
<p>Rippling has raised $250M in a round co-led by Bedrock and Kleiner Perkins, with participation from existing investors Y Combinator, Sequoia Capital, and more. The round values the company at $11.25 billion.</p>



<p>I’m grateful for these investors’ conviction in Rippling, for the employees that have gotten us to this point, and for our clients, without whom none of this would be possible.</p>



<p>Rippling’s core thesis is that employee data is critical to a surprisingly large number of business systems, including the ones well outside of HR.</p>



<p>Maintaining the fidelity of the same employee data across all these disconnected systems—effectively, across multiple separate databases—is the reason it’s a lot of work for companies to have many different business systems in the first place.</p>



<p>Rippling solves this problem by giving companies and employees a single place to make changes, which then propagate everywhere automatically.</p>



<p>The system that does this isn’t just a time-saver—we believe it will be a critical primitive for business software going forward.</p>



<p>Products built on top of a rich graph of data about the organization, employees, and their apps and <a href="https://www.rippling.com/recipes/device-health-report-template" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">devices aren’t just easier to manage</a>. They are better as software products—with more intelligent workflows and approvals, better role-based policies and permissions, and more powerful analytics.</p>



<p>We are <a href="https://www.rippling.com/careers" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">hiring across all roles</a>.</p>




Rippling raises $250M in Series D funding


<p>Independent contractors, whether they be sole proprietors, individuals, or companies, are an asset for businesses that require one-off work or have the periodic need to supplement an internal team. Establishing a process to onboard and pay contractors can help you accommodate any type of work, at any scale, exactly when you need it.</p>



<h2>The contractor challenge&nbsp;</h2>



<p>Contractors are vital assets to companies that need to scale resources quickly. But getting one hired and onboarded is usually anything but speedy. They frequently face long and complex contractual negotiations to get “in the system.” Even after the work is complete, many organizations pay on net-90 terms, meaning that the contractor does not get compensated for up to 90 days following the completion of their work.&nbsp;</p>



<p>To put it bluntly: Contracting is fraught with risk. And risk does not bring out the best in people. Neither the contractor nor the employer benefits from the drawn-out, convoluted hiring process that has become, unfortunately, the status quo.&nbsp;</p>





<p>From an employer&#8217;s perspective, contractor management often results in manual work like customizing contracts, routing internal approvals, logging hours, and running individualized payroll. Everything’s one-off—it’s fundamentally inefficient.&nbsp;</p>



<h2>Nobody becomes a contractor because they want to manage a business&nbsp;</h2>



<p>Contractors have a passion for their craft—not a passion (in most cases) for the mechanics of running an LLC. Even if employers understand this dynamic, they usually do not have the infrastructure to improve the flow of business (more on how to solve that later). Contractors are often confronted with late payments, delayed onboarding, and general disorganization. The advice here is simple: If employers want the most robust bench of on-call talent, they must do everything they can to make life easy for their contractors.&nbsp;</p>



<p>Nick Wiesner, VP of Brand at Rippling, puts it this way, “Contractors are our competitive edge as a marketing team. I do everything I can to make their choice to work for us a ‘no-brainer.’” He continues, “They’re on the same pay cycle as full-time employees and I can get them ‘in the system’ in less than a business day. Why wouldn’t they work for us?”</p>





<p>Immediate and fair compensation is vital to establishing a lasting working relationship with top talent, Nick adds. It’s imperative to get contractors onboarded quickly and smoothly, and establish trust through that first bank transaction. “If that doesn’t happen, they’ll bail.”&nbsp;</p>



<h2><strong>How to pay independent contractors in 4 steps</strong></h2>



<h3>Step 1: Choose your payroll software&nbsp;</h3>



<p>The era of manual payments by direct wire transfer or cutting a business check is over. Instead, look for payroll software that unites all your bookkeeping and regulatory requirements with the ability to manage ancillary data like devices and app permissions.&nbsp;</p>



<p>While not every contractor may require a loaned computer or access to internal communication platforms, these functions are much easier to have and not use than integrate after the fact—make your purchasing decision based on equal parts capability and flexibility.&nbsp;</p>



<h3>Step 2: Get your W-9 forms</h3>



<p>The IRS requires an independent contractor to provide a <a href="https://www.irs.gov/businesses/small-businesses-self-employed/forms-and-associated-taxes-for-independent-contractors">W-9 form</a>; the form includes the contractor’s contact information and taxpayer identification number. Contractors must provide a W-9 <em>before</em> performing work. Most payroll systems can request these forms.&nbsp;</p>



<h3>Step 3: Get your contractors set up in your payroll system</h3>



<p>This is the easy part. Once you have a contractor’s W-9 form, you should have what you need to create a user in your payroll system. Most systems like Rippling will have the ability to add the contractor’s rate and contract details and offer them a time-tracking platform. At this point, you should also set up user permissions for internal applications like Slack, Outlook, Zendesk, or whatever else your teams rely on to collaborate.&nbsp;</p>






<h2 class="mb-16">How Rippling can help with paying contractors</h2>



<p>Rippling unites all facets of contractor management, giving you the ability to oversee your entire workforce in one place.</p>



<p><a href="https://www.rippling.com/contractor-management">See the solution</a></p>




<h3>Step 4: Prepare and send 1099-NEC forms</h3>



<p>Beginning with the 2020 tax year, businesses that hire independent contractors must send those contractors a 1099-NEC form at the end of the year. Contractors must receive the form by January 31 at the latest.&nbsp;</p>



<p>According to the IRS, recipients of the form should meet the following four conditions:</p>



<ul><li>The payment is made to someone who is not your employee</li><li>The payment is made for services in the course of your trade or business</li><li>The payment is made to an individual, partnership, estate, or corporation</li><li>The payment total is at least $600 for the year</li></ul>



<p>Rippling automatically generates and distributes 1099 tax forms to your contractors. And all past 1099 forms are stored within your Rippling account.&nbsp;</p>



