll company and 401k plan with?

No reason it can't happen the same day in this day and age. If they don't do it until the 15th of the next month they better have a really good reason, like the building burned down with the payroll clerk in it or something. The DOL really wants as soon as reasonably possible. The 15th is the maximum for extraordinary circumstances, not the normal procedure. If they do this too often they can end up owing more for lost earnings.

The employer is a school district here in Utah, they apparently send a "file" to the 401k administrator monthly, Utah Retirement Systems(URS.org), who has in house mutual funds. That is probably the delay dealing with to public/govt entities. I emailed URS.org on Friday and they said they have yet to receive the district's file for 10/1 payroll

Are all of her fund choices compete and up to date?

As far as what she had elected for the money to be invested in? Yes, just a Large Cap Index fund that they offer.

Ok. Every plan should have a default fund if no elections were made, but sounds like she's fine her part. Just verifying though to make sure they weren't sitting somewhere waiting for her to do something.

It doesn't make sense to me that a school district would operate like that. I'd ask what's going on.