Integration

Companies today use dozens of employment applications to manage their workforce. They have their systems of record, like HRIS and payroll systems, and then everything else — applications to administer benefits, keep employees engaged, run financial analyses, and so on. Keeping the data in these applications up to date poses a challenge — and that’s where integrated HRIS and payroll systems come into play. 

When an employer’s applications integrate with their HRIS and payroll systems, information can easily and automatically flow between the central database and the applications that need it. For employers, that means less administrative work and higher ROI from their technology. For the applications, that means easier, more efficient access to critical census and pay data. 

What are integrated HRIS and payroll systems?

When two systems are integrated, they’re connected in the background and able to “talk” to each other. Applications that are integrated with HRIS and payroll systems are able to seamlessly share data, so the information is always matching and up to date. For example, if an employee’s salary is updated in the payroll system, their salary will automatically be updated in the other integrated systems, like a 401(k) platform or compensation management tool. 

HRIS and payroll integrations let employers automate time-consuming tasks and reduce the risk of error. Because HR administrators don’t have to manually input data or make changes to multiple systems, they can focus on more strategic tasks. 

Related: The Ultimate Guide to Payroll Integrations (Updated for 2024)

Benefits of integrated HRIS and payroll systems

For employers, there are a lot of benefits to integrated HRIS and payroll systems. They’ll save time and have more streamlined operations when they don’t have to maintain employee information in multiple products. They also eliminate the potential for human errors that can happen when data is manually entered.

HR technology providers also benefit from integrations. First and foremost, they’re able to provide a far easier onboarding process and better user experience to their customers — one where employers realize the full value of the product because they’re not bogged down by data maintenance.

But integrations also make it much easier for these providers to collect the data they need to provide services to the employer—like census and pay data for 401(k) providers, for example. HRIS and payroll integrations let these providers securely access their customers’ data straight from the source, reducing the risk of inaccuracies and noncompliance with state and federal regulations.

In short, HRIS and payroll integrations allow data to flow seamlessly between platforms so employers and applications can focus on the value of the product, rather than moving data around between systems.

Related: The Ultimate Guide to HRIS Integrations (Updated for 2024)

5 use cases for integrated HRIS and payroll systems

Integrations sync relevant data from the employer’s system of record. Employee information like the employee’s legal name, employment status, social security number, address, and birth date provide workforce insights to external apps. Payroll data such as pay period, taxes, and gross and net pay ensure that benefits and deductions are calculated correctly and written back to the payroll system. Data from both HRIS and payroll systems can keep employers and providers compliant with laws and streamline reporting.

Here are a few specific ways HR technology products can benefit from integrated HRIS and payroll systems. 

1) 401(k) plans

401(k) administration is still laden with manual processes and SFTP connections, which can take weeks to set up and don’t scale well. The employer has to shoulder the burden of routinely sending data to their recordkeeper with each pay cycle or to their TPA at year’s end. The recordkeeper to TPA then has to painstakingly check that the data is accurate and reformat it to match their system’s conventions. 

Related: Common SFTP Errors When Sending HRIS Data (And How to Fix Them)

With payroll integrations, plan administrators can connect directly to each sponsor’s payroll system and receive the census and pay data they need automatically — and in a standardized format. They can manage contributions and deferrals for each employee, ensuring that payroll deductions for participants are accurate for each pay period. 360° payroll integrations also automate enrollment for eligible employees and can manage employee contribution changes, seamlessly writing data back to the payroll system. 

401(k) management can be a burden for overworked HR teams and may feel overwhelming for SMBs — even those that may want to offer 401(k) benefits to their employees. Recordkeepers and TPAs who demonstrate a streamlined user experience and straightforward plan management will draw in more clients in a competitive retirement market. 

Related: Challenges of Small Business Retirement Plans: A Plan Administrator's Guide

2) Employee benefits

Employee benefits can be tricky to manage between pre- and post-tax deductions, new benefits enrollment, election changes, and other events that impact an employee’s net pay. Applications managing employee benefits need to write the changes back to the employer’s payroll system so they’re reflected on the employee’s paycheck. 

Payroll integrations are critical so that the payroll data is accurate and timely. By allowing benefits providers to connect to their customers’ payroll systems, integrations allow benefits providers to pull in relevant data and write changes back. They can also automate eligibility checks for benefits with specific enrollment periods. 

3) Employee engagement

While employee engagement applications can automate perks like welcome swag, birthday gifts, and performance-based rewards, managing such systems shouldn’t add additional work to HR teams. If employers feel like an external application is “one more thing” to manage, they may simply opt not to do anything extra for their employees. Or, alternatively, they may opt for applications that can integrate with their HRIS platform. 

Employee engagement applications, rewards programs, and gift-giving rely on employee data, such as start date, location, and manager. Such programs are less effective with out-of-date information, which can quickly become problematic for companies with a large number of employees. The value of these applications is significantly decreased if employers have to upload employee data manually.

With HRIS integrations, the data connection is continuous and syncs employee information to the application. With access to reliable employee data, applications can let employers focus on the employee experience, rather than employee data management. 

“If employee data isn’t being updated in real-time, then you're going to miss the low-hanging fruit of recognition moments that are really going to make the employee experience a lot better and a lot more meaningful within an organization.” — Spencer Linsley, Executive Director of Partnerships at Awardco

4) Employee onboarding and offboarding

Some applications provide critical new employee management functions, such as background checks or company training. The same is true in reverse for offboarding and ensuring that all offboarding tasks are completed. Without access to HR systems, these applications lose some of their value proposition, since employers might miss steps when an employee joins or leaves.

HRIS integrations provide access to census data, allowing these applications to add new employees and contractors automatically. Employee onboarding also impacts benefits providers and employee engagement applications that need to rely on timely access to new employee data. Applications can pre-fill forms with company data, creating a more streamlined experience for their customers’ employees. 

Similarly, when an employee is terminated, HRIS integrations can help to ensure that the employee’s access to important systems is revoked and that they’re offboarded from benefits.

5) Financial modeling

For many companies, employees are the largest expense. They may struggle to build projections or forecast future resources on their own and instead turn to external applications for financial modeling. 

However, such models rely heavily on employee data. Budgets, hiring plans, and scenario planning need to know the total costs in order to provide strategic insights. Without HRIS and payroll integrations, these applications may rely on uploading files or manual data entry — making them not much better than a fancy spreadsheet. 

Integrations pull in employee data and the associated payroll costs, allowing companies to examine metrics like department costs, revenue per employee, and more. Synchronized data gives companies an accurate picture to help them with financial planning. 

Robust HRIS and payroll integrations with Finch’s Unified API

Integrations are more than a nice-to-have for employment technology: they’re essential for maintaining accurate employee data and providing the most value to employers. When exploring potential solutions, most companies would consider such integrations critical.

Yet, for applications, building integrated HRIS and payroll systems is resource-intensive. With hundreds of products on the market, it feels like a tradeoff. Providers need to either devote development resources to creating integrations to a significant number of products, or pick and choose which product integrations they’ll support. Beyond the initial development, providers have to maintain the integration and make updates as systems change.

Alternatively, employment technology applications can use Finch’s Unified API. Rather than build integrations to individual HRIS and payroll systems, providers need to build only one integration to Finch. Our API connects with hundreds of HRIS and payroll systems, covering nearly 90% of U.S. employers. 

Any application relying on employee data needs to put accuracy and efficiency at the forefront. Employers expect integrations, and providers need to deliver. To learn more about Finch, you can try it for free or schedule a call with our sales team.

Many companies rely on a secure file transfer protocol (SFTP) integration to move data from one platform to another, yet the process is notoriously finicky. Setting up the initial connection can be tricky and time-consuming, but the headaches don’t end there — SFTP errors are common and confusing.

The integration between your customer’s HRIS and your application relies on timely data, so it’s important to identify and resolve SFTP errors quickly before the systems become out of sync. This might mean working directly with your customers to troubleshoot — even if the root cause is within the data from your customer’s HRIS and not your application. But from your customer’s perspective, your application “doesn’t work,” and they will often look to you for a resolution. 

Whether it’s a data issue or connection error, you’re left trying to troubleshoot — often without an obvious way to pinpoint the problems. You might have access to error logs, but they’re difficult, if not impossible, to understand. Meanwhile, your customer is frustrated, and you have to meet compliance and SLA requirements.

If you’re not sure where to start, we’ve listed some common SFTP errors and how to identify them. We’ve also provided some information about an alternative that eliminates the need for SFTPs with a more stable, streamlined approach. 

