Question 1

What is Guideline Pro?

Accepted Answer

Guideline Pro is a free program for financial professionals. With Guideline, you can provide your clients with a seamless 401(k), plus get the tools to design, monitor and manage your clients’ plans while incorporating your own advisory fee.

Question 2

How does Guideline process my advisory fee?

Accepted Answer

Pursuant to separate agreement(s) between you and your clients, Guideline can process and pay advisory fees owed by your clients to you. Guideline will pay the advisory fee out of the Plan participants’ accounts based on assets under management. The advisory fee will be prorated daily based on each active participant’s account balance and deducted directly from each active participant’s account quarterly and paid to the advisor in arrears. If you are interested in having Guideline process your advisory fee, you will have to provide the RIA W9 and ACH Bank Account for the RIA when you set up your Guideline Dashboard.

Question 3

How do clients pay their plan fees?

Accepted Answer

The monthly fee is paid by your client directly to Guideline.

Question 4

Can I design a plan on behalf of my clients?

Accepted Answer

Yes, you can. With your advisor dashboard, you can see all of your clients plans—completed and in progress. For new plans, you can help design the plan, track progress, and streamline the approval process to get it up quickly.

Question 5

Will I have a dedicated point of contact at Guideline?

Accepted Answer

Yes, you will be introduced to your dedicated Relationship Manager after you join Guideline Pro and connect to your free advisors dashboard.

Question 6

What are Guideline’s key services?

Accepted Answer

Once a plan is set up, we take care of nearly everything including recordkeeping, investment management, government filings, and more. We integrate with 18 different payroll providers and charge low monthly fees with no transaction fees.

Question 7

What plan design features are available?

Accepted Answer

All Guideline plans include the fundamental services and features needed for a great benefit. In addition, clients can add profit sharing, vesting schedules, matching options, and more depending on the plan. Every Guideline plan features automatic enrollment, and we do not currently support an hours-of-service (i.e. part-time employee) eligibility restriction.

Question 8

Why auto enrollment?

Accepted Answer

Auto enrollment is a required feature for all Guideline 401(k) plans. Auto enrollment can help improve IRS nondiscrimination testing results, increase employees’ retirement readiness, and much more. Learn more about auto enrollment

Question 9

What are the investment options?

Accepted Answer

With Guideline, participants can create a custom portfolio from our fund menu or choose one of 6 different managed investment portfolios. Each portfolio is diversified with funds from low-cost providers giving them an average expense ratio under 0.07%.5 When combined with a 0.15% account fee the estimated total cost of an active participant investing in one of Guideline’s managed portfolios can be under 0.22%5 — that’s up to 6x less than the industry average.6

Question 10

Do you offer target date funds?

Accepted Answer

We do not at this time. Target date funds tend to have higher expense ratios for participants. We lower these fees by building the portfolios ourselves, and still give participants the flexibility to choose investments that serve a shorter or longer term investment strategy. Read more here

Help clients achieve their financial goals

Grow with Guideline Pro

Affordable pricing

All-in-one 401(k)

Employee support

Billing and fees

A retirement platform with built-in billing

More state mandates are coming this year.

We connect with popular payroll providers

Schedule a demo

Add your clients

Design their plans

Frequently asked questions