Run an EBP engagement with Agentive

The EBP templates are general-purpose templates for the employee benefit plan audits your firm runs throughout the year. They are not tied to one client. Each is a starting point you tailor to the plan in front of you. This guide walks through setting up and running an EBP engagement with the templates, then tuning them to your client's documents using Co-Audit and Agentive's advanced features so the engagement runs cleaner each year.

Every piece is modular. The EBP Template Engagement bundles 16 procedures, but you can take only the ones you need, and edit, skip, or roll forward each on its own. Only a few are required to get value: the EBP Plan Analysis and the testing procedures you actually perform.

There are two ways to start an EBP engagement. Pick whichever fits how you work.

Run the EBP Plan Analysis before any testing. It reads the plan documents and extracts the specific provisions that the rest of the engagement audits against (eligibility rules, the compensation definition, contribution and remittance rules, and so on). It groups the extracted provisions by Roman numeral (Plan Document Overview = I, Eligibility = II, Compensation = III, and so on), and each group ends with an overview row that re-reads the prior answers in that group. This extract, review, and summarize pattern improves accuracy.

When you run the EBP Plan Analysis, its overview rows are set as Engagement Variables, values referenceable across the whole engagement. The testing procedures read these variables as their plan-specific policy, so the same provisions flow into every test without re-entry.

Running the Plan Analysis automatically publishes:

• Compensation Overview
• Contributions Overview
• Eligibility Overview
• Employee Allocation Overview
• Loans & Distributions Overview
• Rollovers Overview
• Vesting and Forfeitures Overview

You can review every value under Engagement Variables in Engagement Settings, and click any value to jump back to its source row.

The Document Group accepts plan documents two ways. The template is tuned for the combined approach, but both work.

Overview rows hold AI-extracted text. Make them human-readable so a new team member can read the engagement and understand the plan without opening source documents.

The Plan Analysis extracts a standard set of provisions. When you need more, either a provision the template does not capture or a plain-language read of the plan for a newer auditor, you can extend it two ways.

The library includes 16 procedures. The core testing procedures, what each verifies, and the Plan Analysis variables each reads are below. Skip any procedure you do not perform by leaving its task in Backlog. Click any template name to open its setup reference under EBP Templates.

Contribution Testing also reads IRC threshold variables (annual compensation limit and the age-50+, super, and SIMPLE catch-up limits) set during EBP Setup rather than from Plan Analysis.

The templates request a standard set of documents, but your client's documents will differ: a different report format, a different name for the same figure, a calculation that needs to tie out differently. Use Co-Audit to retool the request to match what the client actually provides.

The clearest case is a swapped source document. A template built to read an individual pay stub needs different extraction and tie-out logic than an annual payroll detail report, which carries every pay period for every employee in one file. Tell Co-Audit what you have, and it rewrites the document request, the extraction prompts, and the calculations to fit.

The procedures link by column header name. The three required headers are Employee Name, Date of Hire, and Plan Entry Date, and the main identifier throughout is Employee Name. When a pasted-in column uses a different name (for example, DOH instead of Date of Hire), the data does not flow downstream and the dependent cells turn red instead of blue.

When you need a procedure the library does not include (rollover testing, for example), start from the closest existing template and have Co-Audit retool it, rather than building from scratch. Co-Audit knows how to manipulate columns and prompts to match audit standards, and it types far faster than a human, so use it for the first draft.

A few Agentive features handle the common friction points when you run a tailored procedure against real client data.

The Match Agent works best with the least information. Leaving the match criteria blank is the laziest option and the one to try first; with less to go on, it makes its own connections. When it finds competing reasons for a match, it shows counter-evidence as a red badge so you can confirm or reject it.

Give it a nudge only when you provide a full population or census, such as an annual payroll report with thousands of rows, or a single PDF holding many check copies. There, name the one thing to match on so it does not try to process the whole population.

Every request has a Memo tab titled Accounting Policies. Before any procedure runs, its agents read this whole page for context. Use it to record not just a policy but how that policy shows up in this client's files, so the determination is made once and persists.

Any question touching that quirk (a nonstandard contribution code, an unusual column name, plan-specific verbiage to review) now has the context to look in the right place.