Related: SFTP vs. API: Which integration method is best for employment data?

SFTP file errors

With SFTP, you’re relying on the extraction of data from your customer’s HRIS into a file. That file is securely moved to a specific directory, which is then “picked up” and imported by your application.

First and foremost, the file has to exist in the specified directory at the time the other application looks for it — whether that’s with each payroll run or on a different cadence. If your customer’s data doesn’t import as expected, that’s the first thing to check. 

Assuming that the file was in the correct location at the right time, you should next look to make sure that the file is in the right format. While it was probably configured correctly when you first set it up, changes in your customer’s HRIS might unexpectedly modify the file, causing the data import to fail. 

File type and format

Files are usually in a delimited format. Delimiters are special characters that indicate the separation of different pieces of data, like commas or tabs. You should check to make sure that the file has the right delimiter and that the delimiter is the same as it was in previous formats. Applications are typically coded with a delimiter in mind, so a file can’t switch between comma- or tab-delimited.

You should also check the file type to ensure it’s as expected. A comma-delimited file, for example, could be a .csv file or a .txt file. If the extension changes, your SFTP integration could fail.

Fields included 

SFTP imports rely on an exact match of columns in your customer’s file to fields in your application. While some applications may be coded to ignore extra fields, others may not. You’d either need to have your customer remove the extra fields in your file, map those fields in your application, or tell your application to ignore those fields. 

If you’d previously mapped a field and the field is removed from your file, that can also cause SFTP errors since the application is now receiving fewer fields than expected.

If your customer has created a custom field in their HRIS and wants to send it through your SFTP integration, make sure you or the customer create a matching custom field in your application before you start sending the data in your file. SFTP integrations will not create new fields in your application. 

File name and field names

Your SFTP integration might be looking for a specific file name (such as “dailyintegration.txt”). If the file name has changed, the import might not work. Sometimes, extracts from your customer’s HRIS might include a date and timestamp at the end of the file (such as “dailyintegration20240831.text). If so, you’d need to determine if your application can handle the changing date and timestamp, or if you or your customer will need to remove it before the import can occur. 

Within the file, some SFTP integrations are looking for exact field name matches between your file and the destination system. For example, if the name in the application is “First Name,” the name in your file must also be “First Name.” In some cases, the field is even case-sensitive, so if the field name is “first name,” the transfer will fail. 

File corruption

If something interrupts file creation (such as an unstable network), your customer might end up with a corrupted file. This can also happen if there are problems during the transfer process itself, such as memory issues.

You can usually detect file corruption if you open the file and it is blank or contains odd characters. 

UTF-8 encoding protocol

Unicode transformation format - 8 bits (UTF-8) is a common encoding protocol used by SFTP servers. If files contain special characters, UTF-8 ensures that data is accurately transmitted and received without corruption. If a file doesn’t follow a UTF-8 format and your application requires that format, the transfer will fail. The reverse can also be true: your customers are sending the file in UTF-8 format and your application can’t handle it, so it corrupts the file. 

SFTP data errors 

While file errors are tied to how the files are created, data errors are contained within the file. Sometimes, issues within individual records are enough to cause your SFTP integration to fail. 

Unless you’re getting clear error messages, the only way to find data errors is to open the file and search for the data that could be causing the issue. Given the size of these files, this can require a massive amount of effort.

Field mapping

You have to establish field mapping before you can complete a successful transfer. For example, in your customer’s HRIS, you might have a field “Start Date” and you need to map it to “Hire Date” in your application. 

If not mapped correctly, the SFTP integration might not work. If your customer incorrectly maps a field “First Name” to a field “Hire Date,” the data types are a mismatch (one is text, and one is a date field). Some SFTP integrations will reject this type of mapping and cause error messages or an SFTP failure. 

Duplicate data 

Your file integration will rely on a unique identifier for each record from your customer’s HRIS (such as the employee’s social security number or email). This is how the application can tell one employee record from another employee record. 

Unique identifiers cannot be duplicated in files. Some SFTP integrations may skip the duplicate records, but in other cases, it may cause the sync to fail. 

Data format

Mapping fields often requires a very specific format. Dates might need to be in either YYYY/MM/DD or MM/DD/YYYY. If your customer is sending any fields with numbers, a field may accept or reject decimals. 

If the SFTP integration fails, check the formatting of each field to make sure it matches the application’s requirements. 

Special characters

Some applications may be unable to handle special characters (like & or $). If your fields contain these characters, they will cause SFTP errors. Special characters may not cause complete SFTP errors, but may cause the specific fields not to be populated within your application, so your sync would be incomplete. 

Your customer would need to remove these characters so your data can sync properly. 

Terminated or inactive employee data 

Many applications that sync from an HRIS want only active employee data. You’d need to ensure that your customer filters the HRIS files to remove terminated or inactive employee records before they’re sent via SFTP. 

If your customer sends a file containing terminated or inactive employees, it can cause a lot of issues. Your application may not be able to handle the records or it can create “junk” records in your application that you’d need to clean up. 

SFTP connection errors 

SFTP failure can also happen when there’s a connection issue between the source (your customer’s HRIS) and the destination (your application). You may need to involve someone from your customer’s technical support team to troubleshoot these issues. 

Destination folder

When your customer sends a file from their HRIS, it has to be placed in a destination folder for the application to ingest. If the destination folder doesn’t have the correct permissions (such as being read-only versus read-write), the file won’t transfer.

Your customer may also have issues within the folder itself. In some cases, the destination folder has to be left blank to ensure that data is ingested. Additionally, if your customer sends too many files at once — especially if they have the same file name — the sync may fail. 

Permissions

The file transfer itself may be set up as a scheduled job, which your customer needs to run with administrator access. If it’s run with a specific employee’s account, and that employee leaves without granting access, it can be difficult to transfer permission for the scheduled job to a new employee. 

Additionally, your customer’s firewall may prevent sensitive data from leaving any internal systems. Your IT department may need to disable the firewall to allow the SFTP sync to occur. 

SSH key pairing

SSH key pairing is an authentication method for SFTP that’s more secure than using a password. On your customer’s SFTP server, your customer will have a public key that acts like a “lock.” During the connection, a private key is used to authenticate and “unlock” the server. The combination of keys — the public key and private key — is the key pair. 

SSH keys can be tricky to manage, especially if your customer is doing this manually. Keys are stored in .ppk files, which may require downloading additional software to generate the files. Keys can be “orphaned” if they’re issued to employees who leave the organization and IT staff forgets to terminate the keys. Keys can also be blocked by firewalls, permissions, or server configuration. 

Erroneous actions

SFTP has many operations, such as “put” (upload), “get” (download), “rename” and more. Your customer’s SFTP needs to use the “put” action only. If you include something else (like “rename”), it may cause the sync to fail. 

Unsupported SFTP protocol

Unsupported SFTP protocol errors happen when there’s a mismatch or incompatibility between the source and the destination. Your customer’s server may only accept certain configurations. 

SFTP has multiple versions, and they’re not all compatible with each other. Additionally, SFTP runs over SSH which also has multiple versions (SSH1 versus SSH2), which can cause incompatibilities. Your customer’s security settings may also cause protocol issues. 

Related: Improving Business KPIs with SFTP Scalability and Automation

HRIS integrations: An alternative to SFTP

Even after you’ve set up your SFTP (which can be difficult by itself) and it’s running as expected, you can experience issues down the road. If there are changes in the underlying technology, such as your customer’s HRIS or in your own application, it can cause SFTP errors. You have control over your own app, but changes to your customers’ various HRIS systems are unpredictable, meaning maintaining a healthy SFTP connection is an ongoing, intensive effort.

To make matters more difficult, each HRIS has its own quirks and data schemas. Each customer will require the configuration of their own SFTP connection, but these connections can’t follow a routine protocol because each HRIS will have different data formats and connection requirements. 

By contrast, HRIS integrations powered by APIs offer an automated, standardized alternative to complex SFTP connections and a way to avoid common SFTP errors altogether. With Finch’s Unified Employment API, you can build a single API connection to access your customers’ data across hundreds of HRIS and payroll systems. 

Finch: The HRIS and Payroll Integration Solution

With Finch’s API integrations, your application can seamlessly connect to the various HRIS and payroll systems your customers use, without having to build individual SFTP connections for each customer. Better yet, the data is automatically standardized, meaning it is delivered to your application in the appropriate format, regardless of how it’s configured in the HRIS or payroll system. The data is also sent daily or weekly, as opposed to just once per pay cycle.