<p>Rippling houses your contractor data alongside your full-time employees&#8217; HR and IT data. Since your entire workforce is in a single platform, taxes and other reporting are one-click simple. Such integration also means that contractors get paid whenever you run payroll (for the contractors out there—you never have to wait on payments with clients that use Rippling.) Get the details after the jump.&nbsp;</p>







<h5 class="is-style-overline">HR &amp; Payroll Software</h5>



<p class="text-28 leading-36 mb-16 w-250 ml-auto mr-auto md:ml-0 md:mr-0">Automate your contractor management </p>







<p></p>




A guide to paying independent contractors


<p>Just as business data is essential for building, marketing, and selling new products, employee data is also vital in developing and maintaining an impactful workforce. Business data, and platforms like Salesforce that digest it, have long proven their value. However, only recently has employee data been considered of equal worth, and has there been technology to use it in a meaningful and integrated way.</p>



<h2>Employee data unites companies&nbsp;</h2>



<p>Employee data is a linchpin that can be used to connect and bind together all the different point SaaS systems in use at a company.</p>



<p>Think of the data that systems like payroll, benefits, and time &amp; attendance generate. Such data can be coupled with the data generated from systems not traditionally associated with HR, like customer service, device management, security, and more. Once a company integrates its HR and IT systems, it can begin to automate workflows across those systems, run reports on combined data sets, and more.&nbsp;</p>



<p>As Parker Conrad, Rippling’s CEO, notes, “For database nerds, we think employee data is the secret ingredient required to create a single, unified schema across all business software. Because almost all business systems have a dimension table for an employee in their own schemas, you can use employee data as a join condition to bind all these systems together.”</p>






<h2 class="mb-16">How Rippling can help teams leverage data</h2>



<p>Built on the first Unified Workforce Platform, Rippling delivers more data, about more things, in an intuitive and impactful way. It helps HR teams use quantitative metrics to bring out the best in employees organization wide. And it houses all the apps you need to run a company of dozens or a global workforce—everything’s united at every scale.&nbsp;</p>



<p><a href="https://www.rippling.com/platform" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">See the solution</a></p>




<h2>Data is at the heart of HR’s profound transformation</h2>



<p>In its report, <a href="https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/people-and-organizational-performance/our-insights/the-new-possible-how-hr-can-help-build-the-organization-of-the-future" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">The new possible: How HR can help build the organization of the future</a>, McKinsey &amp; Company notes that in a post-pandemic era, “a management system based on old rules—a hierarchy that solves for uniformity, bureaucracy, and control—will no longer be effective. Taking its place should be a model that is more flexible and responsive, built around four interrelated trends: more connection, unprecedented automation, lower transaction costs, and demographic shifts.”</p>



<p>This observation underscores two decades of profound transformation in HR. What was once primarily a tactical unit charged with onboarding/offboarding, intrapersonal employee management, and related tasks is now a profoundly strategic component of the overall business.&nbsp;</p>



<p>In its significant <a href="https://www2.deloitte.com/us/en/insights/focus/human-capital-trends/2016/human-capital-trends-introduction.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Global Human Capital Trends</a> report, Deloitte says, “The HR function is taking on a new role as the steward and designer of these new people processes…This means that HR is redesigning almost everything it does—from recruiting to performance management to onboarding to rewards systems.”&nbsp;</p>



<p>The McKinsey report similarly notes, “HR should manage talent rigorously by building an analytics capability to mine data to hire, develop, and retain the best employees.” And “To engage business leaders in a regular review of talent, they [HR leaders] can develop semi-automated data dashboards that track the most important metrics for critical roles.”</p>



<p>Such dashboards were traditionally available only to companies with the resources to build their own. But, with Rippling, they’re standard. And just the tip of a customizable and unified workforce platform.&nbsp;</p>



<h2>You can’t manage what you don’t measure&nbsp;</h2>



<p>So notes the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania in its HR Management and Analytics course. The course also highlights three surprising statistics:</p>



<ul><li>Only 5 percent of big-data investments go to HR, the group that normally manages HR analytics</li><li>Only 9 percent of companies believe they have a good understanding of which talent dimensions drive performance in their organization</li><li>Only 11 percent of companies have rewards systems that are highly aligned with their organizational goals, and 23 percent do not know what rewards their workers value.</li></ul>



<p>What can we infer from these numbers? Businesses understand that HR data is valuable, but gathering such data, and extracting value from it, remains challenging. The <a href="https://www.rippling.com/hris" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">ability to</a> passively source data and automate analyses will help HR teams positively impact the trajectory of the business and its employees.&nbsp;</p>





<h2>People analytics in practice&nbsp;</h2>



<p>Google’s <a href="https://rework.withgoogle.com/guides/managers-identify-what-makes-a-great-manager/steps/learn-about-googles-manager-research/">Project Oxygen</a> is one of the first and best examples of HR data being used to redefine company-wide managerial practices. Kicked off in 2008, the project “defined manager quality based on two quantitative measures: manager performance ratings and manager feedback from Google’s annual employee survey. This data quickly revealed that managers did matter: teams with great managers were happier and more productive.”</p>



<p>The project is a prime illustration of the power of <a href="https://rework.withgoogle.com/subjects/people-analytics/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">people analytics</a>. Broadly defined, people analytics uses “analytical techniques, ranging from reporting and metrics to predictive analytics to experimental research” to “uncover new insights, solve people problems and direct your HR actions.”&nbsp;</p>



<p>Traditionally, HR would address challenges through primarily qualitative debate “based on emotions, instincts, and anecdotes.” However, a quantitative approach that uses data and established analytical techniques can help businesses develop effective and fair processes that eliminate bias and help bolster the entire workforce.&nbsp;</p>



<h2>Rippling is data-driven HR&nbsp;</h2>



<p>Rippling Unity enables companies to connect every system that touches an employee into one source of truth. That means more data, about more things, delivered in a digestible, insightful way. It helps HR teams use quantitative metrics to bring out the best in employees organization-wide.&nbsp;</p>



