Just a few weeks ago, we announced a new set of Jobs Management endpoints, which make it easy for developers to programmatically view the status of data sync jobs for any employer connection. Now, we’re excited to share a new user interface (UI) in the dashboard that empowers any user to do the same. We call it the Data Syncs UI.
The Data Syncs UI enables any Finch user to view the status of scheduled and requested data syncs through a user-friendly dashboard. This gives developers, support teams, and product managers alike an accessible source of truth for the status of data syncs across all connected customers.
The Data Syncs UI is designed to make it easy for anyone in your organization, regardless of their technical expertise, to view and manage data sync job activity.
For example, product managers can now monitor the health of connections across their applications without the need for engineering support. The intuitive interface gives them visibility into every active and past connection, so they can proactively address syncing issues and provide timely information to customers (or our support team) as needed.
Meanwhile, the Data Syncs UI empowers support representatives to quickly assess the status of customers’ connections and efficiently field questions and requests. This helps them provide a best-in-class experience for your customers.
To access the Data Syncs UI, simply log in to your Finch dashboard and click on any of your individual customers under the 'Employers' tab to see a full list of syncs and their status. If you aren’t already using Finch today, but want to learn how employment data can help power your next product innovation, sign up for a free account, or talk to a member of our team today.
Today, we’re excited to announce two major upgrades to Connect: authentication fallback and improved configurability. These enhancements give you more flexibility and control over how employers authenticate through Connect.
Fallback is an alternative path to authenticate when your customers are having difficulty connecting with the primary authentication method. This enables employers to connect through Finch without the need to contact support.
If an employer attempts to authenticate through Connect and cannot complete the primary authentication method, Connect will display instructions for the employer to connect manually as a fallback option. Once Finch sets up the account, the data for this connection will flow through the Finch API as usual. Check out our docs for a complete list of providers and more implementation details.
Finch may display various authentication methods to employers depending on different providers. Several common examples of authentication include credential auth, OAuth, and API keys. Each authentication method has its pros and cons, some of which include friction to connect, cost to employers, and data refresh frequency.
The new and improved authorization configurability allows you to decide what configurations to enable in Connect across providers, including:
To learn more, read the configuration docs for more details.
Both Connect updates are immediately available. Please reach out to Sales or your Account Manager to enable authentication fallback and config. If you don’t have API keys yet, you can sign up for a free account today!
We are thrilled to announce the launch of our new Data Refresh endpoint, allowing you to request new data whenever you need it.
The Finch API syncs data with providers on a set cadence. This enables Finch to provide developers a reliable, low-latency API. But, we know sometimes you need to refresh your data sooner than Finch's retrieval schedule.
Data Refresh is a new endpoint which lets you enqueue a new job on demand without waiting for the next scheduled sync.
We are excited about enabling use cases where near-real-time data is critical. For example:
First, you’ll need a way to trigger a refresh in your application. This is typically triggered by a refresh button built into the product or through some backend workflow. Then you can use this workflow to send a request to our POST /jobs/automated endpoint and we’ll kick off a new job to fetch any new updates. While the job is running, you can use our GET /jobs/automated endpoint to check on the status of the job. After the data is updated, you can call each individual data endpoint to retrieve the latest data. Check out our docs to learn more.
But that’s not all—we’ve also released new Jobs Management endpoints to give you more visibility and control into jobs run by Finch. With these endpoints, you’ll also be able to view the status of a data sync job, as well as timestamps related to key lifecycle events by sending a request to GET /jobs/automated. Use this endpoint to understand and communicate with your customers the last updated time, status of the current sync, and more.
The /jobs endpoint is available to everyone today. Anyone with API keys, please reach out to Sales or your Account Manager to enable the feature in production. If you don’t have API keys, sign up for a free account!
This month’s updates include support for custom fields, which unlocks a multitude of use cases, and ethnicity, which employers can use to track progress on initiatives such as DEIB.
Custom fields has consistently been one of our most requested features with a multitude of use cases, ranging from capturing employee t-shirt sizes, to recording eligibility for fringe benefits, to storing data such as variable compensation targets. Finch defines custom fields as fields created by employers which do not yet exist in the system, and we’re happy to announce that custom field support is now available for the following systems with expanded availability across more platforms later next year:
While the range of data in these fields can vary, we already see multiple use cases leveraging common fields to drive a better employer experience.