Finch’s integrations can be accessed in one of two ways — either through an API integration with Finch, or through Finch Flatfile, now in beta. Flatfile provides all the benefits of our API, but still delivers files via SFTP.

Finch has access to the largest network of HRIS and payroll systems, providing deep integrations without the headaches of SFTP. Companies using Finch can take advantage of Finch’s Unified Employment API and allow their customers to integrate their HRIS and payroll platforms seamlessly. 

Learn more about Finch by signing up for free or scheduling a call.

First impressions matter—which makes your user onboarding experience critical. A smooth onboarding process gets your customers up and running quickly and helps them realize value faster. Automated user onboarding is the fastest, most efficient way to create an unparalleled user experience.

With automation, you can free up resources both on the customer’s end and internally, onboarding customers with almost no manual effort. It also enhances the overall user experience since your customers can self-serve during onboarding. 

However, onboarding can be challenging in the employment sector, since your product needs to import the data held in the employer’s HRIS or payroll platform. Employee information like job titles, employment status, pay statements, or demographic data needs to be securely transferred before your customers can begin using your product. Without direct access to the employer’s system of record, moving this data to your platform requires costly SFTP setups or cumbersome manual work.

Rather than relying on a lot of back-and-forth with your customer, HRIS and payroll integrations enable you to automate onboarding by securely transferring information from their source of truth — without a lot of manual intervention. 

What is user onboarding automation?

Broadly, user onboarding automation streamlines the process of bringing customers onto a new platform with minimal manual effort. In the employment space, that means importing required employee data automatically from the employer’s source of truth.

Manual onboarding requires a lot of effort of both your team and your customers. All of the relevant employee data—whether that’s census data or individual pay statements—has to be manually imported to your platform. At best, that requires configuring a custom SFTP connection or downloading files from the HRIS or payroll system and uploading them to your platform; at worst, it requires your customer to manually add each of their employees one by one.

By contrast, automated user onboarding is much faster and easier. The use cases are broad, but the core functionality connects an application to the source of truth for employee data, whether it’s an HRIS or payroll database. Once connected, data seamlessly transfers between the two systems almost instantly. Plus, the systems are able to continually communicate, meaning data is updated in your system as it’s updated in the HRIS or payroll system.

5 Benefits of automated user onboarding

Whether your customers are SMBs or large companies, automated onboarding provides a better customer experience. 

1) Improves data quality 

Manual onboarding opens the door to human error. Your customers provide files that must be mapped and imported into your system. Customers may struggle to get files with the correct fields in the correct format. Additionally, manually exported and imported files are always point-in-time and may not reflect the current workforce in the system of record. 

Automated onboarding connects two systems using predefined rules and mapping. Customers can be assured that their data syncs are accurate. In regulated industries, this also ensures all steps for compliance are handled correctly.

Automated onboarding also sets the stage for ongoing integration between systems — which is what your customers need and expect. In fact, 84% of HR professionals say integration is “extremely important” for any tool added to their tech stack. 

2) Saves customers time

With automated onboarding, customers won’t spend time creating files or otherwise importing their employee data from one system to another. They won’t be forced to manually enter employee data if they don’t have the resources or technical expertise to create files.

This reduces the time spent onboarding and also saves time as customers continue using the product. The integration used during onboarding keeps HRIS or payroll data synced between the two systems, automatically adding new employees, de-provisioning employees as they leave, and updating information based on changes to salary, role, and other employee data. 

3) More secure

If your customers have to transfer files for manual onboarding, they risk exposing sensitive employee data. Someone internally may email the files rather than share them securely or download them to a directory that doesn’t meet internal protocols. To transfer files on an ongoing basis, they would need to set up an SFTP connection, which needs to be monitored and managed.

Automated user onboarding securely collects your customers’ credentials to connect their systems. Customer-permissioned access lets users stay in control of what data is shared through the integration. 

4) Delivers value faster

Whether manual onboarding takes days or weeks, it delays your customers’ use of your product. Some initial excitement can wear off, and it takes longer for customers to realize value — both as a company and for their employees. 

Human Interest sees integrations as a competitive differentiator. “We’re always looking for an opportunity to improve our value offering,” says Drew Obston, Manager of Product Operations. “With integrations, we’re able to go above and beyond and say, ‘You don’t have to upload payroll data. You don’t have to be provisioning someone on our team to log in to your payroll.’”

Automated onboarding takes minutes and allows your customers to focus their efforts on configuring and integrating your product into their processes. 

5) Scalable for your organization

If you’re relying on manually onboarding your customers, you need employees to work with them. Your employees may import files on behalf of customers, assist with data mapping, or make ongoing updates to keep data current. 

Manual processes will always be limited by employee bandwidth. Automated user onboarding, on the other hand, has no limits. You can onboard more customers without compromising the onboarding experience. You can focus your resources on relationship management or customer support rather than customer onboarding. 

Examples of automated user onboarding

HRIS and payroll integrations can serve a wide variety of industries, including 401(k) and retirement administrators, employee benefits solutions, insurance, HR technology, fintech, and more. 

Here are a few examples of how automation can streamline onboarding.

401(k) and retirement administrators 

With HRIS and payroll integrations, 401(k) administrators can pull employee information like employment status, start date, and date of birth directly from the employers’ system to automatically verify employees’ eligibility. The eligible employees can then be automatically enrolled in the plan, pursuant to SECURE Act 2.0, with the choice to opt out. Even better, these integrations provide evergreen access to the employer’s payroll system, so new employees can automatically be enrolled once they’ve met the sponsor’s eligibility requirements. 

Use Case: 401(k) provider Saveday uses automated user onboarding to let its customers set up plans in 15 minutes or less. Customers grant access to their payroll systems within minutes, eliminating the need for the Saveday team to manually download files and validate data. 

Employer-sponsored benefits providers

Integrations allow employers to import data for all existing employees so they can enroll in employer-sponsored benefits like ICHRAs, Earned Wage Access, and Health Payment Accounts. The provider can automatically import data for each employee, like individual pay statements, company contributions, pre- and post-tax deductions, and employment status to immediately identify eligible employees, enroll them in benefits, and manage payroll deductions on a recurring basis. 

Use Case: Exhale provides a suite of financial wellness benefits to hourly employees. By integrating with employers’ payroll systems, Exhale is able to enroll employees in benefits up to 2 weeks faster because the company doesn’t need to wait until the next pay cycle to view employees’ pay statement data.

Employee engagement and learning management systems

To effectively train employees and reward them for their efforts, engagement and learning management tools need to have a record of each employee and relevant census data like their hire date, job title, tenure, and more. Integrating with the employer’s HRIS allows these platforms to automatically create accounts for each employee and enroll them in rewards or training programs that are relevant to their specific role. As employees join or leave the company, they can automatically be enrolled or deprovisioned.

Use Case: Trainual uses HRIS and payroll integrations to instantly onboard and offboard employees as necessary, without asking customers to update their user data. That automation is critical for a platform that prides itself on scaling with its customers.

Fintech solutions

B2B fintech solutions rely on current employee data for headcount cost analysis, compensation management, or equity management. With HRIS and payroll integrations, you can securely pull in company, department, job title, and payroll data to enable pay and operational insights. Integrations keep employee data updated so your customers can see analysis and pull reports in real time.

Use Case: Mosaic has built a next-gen financial reporting and forecasting system that relies on seamless data integration from a company’s HR and payroll data. With this information, Mosaic provides detailed insights into employee costs so organizations can strategically plan their headcount. 

How to automate user onboarding

Some companies, recognizing the need for automated user onboarding and ongoing syncs between HRIS and payroll platforms, build their own integrations. For customers, this certainly improves the experience by removing the manual work on their end and keeping data up-to-date. 

However, building integrations comes with its own challenges. With so many HRIS and payroll platforms on the market, companies are faced with two paths: expend resources building a significant number of integrations, or limit your potential customers by only building a few integrations.

No matter the number of integrations you build, you will need developers to work with the APIs of different platforms. Even though integrations improve your end-user experience, building and testing them takes resources away from your core product.

Unified APIs allow companies to launch hundreds of integrations at once. As a single, standardized way to connect systems, unified APIs enable developers to work through a single interface. Your developers don’t have to work through the complexities and variations between each HRIS or payroll platform’s APIs. 

Finch provides secure and comprehensive two-way integrations with over 200 HRIS and payroll systems in the US, covering 88% of employers. 

