Blog: Retirement Planning

The reason to review a plan in July rather than in February is economic.

Most retirement plan failures are correctable — and what the correction costs depends on how quickly you find it. Several correction routes are available for operational failures found and fixed promptly, at modest cost and without involving anyone. The same failure found later, or found by an examiner, is a different and more expensive conversation.

Which makes the ...

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Retirement Planning:
QDROs Explained: How CPAs Can Guide Clients Through Divorce and Retirement Splits6/11/2026

The most expensive error in this area is not a valuation mistake. It is using the wrong instrument, and it happens because practitioners and clients use "QDRO" as a general term for dividing retirement assets in a divorce.

It is not a general term. Getting this wrong can convert a tax-free division into a fully taxable distribution to the client who was supposed to be keeping the money.

The Distinction That Matters Most

A qualified domestic

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Retirement Planning:
Common Financial Statement Errors CPAs Catch During Year-End Review6/8/2026

The errors found in year-end review are consistent enough to be a checklist, which is the useful thing about them. The same twenty problems appear across unrelated clients in unrelated industries, and a reviewer who knows the list finds them faster than one working through the statements sequentially.

Two techniques find most of them, and they should be applied before any detailed work.

The Two Techniques

Comparative analytics. Every balance, every

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Retirement Planning:
401(k) Compliance Testing Explained: ADP/ACP Tests for Small Businesses5/6/2026

Nondiscrimination testing is where small business retirement plans fail, and the reason is structural rather than technical: the owner wants to defer as much as possible, the employees defer very little, and the tests exist specifically to prevent that outcome.

Most practitioners encounter this as a phone call in February — the plan failed, the owner has to take money back out, and nobody is happy. The useful work happens well before that, and it starts with understanding which test ...

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