Read the developer docs to learn more about the custom fields addition to the “employment” endpoint.
Ethnicity is a valuable datapoint that organizations aim to track to provide leadership and HR teams insights into workplace metrics such as diversity, hiring (recruitment, applications, interviews, and job offers), compensation, performance, and employee engagement. And now, it is also a field that is supported by Finch in the following HRIS systems:
Similar to custom fields, developers use ethnicity data to deliver deeper insights into an organization. Here are a few use cases that benefit from the additional granularity Finch provides:
Learn more about the ethnicity addition to the “individual” endpoint.
That's a wrap for December! If you haven’t already, be sure to sign up for free access to put our latest features to work for you.
This month’s updates include a partnership with exciting implications, an alternative auth protocol, and a host of new supported data points.
In November, we were thrilled to announce our deeper partnership with HiBob. With that partnership, our HiBob integration has gotten a facelift.
Now, employers who want to connect their HiBob account to a third-party can authenticate directly through Finch Connect to generate a long-lasting API token that queries the HiBob API without the user exiting our front-end modal. Alternatively, employers using SSO will be able to walk through a quick set of instructions that lets them directly generate the API token from within the HiBob dashboard. This will then be shared with Finch, completing the authentication process.
The more than 33,000 U.S. employers who use Paylocity to run their payroll and HR functions are the new beneficiaries of an exciting product feature: alternative auth via API token.
In other words, employers looking to link their Paylocity account to another application will have the option to do so directly with API credentials, for an ultra secure and reliable connection.
The new option is presented to employers who select Paylocity as their provider in our front-end modal as an alternative to the default Finch Connect flow. Once they follow the process outlined by Paylocity, employers will receive a set of API keys which can then be securely shared via Finch Connect.
That's a wrap for November! If you haven’t already, be sure to sign up for free access to put our latest features to work for you.
Since inception, Finch has been a major proponent of employer choice, giving them the ability to securely and compliantly share their data with trusted third parties. Not only should employers be able to choose who they share data with and what data they share, but also how they do so.
Today, we are extending employer choice to the authentication process for Paylocity customers. Paylocity has over 33,300 employers using their platform across the US leveraging a full suite of HR products from payroll to benefits management. Similar to the TriNet integration update included in our September product post, Paylocity users will now be able to choose to authenticate access via API credentials for a secure, reliable syncing experience. Check out our compatibility docs to confirm which datapoints are accessible via this new authentication method.
How to Connect
Employers who select Paylocity as their provider will see a new authentication option offered as an alternative to default Finch Connect flow. Once they follow the process outlined by Paylocity, employers will receive a set of API keys from Paylocity, which can then be securely shared via Finch Connect.
Want to get your hands on this new feature? Click here to sign up for free and test out Finch's expanded Paylocity auth flow in your application.
This month’s updates include the beta launch of our new ATS API, an updated authorization workflow for our latest HRIS partner, and additional data field coverage for some of our most popular supported systems.
In response to growing customer demand, we’ve officially launched the Finch applicant tracking system (ATS) API, and our first ATS integration, Lever, is live!
Because applicant tracking systems house crucial insights into an organization’s recruiting pipeline, seamless ATS data connectivity is essential to B2B applications that service the candidate lifecycle. To unlock a range of high-value use cases in product categories like candidate sourcing, compensation management, and DEI, our ATS API supports four data models: candidate, applications, jobs, and offers.
Reach out to get early access!
As part of our strategic partnership with BambooHR, Finch customers can now leverage BambooHR’s OpenID Connect to establish data connections with the fast-growing HRIS.
OpenID Connect is a reliable authorization method that acts as a simple identity layer on top of the OAuth 2.0 protocol. By working through BambooHR’s OpenID Connect flow, we’re making it even more seamless and intuitive for your users to permission a data sync between your application and BambooHR.
Deduction Types
Building on the headway we made in August, Finch now proudly supports Section 125 medical, dental, and vision deduction typing for ADP Run, PrismHR, and UKG Pro. This level of granularity fuels innovative customer use cases related to deduction management, tax credit calculations, and more. You can find them displayed in the employee_deductions[].type field on our /pay-statements endpoint.
Employer Benefits Contributions
For Trinet and Zenefits, you can now view employers’ benefit contributions—like 401(k) matches—in the pay-statements field, which provides essential visibility for retirement benefits providers.