With Finch, your end user’s experience is seamless and relies on customer-permissioned access to connect their systems to your product. 

With Finch’s unified APIs, you can automate user onboarding and rely on verified, real-time data to keep the systems in sync. 

Empower your customers from the beginning

The best user onboarding is forgettable: it is so easy that it takes almost no time or effort. Manual onboarding and ongoing updates cannot meet customer expectations, so companies need to rely on integrations. Efficient and automated user onboarding builds trust and serves as a prelude to your ongoing partnership. 

Finch’s powerful unified APIs allow companies in HR tech, benefits, insurance, and related industries to access the largest network of HRIS and payroll systems. 

Learn how Finch can benefit your organization by scheduling a call. You can also sign up to try Finch for free.

A 2024 survey of nearly 1,000 working Americans found that less than half (47%) report feeling financially healthy. In the US, workplace benefits like medical insurance and tax-advantaged savings accounts have a direct impact on employees’ financial health and stability; but employers are struggling to afford the benefits their employees need and expect. 

This is especially true for small and mid-sized businesses (SMBs), many of which have struggled for years to afford even the most basic benefits. Only 56% of small employers offer health insurance, and 98% of those said they’re concerned that the cost of medical benefits will become unsustainable in the next 5-10 years.

Employers of all sizes are looking for more accessible, affordable benefits that can scale with their workforce without exponentially increasing costs. Fortunately, a convergence of factors, from government legislation to evolving technology, has paved the way for a new wave of modern benefits providers. These tech-forward companies are quickly gaining traction, and stand to revolutionize the benefits industry as we know it.

Unlocking Scale: The Revolution in Employer-Sponsored Benefits

What are workplace benefits?

Before we dive into the new benefits on the rise, it’s important to understand what we mean by workplace benefits, or employer-sponsored benefits. To put it simply, these are perks or financial incentives that are available to employees through their employer. While most of these are available to individuals, they’re typically far cheaper when accessed through an employer (or sponsor).

Common workplace benefits, or employer-sponsored benefits, include:

• Health insurance
• Health Savings Accounts (HSAs) or Flexible Spending Accounts (FSAs)
• Retirement plans, like a 401(k), 403(b), or pension 
• Financial Wellness tools or access to a financial advisor
• Physical and mental wellness programs or tools, like a gym membership or access to a mental health counselor 
• Equity 
• Student loan assistance or tuition reimbursement
• Commuter benefits

Most of these programs are nothing new, although fringe benefits like student loan assistance, commuter benefits, and pet insurance have risen in popularity in recent years. But the latest wave of benefits providers have approached these traditional benefits in novel ways that have allowed them to offer their services to employers more affordably. 

The state of workplace benefits

Employees rely on workplace benefits, especially at a time when inflation, high interest rates, and skyrocketing healthcare costs have made it increasingly difficult for individuals to save: 56% of Americans say they cannot afford a $1,000 emergency expense.

But employers are also struggling to afford the benefits their employees expect. The average per-employee cost of health insurance alone rose 5.2% in 2023 to a whopping $15,797. That number is even higher for SMB employers—over $16,000. And that’s just one workplace benefit. Employees are also seeking access to tax-advantaged savings accounts, emergency assistance, and fringe benefits like help paying down debt and funding their commute.

As a result of these macro economic trends, accessibility and affordability have been the defining trends in the employer-sponsored benefits market over the past five years. The federal government has responded by introducing new legislation and incentives aimed at encouraging benefits enrollment. These changes have lowered the barrier to entry for a new breed of employer-sponsored benefits to emerge in what has otherwise been a closed and complex industry. 

Scaling workplace benefits: the tech advantage

New legislation may have opened the door for a new breed of benefits providers to enter the market, but technology is the linchpin that has allowed them to compete with established incumbents on price and the accessibility of benefits administration. 

Despite the intense competition in the workplace benefits industry, these companies have thrived by optimizing their products for ease-of-use, affordability, and scale—a combination perfectly tailored to small employers, some 95% of which have been underserved by benefits providers. 

Their secret to success? HRIS and payroll integrations. 

By accessing employers’ data directly via APIs, modern benefits providers are powering time- and cost-saving automation that renders their products more efficient and more profitable. They also take on a greater portion of the administrative burden associated with benefits management, making them even more attractive to businesses big and small. 

Unlocking Scale: The Revolution in Employee-Sponsored Benefits

In our latest white paper, we explore the new-age benefits providers that are leveraging technology to deliver high-quality, high-impact benefits experiences for employers of all sizes—from 10-person startups to enterprises with tens of thousands of employees. 

Download your free copy now to learn more, including:

• The economic trends that are driving a fundamental shift in workplace benefits
• The new employer-sponsored benefits that are on the rise 
• How modern providers are leveraging new technology to optimize their products for under-served markets
• Success stories from real providers—and the actual impact integrations have had on their business

The Finch team just got back from SHRM24 in Chicago, where we joined more than 26,000 HR professionals in exploring the current human resources landscape.

We met with dozens of attendees to discuss all things HR tech, including accessing employer data from HRIS and payroll systems for use cases like employee benefits, engagement and learning, accounting and financial forecasting, and more. 

Below are our top takeaways—including the biggest insights from our survey of nearly 200 HR professionals.  

1. Industry-leading providers made a splash

This year’s conference drew lots of attention from industry-leading HRIS and payroll providers like Rippling, ADP, UKG, Paychex, Paycom, Paycor, Insperity, and Bamboo. They came prepared to both educate and entertain: Paycom brought “unnecessary action hero” Shemar Moore, while Insperity hosted a speakeasy-style bar and UKG printed edible photos on cookies.

The competition is still fierce among payroll providers—the latest data shows there are 5,700 payroll companies in the US alone, and the market share of the top 10 combined is only about 55%. 

Many of the attendees at SHRM24 were in the market for a new HRIS or payroll solution. Top-tier, human-centric customer service was a big selling point for most of them, as was tech that could cater to small businesses. 

2. System connectivity—or a lack of it—is top of mind

We spoke with dozens of attendees who were excited about increasing connectivity between the HR systems they use via integrations. Our own research has found that almost half (49%) of HR professionals use 7 or more employment systems of record—so keeping information up-to-date and accessible across those databases is paramount. 

We surveyed nearly 200 HR professionals at SHRM24. The respondents were fairly evenly distributed across company sizes, though the biggest group (40%) worked for enterprise companies with 500 or more employees. The professionals ranged from individual contributors to managers and executives.

In the survey, we asked respondents about the tools they use that don’t integrate with their HRIS or payroll system—and what challenges they face because those systems don’t communicate. The biggest problems they reported were a high degree of manual work, lost time, and keeping data updated across systems.

• Too much manual work — 34%
• Takes too much time — 30%
• Difficult to keep data updated across systems — 20%
• Administrative costs are too high — 18%
• Lack of reporting capabilities — 17%
• Security risks — 14%

Finch is on a mission to alleviate these pains by creating the Open Employment Ecosystem—an open, standardized, interconnected future of employment technology. You can learn more about it—and see our market map of companies at the intersection of payroll, HR tech, benefits, and fintech—here.

3. AI continues to be a hot topic

We already knew artificial intelligence was hot from the conversations we had with HR professionals at Transform 2024—but SHRM doubled down on it. Twelve of the sessions at the conference were focused on AI and how it can help HR teams be more effective and productive. 

Much of the conversation at SHRM24 was around how AI can answer internal questions and act as a second set of hands for busy HR professionals. While AI has been around for years, companies’ investment in it has accelerated recently—and will likely be at the heart of the next wave of disruptive technologies. 

Unlock hundreds of integrations with Finch

Finch's Unified Employment API allows applications across HR tech, benefits, and fintech to integrate with hundreds of HRIS and payroll providers, enabling streamlined employer onboarding, time-saving automation, and evergreen access to the employee data you need. Learn more by scheduling a call with our Sales team, or try it yourself for free.

Jeremy Myers is an experienced leader across the IT spectrum, from engineering to consulting to project management, having last served as Vice President of Global Technology Services at Cornerstone On Demand.  He has over 13 years’ experience leading B2B software implementation and integration projects in the HR industry.

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As with everything: it starts in Sales. 

As employment technology evolves and matures, it becomes more and more evident that employers are looking for comprehensive solutions to add to their tech stacks. Bespoke point solutions that offer unique functionality are only valuable when they can seamlessly share data with the rest of the organization’s tools. 

