About the Guideline retirement plan integration (PEO)

This article is for Deel PEO clients who use Guideline as their retirement plan vendor.

This article explains how clients can utilize the Guideline integration with Deel in order to reduce manual processing time and more readily collect payroll data.

Important notice about the Guideline integration

Due to recent industry acquisitions, including Vestwell’s acquisition of Accrue in January 2026, the integration landscape for retirement services is shifting. As former Accrue clients migrate to the Vestwell platform, the existing integration with Deel and Guideline will be affected.

If you DO NOT have the integration set up:

• The integration is now discontinued and is no longer available for setup for users migrating to Vestwell.

If you ALREADY HAVE the integration set up:

• All accounts are moving to the Vestwell platform, with a completion goal of April 2026. Note that transition dates vary by company. Look for direct migration notices from Vestwell regarding your specific move date.
• Once your account is migrated, the Deel integration will no longer be active.
• Required Action: You must manually update both the Vestwell and Deel platforms for any payroll or employee changes to ensure retirement contributions remain accurate.

For a detailed guide on the platform transition, refer to Vestwell’s official Accrue 401k Transition page.

In this article

Overview

How the integration works

Setting up the Guideline integration

What is Guideline?

Guideline is a retirement plan administrator that facilitates retirement plan deductions and contributions for enrolled employees. The Guideline integration supports 401(k), Roth and Traditional retirement accounts, including 401(k) loans. 

With the Deel Guideline integration, clients can:

• Automatically update Deel and Prism in near-real time with employees’ Guideline retirement enrollment deduction amounts.
• Automatically update the Deel & Prism platform in near-real time when employees’ Guideline retirement enrollment changes or terminate. 

Key Considerations

• The Deel integration is supported for clients with Non-Elective Contribution (NEC) plans. This means that if the employee does not contribute to their retirement plan, the client will still contribute a percentage of the employee’s earnings to their retirement account. 
   
• If the planned start date is in less than 30 days, Guideline may not be able to proceed with integration on time. Clients may need to manually add the deductions for the first cycle, or delay onboarding so Guideline has time to set up plans.
   

How the integration with Guideline works

1. New employees, or newly eligible employees, feed from Deel into the Guideline system automatically each night.
2. Employees select their retirement contribution plan amounts within the Guideline platform.
3. Near the enrollment effective date, the payroll deduction amount feeds from Guideline into Deel for payroll processing.
4. Once the payroll has been processed, the contribution amounts for that payroll are automatically updated in the Guideline system within 2 business days.
5. Guideline funds the employees’ retirement accounts based on the amounts provided from the payroll update (in step 4).