<p>With such integration also comes the ability to automate nearly any workflow. Whether they be HR alerts that trigger when pay disparity is detected, to IT alerts that notify employees when there are security lapses, as well as finance and engineering workflows of any type—there are hundreds of <a href="https://www.rippling.com/recipes" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">workflows and reports</a> preset and ready to go.&nbsp;</p>



<p>For HR teams, such automation means an end to the mountains of administrative work that get in the way of the human side of the business. At its core, the automation within Rippling is highly configurable, meaning the platform can grow and flex with the needs of an HR team. New business directive? Anticipating a surge in hiring? Need to issue a company-wide policy change? Rippling’s got your future covered.</p>







<h5 class="is-style-overline">Unified workforce platform</h5>



<p class="text-28 leading-36 mb-16 w-250 ml-auto mr-auto md:ml-0 md:mr-0">Manage employee data across your business systems  </p>








Why data is HR's most important asset


<p><strong>Name: Brooke Golombeck</strong><br><strong>Role: Enterprise Account Executive&nbsp;</strong><br><strong>Location: San Francisco&nbsp;</strong><br><strong>Rippler since: 2019&nbsp;</strong></p>



<h2>Role + Responsibilities<em>&nbsp;</em></h2>



<p>As an Enterprise Account Executive, I sell Rippling to our largest, most strategic customers. From the first call to closing the deal, I own each step of the sales process. My role requires knowing the product inside and out, navigating the customer journey, and prescribing the best path forward based on the client’s needs.</p>



<h2>This Rippler’s journey<em>&nbsp;</em></h2>



<p>When I started at Rippling in November 2019, I couldn’t have imagined the magnitude of change ahead. New to San Francisco, I was ready to build my life in the city and a career at Rippling.&nbsp;</p>



<p>Around 150 employees at the time, our small sales team met face-to-face in the office each day. Fast-forward to March, and I was learning a new product and navigating the organization alone in my studio apartment. Being a hands-on person, going fully remote had its challenges. But with the guidance of experienced leaders, I gained a new appreciation for our product and the customers we serve.</p>





<p>When the Enterprise Team formed in July 2021, we had to adapt to change in real-time. Entrusted to go after much larger companies, the team developed new processes, from pricing to negotiating terms. We found a way to chart new territory one day at a time.&nbsp;</p>



<p>Among the many lessons I’ve learned at Rippling—roll with the punches. Change is par for the course whether you’re creating new processes or faced with a global pandemic.&nbsp;</p>



<p>Selling to our largest customers has required me to become a product expert and learn how to navigate internal resources efficiently. I worked hand-in-hand with our CSM, implementation, and sales teams to develop new processes used by sales reps today. I also helped create a new pricing deck to sell multi-year contracts, and built implementation project plans to enhance the customer experience—creating new processes is the best part of being on this team.&nbsp;</p>



<h2>Memorable Rippling moments</h2>



<p>My most memorable moment was selling the largest deal in company history with a new product that wasn’t even on our pricing sheet yet.&nbsp;</p>



<p>We were trained on a new product launch that would be live by January 2022. There wasn’t a name for it, and Rippling had released only a small subset of features to sales. I quickly knew that this new feature would set Rippling apart from any other vendor in this space, and I was determined to learn it and sell it.</p>



<p>I’ll be honest, when I first pitched it, I was very upfront with the customer about not having all the details. They were very appreciative and accepted that this was something new. They saw the vision and eventually signed up for what&#8217;s now called <a href="https://www.rippling.com/blog/introducing-rippling-unity">Unity</a>.&nbsp;</p>



<h2>Work + Life<em>&nbsp;</em></h2>



<p>Helping create a new segment to sell into and seeing those customers successfully use our platform makes me incredibly proud.</p>



<p>What I respect the most about Rippling is the flexibility. I can pick and choose what schedule works best for me—it allows me to manage my time better and more efficiently.</p>







<h2>When I’m not selling Rippling…&nbsp;</h2>



<p>I’m very active. I love anything outside—tennis, hiking, cycling, snowboarding. I also love to travel. So you’ll constantly see me going to new places within the US and abroad. In the summer, you’ll find me traveling up the coast of California, beach hopping, and visiting my favorite sushi spots.&nbsp;</p>



<h2>Tips for future Ripplers<em>&nbsp;</em></h2>



<p>Rippling is a gratifying place to work—you’ve got to be the type of person that wants to roll up your sleeves, work with others to figure out a solution, and bring passion to what we are building.</p>



<p><em>Rippling is growing! We need people to help build the next generation of our Unified Workforce Platform. </em><a href="https://www.rippling.com/careers#openings"><em>Join us</em></a></p>




Meet the Ripplers: Brooke, a true sales force


<p>Not all shifts are created equal. Whether the demands of a business require a steady shift during unusual hours, on holidays, or at times outside the expected norms of the job, they can all be addressed with shift differential pay. It’s a straightforward way to incentivize employees with a boosted hourly rate.</p>





<h2>Make every shift desirable&nbsp;</h2>



<p>Shift differential pay is additional or modified compensation based on the time or job tasks associated with an hourly employee&#8217;s shift.&nbsp;</p>



<p>For example, employees who work an overnight shift from midnight to 8 a.m. may receive a higher hourly rate than employees who work a standard day shift. Another typical example is incentivizing shifts immediately before and following major holidays—times that can be inconvenient for employees but essential to businesses. It’s important to note that shift differentials are identical for every employee who works the hours—they do not vary by the employee.&nbsp;&nbsp;</p>



<h2>The truth about shift differentials<strong>&nbsp;</strong></h2>



<p>According to surveys conducted in <a href="https://www.shrm.org/resourcesandtools/hr-topics/compensation/pages/shiftdifferentials.aspx">2010</a> and <a href="https://cdn2.hubspot.net/hubfs/2236169/docs/17-Pay-Differential-Survey.pdf">2017</a>, shift differentials are more common in manufacturing and customer support than in other types of jobs. These roles are on the frontlines of dynamic and essential industries—there is a perpetual need for goods and services.&nbsp;</p>