As a result, integrations have profound significance in the modern sales cycle—for both the prospect and the Sales team trying to close the deal. To fully examine this significance, I spoke with several SaaS leaders—in both Sales and Service Delivery—to get their take on integrations’ role in the sales cycle. 

The consensus among the people I spoke with was that integrations are no doubt pivotal to closing new business. In their experience (and in my own), the existence of specific integrations, or at least demonstrating competence in building like integrations, often furthered deals along; but the absence of or ignorance toward those integrations often imperiled the deal.

At the same time, these industry veterans noted that building integrations—those pivotal deal-makers—presents a challenge. API integrations require a large investment of time and resources upfront, plus ongoing maintenance; but many integrations don’t offer widespread value because they’re used by only a handful of customers. In other words, sometimes the cost of building an integration outweighs the return on investment. 

To compete in today’s cloud-based tech market, Sales and Delivery Service teams need to approach integrations strategically and may consider leveraging emerging solutions like unified APIs to get a leg up on the competition.

Deals don’t progress without integrations

The rules of engagement for Sales and Solutions Consultants are seemingly straightforward. 

Rule #1: Close the deal.  

Rule #2: If a hurdle is encountered, by all means: See Rule #1.

Of course, any frontline Sales leader will understand that these rules come with nuance. The topic of integrations poses a tricky hurdle for account executives—by raising the issue, they risk opening a can of worms that could potentially derail the sale. But as many of the leaders I spoke with attested to (and as I’ve seen in my own experience), avoiding the integrations conversation can have an adverse effect on the prospect. 

When the salesperson can offer an integration that solves a pain point, or at least demonstrate a competency in building like integrations, it often furthers the deal. When they avoid the conversation for fear of encountering a hurdle, these account executives run the risk of appearing incapable or ignorant when it comes to integrations—which kills deals more often than you might think.

Most, if not all, prospects in the employment technology market will have some need for integrating their systems, so it’s up to the Sales leader to quickly identify whether a deal is worth pursuing—to open the worm can, so to speak. If a prospect is looking for an integration that isn’t readily available, the question is whether or not the deal is big enough or strategic enough to even entertain the discussion. 

As one professional services veteran I spoke with put it, it’s binary: “We will flat out walk away from a deal if our tech team identifies an integration that needs to be added. Sales need discipline and rigor. Sometimes it’s painful.”  

Another leader—this one, a solutions architect and sales leader—added a similar sentiment: he said he’d rather turn down a deal early, at the widest part of the funnel, than spend time internally and externally discussing the requirements of building a new integration just to bow out or be disqualified later on. 

But when an integration is available, it can be a boon for Sales teams, offering an opportunity to expedite a deal. If the discovery phase doesn’t uncover any critical need from the prospect that would disqualify them, the Sales team can begin to gauge their interest in the company’s existing catalog of integrations and partners.

Oftentimes, the buyers negotiating the sale aren’t IT specialists, so comprehensive data flow isn’t their core competency nor their top priority. They’re laser-focused on securing a functioning suite of software that solves their basic business replacement needs. The integration leaders I spoke with pointed out that this is an opening for the Sales team to present their existing integrations as a strength and a potential differentiator. If, during the course of the initial meetings, the Sales team identifies crucial third parties and can expertly address integration pain points by presenting competency and/or an existing catalog, it could set them apart in the selection process. 

Bottom line: Deals are won when the Sales team displays integrations competence. If you’ve got it, flaunt it. 

Roadmap prioritization: To build or not to build?

During my research, one of the experts I spoke with called integrations both the crucial backbone of data flow and an unsexy, oft-ignored framework. They’re something that most people only think about when they’re not working—the dreaded 404 error. 

But integrations are only on the rise—API integrations in particular, as the employment tech industry continues to move toward SaaS and the cloud. There is a direct correlation between the size of the prospect company and the number of integrations they need. A colleague who’s been in the professional services space for some time called it a repeated reinforcing journey, in which buyers demand ever-increasing counts of “set and forget” integrations that work without manual intervention. 

Ideally, any integration a prospect requests will be readily available, pre-built by the company and easy to implement for a new user. That’s the holy grail. But when that’s not the case, Sales teams need to work closely with their colleagues in Product, Engineering, and Service to determine whether the juice is worth the squeeze. New integrations require significant investment of time and resources, which can force companies to make difficult decisions. 

There are three major factors the company must consider: 

1. How necessary is this integration?
2. What will need to be deprioritized?
3. How much will it cost?

How necessary is this integration?

If a prospect requests a non-existent integration, it begs questions like: Is this really a deal-breaker? Is it required at Day 1, or can it be post go-live? How large or strategic (or both!) is this prospect? Have other prospects asked for this integration, or would adding the integration allow the company to enter a new market vertical?  

What will need to be deprioritized?

If the company decides the integration would be beneficial, the next consideration is the investment of resources required. Assuming the APIs are available, there’s a painful tradeoff to be made—what drops from the product roadmap? One of the professional service leaders I interviewed explained that at his company, there’s a troubling awareness that committing to a new integration means less innovation and less tech debt retirement. 

How much will it cost?

Sales leaders consistently report “sticker shock” when it comes to external builds. In one recent example, the price tag came back at $250k. This was on a $60k/year ARR deal. For this particular integration, the available pool of qualified consultants was small, so per the rules of supply and demand, they charged a high hourly rate. 

Sometimes, a company will go ahead and eat the cost in order to win the ARR or an influential logo, or to break into a new vertical. And while companies may have different buckets of money to spend on new deals (NRR vs ARR), most often, situations where one-time upfront costs dwarf the customer’s subscription spend so significantly are non-starters. 

Empowering Sales teams with accessible integrations

Employment applications’ Sales teams are at a crossroads: while integrations are critical to closing deals and winning new business, they’re also difficult to build and maintain, and are often too costly to justify building for just one client. 

Fortunately, new tools have emerged to solve these challenges—namely unified APIs. Global investment firm Activant Capital recently published research that called the case for unified APIs “compelling,” predicting that the market will quickly grow as API-first businesses continue to proliferate.

Unified APIs work as an abstraction layer, building and maintaining integrations with dozens or hundreds of software systems. Customers of unified APIs need only build one integration—to the provider—to connect to all of these systems. 

Unified APIs provide value to at least three departments at any B2B software organization. The Development team can expand the breadth of the company’s integration portfolio with a single connection. The Sales team can revise their pitch to be experts—not novices—in the integration space, providing newfound leverage in negotiations. And the Marketing team is able to uplevel their messaging by positioning the company as modern, forward-thinking, and connected.

By deploying tools like these, employment applications can bring new integrations to market in a fraction of the time and for a fraction of the cost of custom-building them in house. Companies that adopt unified APIs have the opportunity to transform a weakness into a strength and disrupt the marketplace. 

After all, as with everything: it starts in Sales.

At Finch, we categorize our B2B software integrations into two buckets: automated and assisted. Both are tools that allow software applications to share data directly. The difference between the two is the path the data takes to get from one system to another: while automated integrations facilitate automatic data flow from app to app, assisted integrations require a few additional steps behind the scenes.

Assisted integrations serve an important purpose. Fully automated integrations are the gold standard in software connectivity, but they only work when the underlying data provider has an accessible API. In the employment industry, where most systems of record either lack APIs or keep them under lock and key, assisted integrations empower employers to share their data to whatever application needs it automatically.

They aren’t suitable for every use case; but in many situations, assisted integrations are a valuable tool that significantly expands system coverage. Finch supports both automated and assisted integrations in order to provide access to as many HRIS and payroll systems as possible, furthering our goal of democratizing access to the infrastructure that underpins the employment ecosystem. 

What are assisted integrations?

Assisted integrations are secure connections between two software systems that offer many of the same benefits as automated integrations: data is shared between the two platforms in a standardized format. The difference is how the data gets there. Finch provides access to our assisted integrations through a feature called Finch Assist, which supports integrations with hundreds of HRIS and payroll systems.

Here’s how Finch Assist works: The end-user (the employer) adds Finch as a permissioned, third-party user to their HRIS or payroll system using Finch Connect. Finch’s Product Operations team then works behind the scenes, leveraging scripts that pull the relevant data, standardize its format, and make it available via the Finch API.

Like automated integrations, this data is standardized and made available by API request. Developers can also be notified when data has changed—like when a new employee joins or leaves. The most significant difference is that data is refreshed every 7 days (rather than daily).

