An annual employee-deferral target does not by itself determine employer match. When a plan matches each paycheck and does not later reconcile the year, reaching the employee target too early can leave later checks with no deferral and no match. This calculator turns the remaining payroll calendar and the plan terms you enter into a transparent schedule.
Separate federal limits from plan mechanics
Federal dollar limits define supported employee, compensation and annual-additions ceilings. They do not create an employer match, determine whether a bonus is eligible or promise a true-up. Those features come from the actual written plan and payroll administration, so the tool requires user entry instead of embedding a generic assumption.
Use the payroll ledger, not only an annual percentage
Each future check has its own date, pay amount, eligible compensation and maximum deferral capacity. The engine applies the compensation ceiling chronologically, calculates per-check match, and then evaluates an annual true-up only when the entered terms make it available.
Read exactness within the supported model
The optimizer is exact for cumulative one-to-four-tier formulas with nonincreasing marginal match rates and the entered capacities. Exact does not mean the plan document was interpreted for you. Payroll rounding, service conditions, vesting, after-tax contributions, discretionary formulas and other exclusions can change actual results.
Treat sharing and saving as private choices
The widget calculates locally. It does not write plan data to the URL or browser storage automatically. Saving is opt-in, and a share link is created only after explicit consent because its encoded state is readable rather than encrypted.