A good third party administrator (TPA) can handle the day-to-day administration of a daily valued 401(k) plan and a good part of that job is handling the compliance end through various forms of discrimination testing. A TPA can only do an effective job based on the information that a plan sponsor provides and that the information is correct. Making chicken salad out of chicken crap might work for some businesses, it doesn’t work well in the world of retirement plans especially when the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) and the Department of Labor are auditing plans to ensure compliance with the Internal Revenue Code and the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 (ERISA). A TPA needs to know certain things from 401(k) plan sponsors and this article will let them know what you need to provide your TPA.