While assisted integrations require an extra step, they’re a vast improvement over manual data entry, which is the only alternative when a system has a limited API or no API at all. Employers or HR admins aren’t downloading data as a flat file and uploading it to another system—technology is still retrieving and standardizing the data on their behalf. Day-to-day, there is no extra effort required of the system of record, third-party application, or the end-user; Finch handles the syncing process.

Automated vs. assisted integrations

Aside from their workflows, the biggest differences between assisted and automated integrations are the configuration period (how long it takes to activate the integration), how often the data is refreshed, and how many providers are supported through each. 

• Automated integrations — These integrations are pre-built and fully automated, meaning there is no configuration period and data syncs automatically every 24 hours. Users can also run syncs on demand at more frequent intervals if needed. Finch currently supports automated integrations for more than 30 of the most popular providers (by market share).
• Assisted integrations — The configuration period for assisted integrations is 1-2 weeks, and the data is refreshed weekly. Finch’s assisted integrations can support Organization data coverage from any HRIS or payroll system in the US market and double the Payroll data coverage of our automated integrations.

Both automated and assisted integrations are supported by connection monitoring, meaning you can monitor the status of an assisted integration just as you would an automated integration. Both types also allow users to set up webhooks.

Benefits of assisted integrations

Finch created assisted integrations in response to the number of retirement and benefits providers that were building manual data processing in-house—a cumbersome and inefficient workaround necessitated by the lack of open APIs in the employment ecosystem. By leveraging assisted integrations, Finch is able to offer the widest (and deepest) coverage of employment systems available—4x more than any other unified API on the market.

Expand coverage

Integrations are becoming increasingly table stakes for employers; but too few systems of record allow other applications to integrate directly. Since Finch was founded, we’ve found that 99% of payroll providers either have a gated API or no API at all. HR systems are generally more accessible, but the problem still persists here on a smaller scale. 

Relying solely on automated integrations puts thousands of HR and payroll systems out of reach. Some unified APIs don’t support assisted integrations, but this significantly reduces their data coverage, especially among niche or “long-tail” providers that have only a small market share. And it’s worth noting that in payroll, that’s no small number of exclusions—there are more than 5,700 payroll providers in the US alone, and the top 10 competitors only account for 54.8% of the entire market. In other words, using automated integrations alone leaves nearly half of the total addressable market on the table.

Finch’s assisted integrations serve as a supplement to our automated integrations. With assisted integrations, we’re able to support 2x more payroll integrations and 7x more 360° integrations, which allow the two-way flow of data (read and write capabilities).

Write back to payroll systems

While payroll systems are behind the curve on API accessibility, it’s still a crucial source of truth for employment data—especially when it comes to employee benefits. Employer-sponsored benefits must be able to create and manage payroll deductions on behalf of enrolled participants, which requires writing changes to payroll systems.

As a result, benefits providers have been forced to use Secure File Transfer Protocol (SFTP), manual file sharing, or even email to communicate those changes to either the employer or the payroll provider, who then must manually update the payroll system. 

Assisted integrations improve this workflow by allowing the benefits provider to automate deductions by pushing changes directly back to the payroll system via the Finch API—no involvement from the employer or payroll provider required. 

Eliminate manual data processing

Without an open API to build to, the only alternative to assisted integrations is manual data transfer. This poses several challenges: 

1. It creates significant friction for the employer, elongating their onboarding process and delaying the point at which they begin realizing value from your solution. 
2. It puts the onus of standardizing data on your operations team–or worse, the employer. 
3. It introduces more opportunity for human error.

Assisted integrations take the work of your customer’s plate so they can start realizing the ROI of your solution faster. They also offer automated data standardization, and because the integration is powered by scripts—not manual downloads and uploads—there’s a reduced risk of inaccuracies or missed fields. 

Who should use assisted integrations?

Because the data is refreshed weekly, assisted integrations aren’t a fit for every use case. For time-sensitive tasks, like deprovisioning employee access upon termination, the weeklong period between data refreshes is too long. 

But for processes that require access to data that coincides with payroll cycles (like retirement deductions) or data that rarely changes (like employee birthday or anniversary rewards), assisted integrations can provide the same benefits as their automated counterparts.

Here are a few examples to give you an idea of the kind of use cases that can be powered by assisted integrations:

• Employee engagement and recognition — Use organization data like start date, birthday, or title changes to engage and reward employees automatically when they reach milestones.
• 401(k) retirement benefits — Automatically pull income and deferral rate each pay cycle, then write deductions changes back to the payroll system without involving the sponsor. 
• Compensation/equity management — Pull all employee salary, benefits, and equity data automatically to create a holistic view for accounting and headcount management purposes. 
• Professional development/training — Use employee directory data to assign trainings and professional development courses based on title, department, tenure, and so on.
• People/HR analytics — Access the employer’s HRIS to provide a snapshot of company demographics and track KPIs like employee retention and mobility.

Are assisted integrations secure?

When supported by a reliable provider, assisted integrations are just as secure as API integrations. 

Finch is SOC 2, CCPA, GDPR, and HIPAA compliant—meaning we engage in annual audits and maintain strict internal protocols to safeguard the security of sensitive data. We also use data classification to control who is able to access what data and use encryption at rest, in transit, and on the application level to prevent data from being accessed by unauthorized users and bad actors. 

The data that flows through our assisted integrations is subject to strict access controls and monitored by audit logs so we’re always able to account for changes, track who accessed the system and when, and ensure personally identifiable information (PII) and other sensitive data is kept private. 

Why Finch supports assisted integrations

Our company mission is to democratize access to employment infrastructure in order to facilitate faster, more transformative innovation in employment tech. The way we see it, the more systems of record we can provide integrations to, the closer we are to realizing that goal. 

The truth is that assisted integrations aren’t the solution for every company and every use case; but when it’s a choice between assisted integrations and no API support at all, the choice is clear. Assisted integrations are secure and more efficient than manual processes, which put an administrative burden on the employer. 

Our goal is to eventually offer automated integrations to most, if not all, of the systems of record that underpin the infrastructure of employment tech, but with nearly 6,000 of these systems in the US alone, realizing that goal will take time. In the interim, assisted integrations provide a much-needed solution that is bridging the gap between systems of record with closed APIs and the third-party software applications that need access to the data they hold. 

Unlock access to hundreds of HRIS and payroll systems with Finch

Finch’s Unified Employment API powers connections to 200+ systems of record through a single integration, so you can spend less time building technical bridges and more time focused on product innovations. Schedule a call with our sales team to learn more, or try it yourself for free.

Today, the employment ecosystem is very fragmented and siloed, and developers across HR tech, employee benefits, and fintech face significant hurdles when it comes to building integrations. As the #1 Unified Employment API, Finch’s mission is to create a more accessible and connected infrastructure that will allow all of these systems to share data seamlessly, similar to the way Open Finance has unleashed a new era of innovation in fintech. We call this the Open Employment Ecosystem.

On May 9th, Finch hosted a webinar with two employment technology leaders: our CEO Jeremy Zhang and Nimrod Hoofien, former Head of Engineering at Gusto. The conversation centered around the need for greater connectivity between technologies in the employment sector, the challenges these software providers face in building those integrations, and the new solutions that are emerging to create a more unified, accessible future of employment data.

Watch the fireside chat on-demand now, or read the recap below!

Webinar recap: A Q&A with Jeremy Zhang and Nimrod Hoofien

How has the employment industry evolved in terms of connectivity and related technologies over the years?

Nimrod: The world's getting more complex. Earlier, everything revolved around one big HRIS like Workday and applications were built around that one product. But that kind of old-school monolithic approach just doesn't cut it anymore.

First of all, offering a best-in-class product today requires high levels of customization and capabilities to support different and unique use cases. Flexibility is key; staying ahead means being able to listen to the market and constantly add to the capabilities. 

In addition, the days of connecting systems through hefty databases are gone. Now, different systems hold different data, each crucial to supporting specific use cases. This means being able to work with API connectivity and integrations is no longer optional. It’s a must.

Jeremy: In the last few years, connectivity has taken the central stage in sectors like fintech. In employment tech, while many providers agree that greater connectivity would benefit everyone involved, most don’t know how to build integrations using APIs. That’s where we at Finch saw a need for a unified employment API: something that makes life easier for providers by simplifying API integrations and helping them easily share data with the other point solutions that employers use for employee benefits, engagement, financial planning, and so on.

How can APIs help address scalability issues in connectivity?