Gender
The gender field is now supported in Rippling, ensuring that developers building products that analyze pay disparities and DEI issues have crucial data access for a significant segment of their customer base.
Class Code
In continued support of workers’ compensation insurance use cases, the class_code field is now available through the employment endpoint in Trinet—adding to the list of systems we previously rolled out support for in September.
This field identifies the type of work an employee performs, enabling insurance companies to more accurately assess risk and calculate premiums for employers. Please note that 14 states operate with a class code system independent of the National Council on Compensation Insurance (NCCI) standard. Cross-referencing each employee’s work location with the class_code field is important to properly interpret this datapoint for insurance products.
That's all for October! Stay on the lookout for our next monthly product update. If you want to get your hands on the latest and greatest Finch features sign up for free access here.
This month's updates include further expansion of coverage with two additional API integrations, greater availability of a key field for insurance providers, and a new way to connect with TriNet customers. Check out what’s new!
Wave
Wave offers payroll as part of an all-in-one suite of financial products that serve over 2 million SMBs across the US and Canada. Acquired by H&R Block in 2019, the company offers a set of free services including invoicing, accounting, and banking, and adds additional paid services such as payroll, payments, and bookkeeping. We're excited to support Wave and allow developers to connect with hundreds of thousands of their payroll clients.
Quickbooks Canada
While we have compatibility with Quickbooks Payroll in the US we've now added support for Quickbooks Payroll as part of our broader international expansion efforts. Now developers can connect directly all 1.4 million Quickbooks Payroll customers across North America.
We continue to roll out new fields for essential use cases and have made the worker's comp class_code field available in both Quickbooks and Paylocity alongside Gusto, ADP RUN, and others.
This field within the employment endpoint exposes the specific 3-4 digit code that identifies the types of work an employee performs so that insurance companies can estimate risk and calculate accurate premiums for employers.
While many of them will follow the National Council on Compensation Insurance (NCCI) code system, 14 states operate with independent class code systems. Cross-referencing the work location state for each employee with the class_code field is important to properly interpret this datapoint for your insurance product.
With over 23,000 employers supported in the US, TriNet is one of our longest-standing and most popular integrations, and we’ve given it a fresh new update! Our TriNet integration now supports the option to connect via TriNet’s API directly. This new integration option is both a smoother and more secure experience, providing significant latency and reliability improvements to the connection.
How to Connect
Employers who select TriNet as their provider will see a new authentication page displayed by default in Finch Connect. Once they follow the process outlined by TriNet, employers will receive a set of API keys from TriNet, which can then be securely shared via Finch Connect.
That's all for this monthly update! Stay on the lookout for our next monthly product update. If you want to get your hands on the latest and greatest Finch features sign up for free access here.
Today we’re announcing support for connecting Canadian versions of Quickbooks Online via Finch Connect. This integration expands our Canadian 🇨🇦 coverage alongside Wave! Quickbooks joins Personio and Humaans integrations - both recently launched European-focused HRIS - that represent our continued efforts to support international systems.
Access to Quickbooks Canada is available today via Finch Connect. Canadian accounts connect seamlessly; employers can connect using the existing Quickbooks integration page in Finch Connect. Finch will automatically detect whether the account being connected is Canadian and handle any integration differences.
If you’re not yet a customer and are interested in gaining access to Finch, sign up for a free sandbox account, and get your API keys today.
With our universal API, you’ll gain access to 180+ HRIS and payroll integrations and counting, from ADP RUN to Zenefits. Our team also handles all ongoing maintenance and updates so you can spend your time focusing on building out your platform, creating exceptional user experiences, and fostering stickier customer relationships.
As developers ourselves, we know that while APIs are a great first step to increasing business efficiency, when it comes to implementation, SDKs create a superior experience.
We recognized this early on at Finch, which is why we focused on developing our React SDK for Finch Connect. This SDK offers an easier alternative for embedding Connect into applications versus using the Finch API directly. However, it also constrained developers to using React if they wanted to embed our product.
For this reason, we’ve gone back to the basics and developed a vanilla Javascript SDK for Finch Connect. This framework-agnostic SDK offers more flexibility when embedding Finch Connect into your frontend applications. Any web app running Javascript can now take advantage of the improved developer experience that SDKs offer.
To embed Connect via our JS SDK, simply load the SDK via a script tag and add some simple initialization code to your application:
<script src="https://prod-cdn.tryfinch.com/v1/connect.js"></script>
The returned FinchConnect object exposes open, close, and destroy lifecycle methods, which you can utilize to seamlessly get Connect up and running in your application.
