GuidelineReviews of guideline.com

Don't go with this business. Here is the email they sent me when asked why my plan I cancelled 4 months ago is still charging me. "Thank you for reaching out. I've provided details below with regard to the billing and you can find Guideline's Billing practice here. It looks like you terminated the plan effective 6/16/23 when you completed the request in your dashboard on 8/2/23. We’re still servicing the plan for a few more months in the form of winding the plan down even though it terminated effective 6/16/23. This means that monthly invoicing continues for a period of time following the date (3 months after the month in which the termination of the plan was initiated, or the termination date - whichever is later). Items that we’ll be working on justifying our charge include: 1. Holding, managing, investing plan assets while waiting for participants to provide instruction on distributing their balances 2. Contacting and working with plan participants to distribute their balances 3. Completing short year non-discrimination testing 4. Filing required government filings related to plan closure 5. Trust account closure I just reviewed your account with our policy outlined above in mind. Here’s a breakdown of what I found - it looks like everything is set up correctly: 1. Request made on 8/2/23 2. Invoices for the 3 months following (September, October, November) 3. Last invoice to be charged in the first week of December for service provided in November With that being said - we can’t deviate from our policy here. You should expect your last invoice for Guideline service in the first week of December. Lastly, I do want to let you know that I’ve gone over the feedback that you provided in this thread. We take any feedback very seriously, and will be considering the points you brought up as we strive to improve. Thank you again for the feedback." Not good enough

If you run a company & are considering Guideline as your 401k provider...for the love of God, please don't use them. * For starters, I'm aware that "automatic enrollment" is common with 401ks & not specific to Guideline - no issue there. However, while they're quick to tell you that "you're always free to opt out," they actually force you to agree to all their Terms & Conditions before they'll let you do so: the "opt out" option is gated behind agreement. In other words...there is literally no way to disagree. You cannot even e-mail them to opt out: they'll just tell you to use their web panel...which...requires you to agree. It's shocking to me that this is even legal. What if I don't want to use their 401k, and I also don't agree to their terms? (And note that if you do want to actually read the >100 pages they're forcing you to agree to, you'd better be able to drop everything & do it quickly, as auto-enroll has a deadline. And of course, don't miss the scummy Binding Arbitration clause buried at the bottom - where if you don't proactively opt out of that, you'll automatically forfeit your basic right to trial by jury & class action settlements. Yes, those clauses are increasingly common - but it's entirely different when they bury it in terms that you're FORCED to agree to on a tight deadline & under duress). Just put the opt-out button before the Terms & Conditions. Is that really so hard? * The transaction history they provide obfuscates any meaningful information that you could use to actually track & manage your investments. For example, when there's a rebalance, it says "Your portfolio rebalanced to your target allocation." That's it. No information on how many shares were bought or sold, no information on the share price at which those buys & sells took place. This is true of their web panel, their monthly statements, and their transaction report exports. Has anyone even heard of a company that obfuscates & witholds all detail on the trades that are being performed with your funds on your behalf? Again, how is that even legal? That would be like a credit card company sending you a statement with a list of dates of your purchases, but the amounts & descriptions all blank. How can you possibly manage a portfolio when they withhold any proper information about the trades that take place? Hint: you can't. Support confirmed that many people have contacted them about this, yet they haven't bothered to fix it. This is the kind of thing that should've been there before the service was even allowed to go live. EDIT: "We’re sorry to hear you’re having trouble, please email us so we can look into this" is a non-response. I clearly stated above that you've already been notified of both these issues via e-mail, and you've already confirmed via e-mail that there is no workaround. If anything about my statements are incorrect, please respond here publicly.

Simple, easy to manage 401K, with great funds and easy user interface, for both managers and employees. My ONLY complaint is the addition of user fees a couple of years ago, after we had set it up. After years of promoting themselves as not charging users, they apparently - and with minimal warning - reversed their position on this. And yet, still a great low-cost option.

Customer service is spotty, a recurring withholding issue took nearly a year to resolve which negatively impacted a couple of employees. We've also come to discover that pricing is on the premium end of the spectrum, so given the level of service we're back in the market again for a new 401(k) provider.

This company will do whatever it feels it has to do even after giving wrong advice or just simply failing to properly guide plan sponsors. They are only worried about their monthly fees. Throw vesting out the window if you are a plan sponsor. They will vest them regardless. It's all due to improper advice or simply no advice at all.

You guys didn't give me .y remainder pay for sick time or 401k

6 months and still waiting on disbursement. They don't share details of why, just blame it on the employer.

We are a small nonprofit and honestly, not the most savvy. It has been nice to be able to trust QuickBooks and Guideline to do all the heavy lifting.