Jeremy: The problem with scaling API connections is twofold: the employment tech market is highly fragmented with tens of thousands of providers, including payroll, HRIS, time and attendance, benefits administration, and more. Here, hundreds of millions of dollars move each year through CSV uploads, SFTP, and EDI file feeds, or simply by manual operations. Plus, the cost of setting up SFTP, downloading and verifying data files is quite high. With APIs, we can bring these costs down to make the process more efficient and encourage innovation. Having standardization or a unified API allows developers to build API integrations without dealing with different data models from thousands of providers.

Nimrod: Jeremy is spot on. APIs are complex, and the specialization needed to build highly personalized use cases takes time. A good developer knows that they cannot build for everyone and serve all the tens of thousands of different use cases possible. As a result, they’re forced to rely on other people’s products to offer all the capabilities without draining in-house resources. 

How do providers use APIs in this space? How did embracing integrations help Gusto to grow?

Nimrod: For providers, three kinds of API matter the most. First, they need to access functionalities from other systems to expand their offerings without building themselves. Gusto used integrations to build capabilities that they didn’t want to build in-house like time-tracking, 401(k), and more. Even when you want to eventually build those capabilities yourself, using integrations can give you a time-to-market advantage. 

Another advantage of integrations is when you want to add long-tail offerings that are too small to scale. However, there are some applications that want to serve these niche use cases. You need to allow these developers to use your capabilities to build their own products with a low touch from you. That was the basis of Gusto’s extensive partner program. 

And lastly, you can benefit from integrations by taking your core offering and making it available to other big providers who don’t want to build everything themselves. That’s how Gusto’s embedded payroll offering came to be. 

There’s a huge benefit to being able to build with other people’s APIs and allow others to use yours. This enabled Gusto to offer 401(k) products they would’ve never been able to build from scratch. Allowing others to use its payroll API also allowed Gusto to serve edge cases across industries. 

What’s preventing the wider adoption of APIs in the payroll space? 

Jeremy: There are two issues here. The first is that there’s a widely accepted status quo in this industry when it comes to sending files. Most applications still use emails or SFTP, even when they aren’t secure enough to send PII data. But payroll is a highly regulated industry, and it has a complex infrastructure—so unless something absolutely needs to change, people don’t want to mess around with what’s working underneath. 

The other factor is that adopting an API strategy requires a huge technical lift, especially when you haven’t built your backend infrastructure to support this. 

Nimrod: Absolutely! The technical difficulties of building API integrations are huge. You need to be careful about who gets access to your data and test their reliability and performance because the security risks and the cost of slip-ups are high in this space. 

For example, if you allow an application to make changes to your census data, you need to trust that it’s going to be correct. In short, you need to carefully design your APIs and create clear support guidelines in case an issue arises. Tools like Finch are great in this context because they take much of these considerations away from providers. 

What are some of the emerging technologies that are making connectivity easier?

Jeremy: When we consider new technologies, we need to first acknowledge the need for standardization across the employment industry. Finch is primed to solve this. We standardize the data from hundreds of different systems into common fields so applications can use a single data model. We understand the complexities and regulations within the industry and have created an infrastructure that allows applications to build products without worrying about the details. 

We’re also building a strong partnership network with top providers to offer instant access to application developers. We offer extensive documentation, a sandbox environment, and developer experience tools to make it easy for developers to build with Finch. We also add a strong authentication layer to make it easier for employers to grant granular access to applications so data is protected and safe. 

For partners, we meet them where they are. We work hand-in-hand with these providers to help them structure and release their APIs, or if they aren’t ready to build APIs, we connect to their SFTP and EDI file feeds and convert the data into a standard format to make sure the entire industry is moving towards this API connectivity. 

Nimrod: Spot on! APIs are pretty nuanced, and data standardization is key. Banking used to have the same problem, and Plaid helped them use a common universal language. Finch is doing the same for payroll. They’re reducing the effort to normalize data from various systems.

How does the Open Employment Ecosystem benefit systems of record, third-party applications, and employers?

Nimrod: It’s a win-win-win for all parties involved. 

The best developers are the laziest. They focus on tasks that add value to the product and avoid work that doesn’t. Reproducing what other people have already done and reinventing the wheel is just useless for them. So, for developers, API connectivity offered by the Open Employment Ecosystem is a clear win.

For partners, one of the biggest challenges is to assess the effectiveness of a partnership deal in the beginning. There’s no way we can predict which partnerships will succeed and which won’t. The resistance to invest heavily in partnerships is low due to risk aversion. If you can lower the integration cost to close to zero, you can integrate more partners at a much lower risk. 

For employers, the Open Employment Ecosystem will bring more options to choose the best tools for their needs. An open market will benefit the players that offer the most value, make the employment market more efficient, and allow all players to access equal information.

Jeremy: Yeah, Nimrod explained it perfectly. I’d only add that in the future, there will be even more parties that stand to benefit from the Open Employment Ecosystem, from healthcare providers to local governments that want to understand how the state of employment is shifting over time. 

There are so many ways that democratized access to employee data can benefit not just the employment industry, but all of us—everyone who is employed.

OnPay: a payroll business from the very start

When Jesse Burgess joined his family’s payroll business in 2007, he wanted to help the company’s payroll clerks be more efficient in serving their small business customers. Jesse streamlined the user experience, automated repetitive tasks, and ultimately realized he could bring the entire payroll process online. That’s when he founded OnPay.

Today, OnPay is a cloud-based and complete payroll solution that lets businesses run unlimited payrolls per month and create comprehensive employee information records. It’s popular with both small businesses and large organizations in North America, due to its great user experience, custom forms and fields, seamless user experience, automatic payroll tax calculation, and time tracking features. New users even get the first month free.

How do I get access to the OnPay integration?

Sign up for Finch by clicking the Request Access button in the top right of our website. (If you’re already a Finch customer, then you already have access to the OnPay integration.)

With Finch, you get access to the OnPay integration as well as 100+ other major employment providers (QuickBooks, ADP RUN, and more). You do not have to worry about integration updates, maintenance, or issues, as Finch’s team owns all technical requirements for each employment provider and provides you with one universal API.

Workday: an innovative, cutting-edge enterprise software solution

Workday started in 2005 when two software visionaries, Aneel Bhusri and Dave Duffield, decided to start a company that would transform the enterprise software market. The company quickly launched two revolutionary product offerings - Workday Human Capital Management in 2006 and Workday Financial Management in 2007. They went public in October 2012 and celebrated their 10th anniversary in 2015, with more than 1,000 customers, each with 500+ employees.

Today, Workday supports more than 9,500 customers globally with more than 50 customers employing 100,000 employees. As of September 2021, the platform manages records for 120 million people including 55 million active employees. Today, the platform continues to expand its full suite of services to create a more cohesive enterprise experience.

How do I get access to the Workday integration?

Sign up for Finch by clicking the Request Access button in the top right of our website. (If you’re already a Finch customer, then you already have access to the Workday integration.)

With Finch, you get access to the Workday integration as well as 110+ other major employment providers (QuickBooks, ADP RUN, Gusto, and more). You do not have to worry about integration updates, maintenance, or issues, as Finch’s team owns all technical requirements for each employment provider and provides you with one universal API.

Developers using Finch now have access to our latest integration: Bob. With total coverage at 125 HR and payroll systems (and counting), Finch customers can expect more flexibility, more market opportunities, and better user onboarding experiences than ever before.

Bob: modernizing HR tech to help businesses–and people–thrive

When Israel David and Ronni Zehavi founded Hibob in 2015, they set out to transform the HR platform from a system of record into a system of intelligence and engagement–one that prioritizes user experience as much as functionality. Their goal: to meet the needs of fast-growing, global companies, cater to the expectations of younger generations of employees, and bring people together in meaningful ways.

Today, Bob (the name of their innovative platform) is as much a people-management system as it is an HR tool. With a focus on mid-sized, modern, multinational companies, the team behind Bob has built a distinctly welcoming and intuitive digital experience with the back-end power and connectivity to streamline core HR processes, improve performance, and serve as the single source of truth for the entire employee experience. All the while, Bob is agile enough to grow and scale with its customers (including Monday, Fiverr, Revolut, and Cazoo), who can run custom workflows by teams and regions to suit the disparate needs of their employees around the world.

How do I get access to the Bob integration?

Sign up for Finch by clicking the Request Access button in the top right of our website. (If you’re already a Finch customer, you automatically have access to the Bob integration.)  