<p>As noted in the <a href="https://www.shrm.org/resourcesandtools/hr-topics/compensation/pages/shiftdifferentials.aspx">Culpepper U.S. Shift Differential Pay Practices Survey</a>, which examined the practices of 202 U.S. organizations:&nbsp;</p>



<ul><li>The third shift is paid at a slightly higher rate than the second shift</li><li>Holiday shifts typically are paid 1.5 times the base rate</li><li>In lieu of paying shift differentials, some companies compensate employees for working undesirable shifts with additional paid time off</li></ul>



<p>A <a href="https://cdn2.hubspot.net/hubfs/2236169/docs/17-Pay-Differential-Survey.pdf">2017 survey published by ERC</a>, noted similar findings:&nbsp;</p>



<ul><li>Participants report that 2nd and 3rd shift work (both weekday and weekend) are the most common shifts to be paid a differential&nbsp;</li><li>Double shifts and holiday shifts are rarely paid a differential, most likely because the employers in the survey sample simply do not run shifts during those times, not because employers don’t place a premium on work performed during those hours.&nbsp;</li><li>The most common shift differential paid by employers is a flat premium per hour</li></ul>



<p>Shift differentials are common, especially for hourly employees:&nbsp;</p>



<ul><li>92 percent of companies pay shift differentials to hourly employees</li><li>36 percent pay shift differentials to salaried employees</li></ul>



<p>Shift differential pay is often calculated as 10% of the hourly wage for the role. Companies offering shift differential pay to salaried employees will extrapolate a theoretical hourly wage based on yearly salary and apply the rate across the board.&nbsp;</p>






<h2 class="mb-16">How Rippling can help with shift differential pay</h2>



<p>Rippling makes calculating shift differential pay easy and automatic. You deal with one integrated system that supports any type of differential pay, in any combination, making it simple to establish pay policies that work best for your business.</p>



<p class="font-medium is-style-p2 after:absolute after:bg-yellow after:bottom-0 after:h-2 after:w-100% inline-flex pb-4"><a href="https://www.rippling.com/shift-differential">See the solution</a></p>




<h2>What’s a normal shift anyway?<strong>&nbsp;</strong></h2>



<p>The definition of a “normal shift” is dependent on the industry in which one works. Shift differential pay is most often applied in the security, healthcare, manufacturing, and customer support industries—and those industries have vastly different goals and demands.&nbsp;</p>



<p>It’s not uncommon for customer support businesses to have typical “9-to-5” hours. If an employer needs to add extended hours to accommodate a product launch, the holiday season, or a recall effort, for example, they may offer differential pay for those hours.&nbsp;</p>



<p>The expectations in the healthcare industry are different. Weekend and overnight work are typical—hospitals never close. Here, shift differential pay may be applied to accommodate an unexpected surge in demand, incentivizing employees to work hours outside their normal schedule.&nbsp;</p>



<h2>Shift differential pay vs. overtime<strong>&nbsp;</strong></h2>



<p>Shift differential pay is not overtime. The two are related and complementary, but not calculated in the same way, nor do they have the same legal implications.&nbsp;</p>



<p>Shift differential pay is not legally required. It is simply used to incentivize work during hours outside the norm. It also varies by business—for example, some businesses may offer shift differential pay as a percentage of an hourly rate while others offer a fixed dollar amount. Those percentages and rates can vary significantly within identical industries as well.&nbsp;</p>



<p>Overtime pay is legally required for most hourly employees who work more than a standard 40-hour workweek. The Department of Labor <a href="https://www.dol.gov/agencies/whd/overtime">has more information on the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) and defining overtime pay in your industry and state</a>.&nbsp;</p>









<h2>The configuration challenge</h2>



<p>The concept of shift differentials is simple. But configuring and implementing shift differential rules across multiple payroll and time tracking systems? Not so much.&nbsp;</p>



<p>Charlie Ng, a Manager of HR Solution Consulting at Rippling, notes, “Nearly all of my clients tell me how difficult it is to configure shift differential rules in their systems. Many have to call IT to build a custom solution. Others spend hours digging through the menus of their platforms, hunting for an obscure setting to streamline the process.”&nbsp;</p>



<p>Rippling eliminates those laborious ad hoc solutions. Instead, everything is integrated, automated, and accessible from a central platform.&nbsp;</p>



<p>When an employee clocks in during a special shift, their specific differential pay rate automatically syncs to Payroll. Rippling will also calculate blended rates for employees working at multiple pay rates to ensure you’re paying correct overtime to your employees.</p>



<p>In Rippling, it’s simple to:</p>



<ul><li>Pay everyone who works a certain shift a flat rate</li><li>Add an additional amount to an employee’s standard pay</li><li>Pay a multiple of an employee&#8217;s standard pay</li></ul>



<p>Rippling makes calculating shift differential pay easy and automatic. You deal with one integrated system that supports any type of differential pay, in any combination, making it simple to establish pay policies that work best for your business.</p>



<p>See how Rippling can help you use the pay policies that work the best for your business. Talk to a shift differential expert and test pay scenarios of your own.</p>









<p><a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://www.rippling.com/shift-differential" target="_blank">See the solution</a></p>













<h5 class="is-style-overline">Payroll Software</h5>



<p class="text-28 leading-36 mb-16 w-250 ml-auto mr-auto md:ml-0 md:mr-0">Automate your differential pay calculations </p>








Everything you need to know about shift differential pay


<p>For many employees, equity is as important, if not more, than their salary. It gives them a stake in their company’s future success, and encourages motivation and loyalty. Given its criticality, businesses that offer equity need to holistically plan for and manage all employee compensation, including salary and equity.&nbsp;</p>



