What's covered in this guide?
State retirement programs
Several states run their own retirement savings programs for employees of businesses that don't offer a workplace retirement plan. Common examples include California's CalSavers and Illinois Secure Choice. If you're enrolled in one of these programs, you withhold employee contributions through payroll and remit them to the state on a regular schedule.
Workforce reports these contributions to the state retirement agency on your behalf so you don't have to compile and submit the file yourself.
How reporting works
When you process a pay run, any employee contribution to a state retirement program is recorded as a deduction on the pay stub. Workforce collects those contribution records and packages them into the file format the state agency requires. Your Workforce representative submits that file to the state on your behalf.
Reports are generated on a weekly basis, capturing contributions from pay runs processed during that week. The state always has up-to-date contribution data for your employees. You don't need to download anything, log into the state portal to upload a file, or trigger the export manually.
Getting connected
Before Workforce can report on a state retirement program for your business, we need to link your payroll account to your state program account. To get this set up:
Register your business directly with the state program (for example, on the CalSavers or Illinois Secure Choice website) and complete employer onboarding there.
Reach out to support@workforce.com and let them know which state program you're enrolled in.
Your representative will help you configure the right deduction type on your account and confirm when reporting is live.
Once you're connected, contributions withheld on each pay run will be reported to the state automatically.
Note: If an employee opts out, changes their contribution rate, or switches between Roth and Traditional, they manage that directly with the state program. Make sure their deduction in Workforce matches what the state has on file so the reported amounts line up.