With Finch, you get access to the Bob integration plus 125+ other major North American payroll providers like QuickBooks and ADP RUN. And because our team owns all technical requirements for each integration and provides you with one, universal API, you don’t have to worry about updates, maintenance, or issues.

Developers using Finch now have access to our latest integration: UKG Pro. We cover 125 HR and payroll systems, enabling our customers to deliver best-in-class products and onboarding experiences to more users than ever before.

UKG: keeping employees connected, productive, and happy

When two of the largest HR technology companies, Kronos and Ultimate Software, officially merged in April 2020, they created not only a powerhouse human capital and workforce management provider, they created one of the largest cloud computing companies in the world.

The product of their unification, UKG (Ultimate Kronos Group), now boasts 12,000 employees and 50,000 clients across 150 countries. UKG’s comprehensive suite of products unifies HR, payroll, scheduling, operational analytics, case management, and talent management functions, including compensation, career development, and performance reviews—all with an eye toward facilitating meaningful interactions and driving superior business outcomes. Above all, UKG believes that when people feel valued, they’re empowered to tap into their unique talents, for the good of themselves, their company, and their communities.

Get access to the UKG Pro integration

If you’re already a Finch customer, then you automatically have access to the UKG Pro integration. If you’re not, it’s as easy as signing up for Finch. Click the Request Access button in the top right of our website to get started.

With Finch, you get access to the UKG integration plus 124 (and counting) other major North American payroll providers like QuickBooks and ADP RUN. And because our team owns all technical requirements for each integration and provides you with one universal API, you don’t need to worry about updates, maintenance, or issues.

Developers using Finch now have access to our latest integration, Sequoia One, putting our total data coverage at 150+ HR and payroll systems (and counting). With this latest addition, Finch customers have even more opportunity to offer seamless digital experiences to their customers.

Sequoia One: people investment strategists

Founded in 2001, Sequoia has long been committed to helping businesses foster supportive work environments and benefit packages for their employees. In 2014, the company doubled down on its commitment by launching Sequoia One—a professional employer organization (PEO) dedicated to serving the needs of innovative startups looking to outsource HR, payroll, and benefits.

Today, Sequoia One takes care of HR-related functions so its clients can focus on their mission. But Sequoia One doesn’t just alleviate administrative and regulatory burdens—it helps its employers optimize their benefits packages, expertly manage their hybrid workforce, and uncover automations to build a winning, seamless, and wholly scalable HR experience that attracts and retains superlative talent. At last count, Sequoia One boasts more than 800 fast-growing companies as clients.

How do I get access to the Sequoia One integration?

If you’re already a Finch customer, you automatically have access to the Sequoia One integration. If you’re not, enter your email address on our homepage here to get API keys today.

With Finch, you get access to all 150+ major North American payroll providers we’re integrated with, including QuickBooks and ADP RUN. And because our team owns all technical requirements for each integration and provides you with one universal API, you don’t have to worry about updates, maintenance, or issues.

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Our newest integration, Personio, is now open for access. This latest offering increases our data coverage to over 150 HR and payroll systems, ensuring developers can continue to provide their customers with innovative and seamless digital experiences.

Personio: people investment strategists

Founded in 2015, Personio is a comprehensive platform dedicated to helping businesses automate and optimize their core HR processes in order to save time. That means making HR as transparent and efficient as possible. So far, Personio has done just that for over 6,000 customers across Europe.

In 2021, the company launched its latest offering: People Workflow Automation. This new product helps companies drive productivity across all aspects of their business by connecting tools and teams outside of a traditional HR scope and consolidating all employee information in one place. Innovations like this have helped Personio build a leading HR platform, valued today at $8.5 billion

How do I get access to the Personio integration?

Finch customers automatically have access to the Personio integration. If you’re not yet a customer and want to gain access, enter your email address on our homepage here, and get your API keys today.

Our universal API provides access to 150+ payroll integrations and counting, including Quickbooks and ADP RUN. Maintenance, updates, and edge cases are all handled by our first-rate team, so your team can focus on building exceptional experiences.  

Sapling, an HRIS platform, is now accessible via Finch’s automated API. That brings our coverage to 150+ HRIS and payroll systems—each one helping your app better connect with your customers.

Sapling: a people management platform for modern HR teams

Sapling was founded in 2016 to fulfill a simple goal: amplify connectivity for people operations teams around the globe. The platform does this by utilizing AI-powered automation and predictive insights that provide HR teams with a powerful, data-driven experience that helps them foster workplace culture and drive impact. In January 2020, the platform was acquired by Kallidus to complement a full suite of human capital management (HCM) software.

A best-in-class employee onboarding platform, Sapling streamlines complicated HR processes, allowing employers to visualize relationships between people, teams, and departments; manage time-off policies; and unify global data effortlessly—all from within a single system.

How do I get access to the Sapling integration?

Current Finch customers can enjoy immediate access to the Sapling integration. For those interested in becoming a customer and gaining access, simply enter your email address on our homepage here, and get your API keys today.

Our universal API provides access to 150+ HR and payroll integrations and counting, including Quickbooks and ADP Run. As for ongoing maintenance, updates, and dealing with edge cases, there’s no need to worry; our dedicated development team handles everything, so you can spend your time on your core product.

Finch’s newest integration, Humaans, is open for access. Our coverage network now stands at 150+ HRIS and payroll systems, ensuring our customers stay connected to the global employment ecosystem.

Humaans: a new approach to people operations

Founded in 2020, Humaans is a human resources information system (HRIS) that acts as a single source of truth for all staffing operations. The platform provides users with a holistic interface for employee onboarding and ongoing people management—giving them access to powerful insights like company growth metrics and payroll information. The platform initially catered to European companies but has rapidly expanded to help global organizations with their people operations.

Eschewing the all-in-one model of HR software for a more dynamic approach, Humaans integrates with leading HR SaaS platforms, allowing employers to mix and match services based on their needs. This adaptability is part of the reason Humaans is growing quickly.

How do I get access to the Humaans integration?

For existing Finch customers, access to Humaans is already available. If you’re not yet a customer and are interested in gaining access, enter your email address on our homepage here, and get your API keys today.

With our universal API, you’ll gain access to 150+ HRIS and payroll integrations and counting, including Quickbooks and ADP RUN. 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.

Our latest HRIS integration, SageHR, is up and running, adding yet another data source to our overall data coverage network of 150+ HR and payroll systems. For Finch customers, that means even more opportunities to create seamless, interconnected digital experiences.

SageHR: a modular HR platform

What started as a leave management solution has since expanded to include a range of modular HR solutions that flex with the unique and changing needs of modern employers. One of the unique aspects of SageHR is its built-in connectivity with the Sage family of accounting and payroll solutions. This is part of the reason why the platform has grown to support customers in 1,200 cities worldwide for small businesses that have up to 125 employees. Now, in the latest stage of its evolution, the company is adding new modules and features specifically designed to scale—ensuring a seamless HR experience regardless of company size.

How do I get access to the SageHR integration?

For Finch customers, the SageHR integration is automatically accessible. If you’re not a Finch customer but are interested in becoming one, enter your email address here and get your API keys today.

Once you’ve signed up, you’ll gain access to all 150+ HR and payroll providers we’re integrated with through our universal API, including QuickBooks and ADP RUN. Our team also handles all technical requirements for each integration, so you don’t have to worry about updates or maintenance.

Our newest integration, Wave Payroll, is now live, further extending our Canadian provider coverage. Finch can now connect you to over 170 HRIS and payroll systems, giving you access to the employment data necessary to create the integrated experiences your customers are looking for.

Wave: all-in-one money management made easy

Founded in 2010, Wave began its journey as an accounting solution with a simple mission: helping small businesses easily manage their finances. Since then, the Canadian company has expanded its initial accounting offering into a suite of products that services more than 1 million customers.

With Wave Payroll, small businesses can quickly manage employee onboarding, tax profiles, employment records, and more while providing access to critical aspects of their business from its all-in-one platform.

How do I get access to the Wage Payroll integration?

For Finch customers, the Wave Payroll integration is already available. If you’re not a Finch customer, and you’re interested in leveraging employment data, sign up for free access to our sandbox and get your API keys today.

Once you’ve signed up, you’ll gain access to all 170+ HR and payroll providers we’re integrated with through our unified API, including QuickBooks and ADP RUN. Our team of experts handles all technical requirements for each integration, so you don’t have to worry about updates or maintenance.

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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.

How do I get access to the Quickbooks Canada integration?

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.

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.