<p>Yet, there’s no easy way to manage total compensation today.</p>



<p>Businesses have their salary data stored in an HR / payroll system and their equity data stored in an equity management system, but no solid integration between two systems exists. This creates all sorts of inefficiencies and painful problems.<br><br>Here are just a few headaches your team is likely dealing with today:</p>



<ul><li>Every time your managers need to know their direct reports&#8217; equity, they have to go to the CEO, COO, HR, Finance, or Legal to get the answer.</li><li>Whenever you hire or terminate an employee, you have to manually enter the same data in multiple places, in order to keep your HR and equity management systems up-to-date and in-sync.</li><li>In order to run reports that rely on employee compensation data, your HR and Finance teams have to export salary, equity, and other data from multiple systems, import them into Excel, and create pivot tables to run the analysis they need.</li></ul>



<h2>Introducing the Rippling + Carta integration</h2>



<p>These are among the many reasons why we’re thrilled to announce Rippling’s integration with <a href="https://carta.com/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Carta</a>, the single platform for businesses to manage all things equity—from founding to IPO. This new integration is the first of its kind, in that it gives businesses a 360-degree real-time view of employees’ total compensation.</p>



<h2>View all your salary + equity data in one place</h2>



<p>By combining equity data in Carta and salary data in Rippling, you’ll get an up-to-date view of your employees’ compensation—salary, equity, health insurance, 401(k), and more—instantly.&nbsp;&nbsp;</p>





<h2><strong>Make it easy for employees to view their total compensation</strong></h2>



<p>The Rippling + Carta integration is the first way for employees to get a real-time view into the total value of their equity + salary. At any moment they can see how much their compensation is worth today and in the future as their equity vests.</p>





<h2><strong>Safely allow managers to view their team’s equity&nbsp;</strong></h2>



<p>With <a href="https://www.rippling.com/permissions" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Rippling’s role-based permissions</a>, you can precisely configure who can view an employee&#8217;s equity based on their department, role, level, and more. That way your managers no longer have to go to HR, Finance, or Legal every time they need to know how much equity one of their reports has.&nbsp;</p>





<h2><strong>Automate your equity admin work with no-code workflow automation</strong></h2>



<p>With <a href="https://www.rippling.com/workflow" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Rippling Workflow Automator</a>, your team can build workflows using Carta data to help automate manual work — like a workflow to notify HR and managers (via Slack, Email, and more) whenever someone’s total comp drops below a specific threshold due to their equity vesting. This way you can increase an employee’s comp, if necessary, before they start exploring other opportunities.&nbsp;</p>





<h2><strong>Offer competitive compensation packages&nbsp;</strong></h2>



<p>With <a href="https://carta.com/private-companies/total-compensation-management/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Carta Total Comp’s benchmarking tool</a>, your team can pull in Rippling data to see an employee’s total compensation relative to the market, making it easy to quickly spot retention risks or create attractive packages to hire the best candidates.</p>



<h2><strong>Simplify complex reporting and planning&nbsp;</strong></h2>



<p>Eliminate the need to download multiple spreadsheets from different systems and perform complex analysis for compensation planning. By integrating your Carta and Rippling data, the current compensation analysis is done for you, instantly.</p>





<p>You can also forget about manually tagging employees’ departments for stock-based comp reporting in Carta. Employee attributes automatically sync to Carta, ensuring your reporting is up-to-date and accurate.&nbsp;</p>



<h2>Ready to get started with Rippling + Carta?</h2>



<p>With the Rippling + Carta integration, you’ll be able to radically simplify your administration work, run more effective reports, make it easier for your team to view their total compensation, and retain employees longer by offering competitive compensation packages that attract and retain top talent.<br><br><strong>If you’re already using Rippling and Carta,</strong> you can <a href="https://app.rippling.com/app-shop/app/Cartav2/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">install the Carta app here</a> in minutes.<br><br><strong>If you aren’t using either solution</strong>, you can learn more about <a href="http://www.rippling.com" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Rippling</a> and <a href="http://www.carta.com" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Carta</a>.</p>




Introducing Rippling + Carta: The first way to manage employees’ salary and equity data in one place


<p><strong>Name: Aakarshan Chawla</strong><br><strong>Role: Manager, SSB Sales Team</strong><br><strong>Location: Bangalore, India</strong><br><strong>Rippler since: 2018</strong></p>



<h2>Role + responsibilities<em> </em></h2>



<p>An <a href="https://www.rippling.com/careers">SSB (Super Small Business) Sales Manager</a> helps sell Rippling to the emerging businesses in the US that are setting up payroll for the first time. The company can be a sole proprietorship of one employee/the owner, or a 100-plus employee multinational enterprise starting operations in the US.</p>



<h2>This Rippler’s journey </h2>



<p>I started as a developer in a startup fresh out of college; moving to sales happened by chance when I interacted with (and sold to) many existing clients in that organization.&nbsp;</p>



<p>I joined Rippling in 2018 when the team was about 30 people. We didn’t plan to have a sales team in India, and I joined purely because of the amazing people that were building the product. With founders like Parker and Prasanna and sales leaders like Matt Plank, I was sure that the company would be a leader in the HR Tech space.</p>



<p>My journey has been nothing less than a rocketship ride. Starting as the sole SDR in India to managing a team of Account Executives has provided me with an opportunity to learn and grow on both the professional and personal fronts—the last four years have been pretty exciting.</p>



<h2>Memorable Rippling moments</h2>



<p>Rippling has given me some amazing memories over the years. The best (and the most joyous) one was being able to view Rippling’s company insights on LinkedIn.</p>



<p>LinkedIn only populates (or used to) company insights once a company reaches 30 employees on the platform. Although we had a little over 30 employees at that moment, a few didn’t update their LinkedIn profiles with Rippling as their current employer. Curious to see what the data looks like (I’m a big-time data nerd), I picked up the phone numbers of all of the employees who didn’t update their LinkedIn profiles and requested them to update them ASAP. The numbers weren’t surprising, but the memory would last forever.&nbsp;</p>