Read our docs to learn more about our JS SDK and view the open source repository here!
Finch now syncs data with providers on a 24 hour cadence, and Finch API requests now return data from the most recent sync. This will result in major improvements to response latency, as well as a more smooth and consistent experience using Finch — any provider-specific issues related to their own infrastructure will be smoothed over by our most recent sync data. In the future, we’ll be adding even more rich functionality to our data syncs, including faster refresh times and the ability to force a data sync on-demand.
In addition to our ReactJS SDK, Finch now offers a vanilla Javascript SDK for embedding Finch Connect into your application. Simply load the SDK via a script tag and add some simple initialization code to your application to embed connect.
Developers are no longer limited by choosing React to embed Connect with our supported SDKs. Any web app running Javascript can now take advantage of this superior developer experience.
From calculating tax credits to identifying when deductions have been applied, many customer use cases rely on being able to consistently discern benefit deduction types in employee pay statements. We have now added support for Section 125 Medical deduction typing in Paychex Flex, ADP Workforce Now, and Rippling. You can see these s125_medical types showing in the form employee_deductions[].type field on Finch’s /pay-statements endpoint. More providers to follow soon!
That's all for this monthly update! Stay on the lookout for our next monthly product update. If you want to get your hands on the latest and greatest Finch features sign up for free access here.
Alex is originally from New Jersey but moved to California to study computer science at U.C. Berkeley. Now based in San Francisco, he’s happy to be back doing what he loves at a small but (rapidly!) growing company while still having time and opportunity in his personal life to take advantage of the best the West Coast has to offer. Learn more about Alex—and his advice for engineers just starting their careers—in our conversation below.
What brought you to Finch?
After spending several years working at enterprise and midsize organizations, I wanted to go back to my roots and join an early stage startup. It was important for me to find an opportunity to get in at the ground floor, because I wanted a lot of ownership, and I wanted to be able to take on a lot of different responsibilities and grow with the organization. There is good opportunity to do that here. I was also really impressed with how much traction the product was getting. Finch only had one or two engineers at the time, and they were already working with big companies. That was motivating—to be at the cusp of powering all of these other businesses.
Where were you before Finch?
When I was still in school, a couple of my friends and I created a startup and ended up taking some time off to keep pursuing it. I loved the camaraderie of the team and the feeling that I had a lot of impact on the end product. It was really fulfilling for me. When I finished school, I went in the complete opposite direction. I went to a gigantic company—Apple—where I started in mobile development before switching to machine learning. Then I went to a neobank called Digit, where I worked on the money management system. After that, I really wanted to go back to something small.
Tell us about your role.
My official title is founding software engineer. My responsibilities are varied, but it's mostly engineering work. I started out building our integrations with different payroll systems. Recently, I moved more into building new products. The project I’m working on now has been a little bit different than the rest of our endpoints, because we’re able to not just read from the system but also write back into it. And this week I'm doing product marketing, which I've never done before. So, I get to dabble. That's been cool.
What drives you to do the work that you’re doing here?
It’s evident that we’re building critical infrastructure for employment-oriented companies, so they can streamline manual processes. Knowing that we’re solving a real pain point, and that my role directly ties to clients’ needs, is really motivating for me.
What’s the most challenging aspect of your job?
The work is very open-ended; there's not really one right answer. And so, a lot of it requires creative solutions. But that's also what makes it fascinating to me—the fact that it's not always a straightforward task. I have to dig and take different angles. For example, there's not really a roadmap for the product I’m working on. The challenge is how you scope it down and identify the needs of the customer and then figuring out how that all fits together. It’s the hard part but also the fun part.
What makes you a good fit for your role and for Finch?
I really care about the bottom line. I wouldn't work on something just because I thought it was interesting if it has no actual impact on the business. I‘m kind of existential in that way. I like to ask myself, “Why am I even doing this?” I need to know that what I'm working on is important and that it's going to make a difference in the outcome of the company.
What do you like most about working at Finch?
What I like most is that the people are really authentic. I think that's kind of rare, and it's definitely something that I value. I feel like everyone can be themselves here, and there's no weird power dynamics or hierarchies. Everyone is at Finch for the same reasons.
How would you describe Finch in one word?
