so good news...,my plan allows for the after-tax contribution to be converted to Roth up to 54500 including employer match.
Cool! To be clear, are you talking about in-plan conversions to a Roth subaccount within your 401k, or withdrawal/rollover into a personal Roth IRA?
My plan doesn't have the ability to manage it myself so I need to call them to have the $$ converted.
Bummer, but probably not that uncommon. For in-plan conversions I'm able to log onto Vanguard and convert with a few clicks. For withdrawl/rollover I have to call up Vanguard. Sounds like kind of a pain to remember to do this every 2 weeks when I get paid, but I'm not complaining too much -- it's just nice to have the option.
The rep also suggested that I convert the $$ as soon as it hits the account to minimize taxable gains paid.
I see this talked about a lot, and I understand it. However, in almost every case the amount of taxable gains are likely to be very small. The exception would be if you have an enormous salary and/or bonus early in the year, dump a ton into the after-tax account all at once, then let it sit for many months during a strong bull market.
More typically, you could convert quarterly and still have miniscule taxable gains. Some plans are more limited than others. If yours allows conversions at any time and without limit,
and you don't mind making a phone call every 2 weeks (or whenever your paycheck is issued), then you might as well optimize and limit those taxable gains.
The less-discussed aspect is the potential for locking in
losses when converting. At least the losses will be on the same miniscule scale as the potential taxable gains. Still, I'm tempted to do the analysis to discover whether it's better to leave the money in the taxable portion until it breaks even or posts a small gain, before converting. Why is this tempting, when I know it's not worth the mental bandwidth? I have no idea. :D