<h2>Work + life </h2>



<p>Rippling is an organization that promotes entrepreneurship. We have numerous co-workers that have been founders of some great companies/startups in the past. My colleagues&#8217; entrepreneurial spirit is contagious, and I guess that’s what I acquired while working with them.&nbsp;</p>



<p>The Sales Enablement Team has also been pivotal in my team’s success. The partners on the sales enablement team not only support us but empower us to sell better.</p>



<p>The ethos of “Never not my problem” is deep-rooted in all Ripplers, making it super easy for me to collaborate with anyone and everyone on the team. Of course, the conversations (and hence the partnership) are more online than offline, more asynchronous than live, but that hasn’t affected the way we come together and work to be a part of each others’ success.</p>



<p>I have been fortunate enough to work with multiple functional and departmental leaders at Rippling. All of them have been very supportive when it comes to taking time to rejuvenate and relax. Leaders like <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/shea-steacker-3312363a/">Shea</a> and <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/mihir-bhanushali-9aa56956/?originalSubdomain=in">Mihir</a> make sure I take my time off to recharge and spend time with family and friends, even when the pandemic has made the line between work and personal life a blur.&nbsp;</p>



<p>We have also been going on team outings so we can come together and <em>not </em>work with each other, for a change.</p>





<h2>When I’m not selling Rippling…<em>&nbsp;</em></h2>



<p>I’m an avid F1 follower and a driving enthusiast—I have driven along the length and breadth of India over the last ten years. The longest drive spanned 12 hours at a stretch without a break. I am also an intermediate DOTA player and a micro drone pilot during the weekends.</p>



<h2>Tips for future Ripplers<em>&nbsp;</em></h2>



<p>Rippling unites enterprise applications into one platform and connects it with employee data, saving companies time and money. It gives me immense satisfaction when I see potential customers’ happily surprised reactions upon discovering that fact after looking at the product—and I’m sure all members of the sales team have the same reaction!&nbsp;</p>



<p><br><em>Rippling is growing! We need people to help build the next generation of our Unified Workforce Platform. </em><a href="https://www.rippling.com/careers#openings"><em>Join us</em></a></p>




Meet the Ripplers: What drives Aakarshan, early Rippler and F1 enthusiast


<p><strong>Name: Brandon Simmons</strong><br><strong>Role: Scaled Customer Success Manager&nbsp;</strong><br><strong>Location: San Diego</strong><br><strong>Rippler since: 2021</strong></p>



<h2>Role + Responsibilities&nbsp;</h2>



<p>The <a href="https://www.rippling.com/careers">Customer Success Manager</a> (CSM) role at Rippling focuses on the growth and success of our clients. As CSMs we’re responsible for conducting renewal conversations, providing product demos, providing new admin training, managing client escalations, and overall helping our clients align their business challenges with Rippling solutions.</p>



<h2>This Rippler’s Journey<em>&nbsp;</em></h2>



<p>Because I have <a href="https://www.feedlove.co/">a small business of my own</a>, Rippling’s mission of “freeing smart people to work on hard problems” really resonated with me. It’s rewarding to help small businesses grow and to be a part of their success.&nbsp;</p>



<p>And the journey has been great so far! Since my first day at Rippling, I’ve felt an overwhelming sense of support from my team. This is one of the things that makes Rippling so special and sets it apart from other companies.&nbsp;</p>



<p>You join as a newbie, not knowing a ton, but because you have so much support from your teammates, you become a seasoned member of the team quickly, and then you’re able to turn around and reciprocate that same level of support to the new hires. I think the biggest thing I’ve seen here, as cliché as it may be, is people supporting others like they were supported.&nbsp;</p>





<h2>Memorable Rippling moments<em>&nbsp;</em></h2>



<p>One of my favorite memories has to be learning about the <em>#ppl-blackish</em> Slack channel (for black employees at Rippling). Having a place to go where there are people who share a similar experience in this country is so important. This channel is just one way I see how much community and culture are valued here at Rippling.&nbsp;</p>



<p>Another memory was a fireside chat we had around Asian hate. Although a new employee at the time, I spoke about my solidarity with the AAPI community. After the meeting, I got a flood of messages from colleagues who appreciated what I said. It’s a memory that stuck with me because we were given that time and space to have such a conversation during the workday, and it felt like we had each other’s back.</p>



<h2>Work + Life</h2>



<p>The CSM management team is the best out there! It&#8217;s always said that we as CSMs are the “CEOs of our book of business.” Because our management team has so much trust that we will handle our business, we have the flexibility to focus on work-life balance. They encourage us to log off early if we can, take a walk in the middle of the day, take time off, etc. The trust part is huge, as none of this works without trust.</p>





<p>As I mentioned earlier, helping with small businesses is what&#8217;s most meaningful. It&#8217;s also nice to see that all small businesses struggle with payroll, filing taxes, etc. Having a business of my own, I know it can be challenging doing all this with a small team.&nbsp;&nbsp;</p>



<h2>When I’m not helping Rippling customers… <em>&nbsp;</em></h2>



<p>I founded and run a small business called <a href="https://www.feedlove.co/">Feed Love</a>. It’s a clothing brand focused on community and the spreading of love. We believe that the smallest amount of love shared with someone has the potential to spark a chain reaction that can change the world!</p>



<p>Our success isn’t measured by the number of t-shirts or hoodies we sell, but rather by the number of people we are able to serve. <a href="https://www.womenshistory.org/education-resources/biographies/shirley-chisholm">Shirley Chisholm</a> has a quote we often like to reference and it states, “Service is the rent we pay for the privilege of living on this earth.” We try to approach everything we do with that mindset.&nbsp;</p>