We have this part of our values that basically means not getting too high off of the highs or too low off the lows—just making sure to keep looking toward the next opportunity. So, I think levelheaded is the right word for that.
When you’re not plugging away at work, what do you do for fun?
My main thing is hiking and backpacking with friends. I try to do both as often as I can, usually every weekend. Most recently, I spent time in Sequoia National Park, Colorado, and Yosemite. That's one of the reasons that I like living in the western part of the U.S. I’m always trying to get outside and into the mountains as much as I can.
What’s the best advice you can give to someone who just started their career?
Try to get a breadth of exposure to problems as early as possible—startups are the best for this! You’ll feel like you’re floundering a bit, but it will give you a general framework of what you like and don’t like, and it will help you think about new problems from different angles throughout your career.
Interested in joining the Finch team? We’re hiring! Check out our open positions here.
Today, we are excited to announce the launch of Benefits, a product that enables developers, benefits administrators, and employment providers to enable holistic benefits management—including benefits creation, employee enrollment, and deduction and contribution updates—across employment providers via a single API.
At Finch, we are on a mission to power the future of employment, and a huge piece of employment involves benefits. As the employee benefits landscape becomes increasingly digital and competitive, existing benefits providers need to be able to scale rapidly. In addition, benefits expectations have changed drastically over the past 18 months. From small businesses to large enterprises, there is more demand than ever from employees for quality benefits, and new solutions are popping up to fill those needs. We're excited for this new product to provide seamless control over benefits data so you can deliver these much-needed services to employers.
Today, benefit providers sell to employers across a whole range of different employment systems, from Gusto™ to Zenefits to Insperity® and more. These benefits providers not only need the ability to retrieve employee records when a new member joins, but also process deductions and benefits enrollment to move money from payroll compliantly. The requirement to process deductions and enrollment is further complicated given money movement and employment regulations.
Today, there are generally three options for benefits providers—
Many times, this benefits infrastructure is cobbled together with millions of dollars in development cost and is extremely difficult to maintain. Benefits changes the game. We have rebuilt this infrastructure from the ground up using modern API connectivity. Gone are the days of depending on painful CSV uploads, antiquated SFTP transfers, or error-prone internal product operations teams. With Benefits, Finch's platform can support the growth and expansion of our partners for today's increasingly digital and fragmented employment landscape.
Benefits is comprised of a few simple endpoints under /employer/benefits/ to set up company benefits as well as enroll individuals—
/employer/benefits/{benefit_id}/individuals
You can enable the benefits product for supported providers today by simply configuring your application to request permission for the new benefits scope on Finch Connect.
As with all of our products, Finch takes data integrity and security very seriously, and our Benefits product is no different. None of this sensitive data is stored by Finch, but rather it is passed through from the application to the underlying provider. Since we are a pass-through layer, we build on top of all of the existing fail-safes for communicating issues and tracking deductions and contribution limits, just as the underlying payroll systems do.
Benefits is already being used by customers from sectors including HSA, FSA, 401(k), payroll-backed lending, and more. Hear directly from some of our customers—
Operational efficiency and employer coverage was a bottleneck to our sales efforts. Finch Benefits allowed us to drive real-time management around deductions and enrollment and therefore increase our customer acquisition and retention. Our sales and operations teams are extremely happy!
CPO of a large enterprise powering a new workplace savings program
Finch has allowed us to streamline our required integrations with our client's payroll administrators, freeing our clients and Lane Health from having to expend time and resources to perform these payroll system integrations and file exchanges. By providing Lane Health with access to 95 payroll systems, we can deliver a superior client experience very effectively and efficiently. Finch has and will continue to be a valued partner for enabling our growth and achieving our business goals.
Crystal Peel, VP of Client Solutions @ Lane Health
The Finch team have been valuable partners to us as we navigate the various complex aspects of 401(k) administration and compliance, and how payroll and contribution data factor into that equation. We couldn't be more pleased with our partnership with Finch so far and are equally excited for the future as Finch continues to evolve their service platform to include more valuable features and benefits.
Justin Young, Senior Manager of Product Development @ Slavic401k
We would like to extend a big thank you to all of our early users who provided invaluable feedback during the build!
If you’re an existing Finch customer, you can enable the Benefits product today by reaching out to your account manager to get started. Developers new to Finch can reach out to developers@tryfinch.com.
Stay tuned as we continue to update the endpoint with additional benefits categories. We look forward to supporting you in what you build next to create innovations for employers and employees.