<p>Once a quarter, we host an event called <a href="https://www.instagram.com/tv/CX7Oza-p1BK/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link">Feed Our People San Diego</a> where Feed Love joins other organizations to provide mutual aid to the houseless population of San Diego. We provide hot meals, snacks, clothing, hygienic products, hair cuts, and most of all love. Our partners are local organizations and businesses: Willie Wingz, Myjeal&#8217;s Soul &amp; Continental, Average Joe&#8217;s Burgers, Custom Cuts by Natalye, Huey&#8217;s Chicken, OnFlight Co., R&amp;B Eatz, The Hemp Attic, Vslay, We Stand United SD, Celebrity Entertainment, B2Cleann, and Heavy Pocketz.</p>





<p>Aside from service we also have an activism side where we fight for justice and equal rights. During the summer of 2021, we conducted a protest called The People&#8217;s Rally which was a protest of solidarity between Black, brown, Asian, and white allies for justice.&nbsp;</p>



<p>And most recently we collaborated with a grassroots organization called <a href="https://af3irm.org/af3irm/">Af3irm</a> to fight against the global sex trade.</p>





<p>It’s not always super easy, but I usually work on Feed Love at night and on the weekends. A lot of the stuff I deal with at work helps me with my business. I also get a ton of support internally, I’ve had colleagues post about new releases and have gotten a good amount of sales from Rippling teammates.&nbsp;</p>



<h2>Tips for future Ripplers<em>&nbsp;</em></h2>



<p>Rippling is a great place if you’re looking to be around great people, help great people and their business, grow your career, and become an overall better person.&nbsp;</p>



<p><em>Rippling is growing! We need people to help build the next generation of our Unified Workforce Platform. </em><a href="https://www.rippling.com/careers#openings"><em>Join us</em></a><em>.</em> </p>




Meet the Ripplers: How Brandon helps customers succeed, and spreads the love to those in need


<p><strong>Name: Simran Dokania&nbsp;<br>Role: Software Engineer in International Payroll<br>Location: Chicago<br>Rippler since: 2018</strong></p>



<h2>Role + responsibilities&nbsp;</h2>



<p>I currently work as a software developer on the International Payroll team. Earlier, I worked on the COBRA project on the Insurance team. I also worked on core insurance system design and architecture.</p>



<h2>This Rippler’s journey&nbsp;</h2>



<p>So, I didn’t apply to Rippling. [Rippling Co-founder] Prasanna Sankar reached out to me on LinkedIn. I thought it was spam! Luckily my husband (then boyfriend) told me who Prasanna really was and, after two months of chasing, I finally agreed to an interview. And now here I am.</p>



<p>When I joined, I was immediately handed the responsibility of taking the COBRA product from 0 to 1.&nbsp;</p>



<p>I was fortunate to get guidance from industry veterans who taught me how to develop a superior product. Through them, I adopted good software engineering practices and got rid of some bad ones. Today, I’m confident enough to take a leap and build an even larger and more complex product from the ground-up in the International Payroll team.&nbsp;</p>





<p>I have a sense of accomplishment for what I have been able to build at this company, the processes that I have been able to take ownership of, and am a much more confident and informed engineer than I was when I started.&nbsp;</p>



<p>As an undergrad, you often get the advice that if you want to learn a lot very quickly, you should join a startup. Today, I can confidently attest that this statement is a fact.</p>



<h2>Memorable Rippling moments&nbsp;</h2>



<ul><li>Chocolate chip cookie and coffee breaks with Parker&nbsp;</li><li>My visits to the small SF office in 2018 and 2019</li><li>Working with <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/aswinrajendiran/">Aswin Rajendiran</a>, <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/sriram-ganesan-46103b34/">Sriram Ganesan</a>, Shail Patel, <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeevanshankar/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Jeevan Shankar</a>, Chen Wilson</li><li>Living with <a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/sravyavalipe/" target="_blank">Sravya Valipe</a></li></ul>





<h2>Work + Life&nbsp;</h2>



<p>Rippling has enabled me to maintain a healthy work-life balance. They have given me the freedom to work remotely after my marriage which has allowed me to stay in the same city as my husband. Apart from the regularly scheduled meetings, I enjoy the flexibility to set my own schedule as long as I deliver my work on time, which allows me to pursue my hobbies during the weekdays as well.</p>



<p>Since I enjoy the liberty to schedule my own work hours, I am able to manage my day so that I can take early morning/late night zoom meetings on the other side of the world without burning out.&nbsp;</p>



<p>Work at Rippling is challenging. I enjoy seeing myself grow; I enjoy looking back at my trajectory and seeing the knowledge I have accumulated. This makes taking on new challenges a rewarding experience and keeps me coming back for more.&nbsp;</p>



<h2>When I’m not building Rippling…&nbsp;</h2>



<p>I am a foodie! When I was living in Bangalore I had visited about 200+ restaurants and <a href="https://www.zomato.com/sim95/reviews">reviewed them on Zomato</a>. It’s hard to find good vegetarian restaurants in Chicago so my reviewing is temporarily on hold—I am hoping to explore more and start blogging on Yelp. I also enjoy cooking new dishes with my husband</p>



<p>I also <a href="https://www.instagram.com/passportscameraaction/">love photography</a> and try to document my journey whenever I can. If I had an option to travel for a living, I’d quit my job [<em>Editor’s note: Please don’t.</em>]. I have been to ten different countries—India (of course) followed by Singapore, Italy, UK, USA, Hong Kong, Germany, China, France, and Portugal.&nbsp;</p>





<p>I love reading simple authentic books on someone’s life experiences. My all-time favorites are Sudha Murthy’s books, <em>The Diary of a Young Girl</em> by Anne Frank, <em>How to American by Jimmy O. Yang</em>. I am currently reading <em>Fate Is the Hunter</em> by Ernest K. Gann.</p>



<p>I watch at least two movies a week. I don’t usually watch tv shows because I lose control and end up binge-watching. And I love interior decorating and hope to do it one day as a side gig. </p>





<h2>Tips for future Ripplers&nbsp;</h2>



<p>Rippling focuses more on quality rather than quantity. Remember to think thoroughly and build efficient, stable products.</p>



<p><em>Rippling is growing! We need engineers to help build the next generation of our Unified Workforce Platform. </em><a href="https://www.rippling.com/careers#openings"><em>Join us</em></a><em>.</em></p>




Meet the Ripplers: Simran’s story


<p>Garry Tan met Parker Conrad long before he cut Rippling its first check, back when Tan was still a partner at Y Combinator and Conrad had founded his second startup.&nbsp;</p>



<p>Garry and Parker sat down for a conversation on what it takes to build a successful compound startup, Rippling’s unique approach to customer support, how Parker’s history as a writer for The Harvard Crimson is not unlike those early days bootstrapping a startup—and much more.</p>



<p>It’s inside baseball—or, more accurately, inside-early-stage-high-growth-SaaS-startups.&nbsp;</p>



<p>Watch the conversation below or on Garry’s YouTube channel <a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://www.youtube.com/c/garrytan" target="_blank">here</a>.&nbsp;</p>





<p>The highlights:</p>



<ul><li>Rippling’s key insight: Employee data is far more distributed across companies than most people realize. Almost every business system a company uses is full of employee information. This data becomes more nuanced and intertwined as a company grows, creating a management headache as well as a business opportunity.&nbsp;</li><li>Single-solution startups are saturating the market. It’s becoming clear that deep systems integration and bundled contracting and pricing will begin to dominate the market. Salesforce did this two decades ago and Rippling is doing it now.&nbsp;</li><li>Facebook has the social graph. Salesforce has the customer graph. Rippling has the employee graph. These are far more than directories—they are interconnected webs of identities. And that makes them incredibly powerful.&nbsp;</li><li>Rippling improved its customer support engagements overnight by looking at the 90th percentile of cases instead of the median. As Parker elaborates, “We discovered the 90th percentile was way worse than the median. I said, ‘The only thing that anyone&#8217;s allowed to look at is the 90th percentile,’ which is a much more punishing statistic. It basically says, ‘What is the worst 10% of the support interactions that you have?’ We started reporting on that.”&nbsp;</li><li>If you want to have great support as a company, you&#8217;ve got to focus relentlessly on the outliers. <em>Editor’s note: Rippling publishes its full, real-time support stats </em><a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://www.rippling.com/support-status" target="_blank"><em>here</em></a><em>.&nbsp;</em></li><li>From early on, Parker was drawn to taking on the incumbents—those with more resources and more power. Reflecting on his time at The Harvard Crimson, he notes, “It felt like we were this band of pirates taking on the administration…I spent a bunch of time after college looking for that experience again and found it in working at startups.”</li></ul>







<h5 class="is-style-overline">See Rippling</h5>



<p class="text-28 leading-36 mb-16 w-250 ml-auto mr-auto md:ml-0 md:mr-0">See Rippling in action</p>








Startups are a "band of pirates": tech investment leader Garry Tan’s interview with Parker Conrad


<p>Delivering a great support experience–whether it’s a recommendation on what size a customer should get, or talking them through a frustrating experience—is key not only to securing a customer’s first purchase, but ensuring their long-term loyalty with your brand.&nbsp;</p>



<p>That means the pressure is on for customer support teams to provide service that’s not only accurate and up-to-date, but speedy as well—which can be somewhat of a challenge when the typical contact center faces hundreds, if not thousands, of support tickets a day.&nbsp;&nbsp;</p>



<p>But if you’re managing a support team on <a href="https://www.zendesk.com/">Zendesk</a>, we’ve got some good news for you. With Rippling’s no-code, custom workflow builder, <a href="https://www.rippling.com/workflow">Workflow Automator</a>, you’ll be able to trigger tasks, emails, and even Slack messages to help keep you and your team on track, and ensure you’re hitting your SLAs every time.&nbsp;</p>



<p>Want to learn more? We’ve got five workflows to get you and your team going.&nbsp;</p>



<h2>1.&nbsp;<a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://www.rippling.com/recipes/urgent-zendesk-ticket-assigned-to-ooo-agent-alert" target="_blank">Know when employee absences are putting Urgent tickets at risk</a></h2>



<p>Customers expect immediate responses to their questions—especially if they involve time-sensitive, or urgent requests.&nbsp;</p>



<p>But even the most ardent of team efforts can become quickly derailed if support tickets are inadvertently assigned to&nbsp; agents that are actually out on leave—a situation that’s become increasingly difficult to track as more teams shift to remote or hybrid work, and knowing who is on deck requires more than just a quick scan down the contact center floor.&nbsp;</p>



<p>Luckily, you can rely on this workflow to do your tracking for you.&nbsp;</p>



<p>Now, any&nbsp;Urgent tickets assigned in Zendesk will automatically be checked against your employees’ leave schedule in Rippling, and if they’re found to be assigned to an out-of-office employee, you’ll get an automated alert letting you know, so you can reassign those time-sensitive tickets immediately to an available agent to handle.&nbsp;</p>





<p>In the example above, we’ve set the alert to be sent via email, but—as with any of Rippling’s <a href="https://www.rippling.com/recipes">workflow templates</a>—you can easily customize it to send alerts to a dedicated Slack channel, or add more people on copy as well.&nbsp;</p>



<h2>2.&nbsp;<a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://rippling.com/recipes/agent-with-open-zendesk-tickets-OOO-alert" target="_blank">Be alerted to unresolved Zendesk tickets in your out-of-office agents’ queue</a></h2>



<p>While it’s obviously important that your Urgent support tickets are handled promptly, that doesn’t mean it’s fine to let your non-Urgent tickets languish in an absent agent’s queue.&nbsp;&nbsp;</p>



<p>With this out-of-the-box workflow, you can easily stay on top of any unresolved tickets your agents might have left in their queue before going out on PTO.&nbsp;</p>



<p>When Rippling detects that an agent is on leave, you’ll automatically get a list of any Open tickets still in their queue, so you can assess if any need to be reassigned, or if they can wait until your agent is back at work.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;</p>





<h2>3. <a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://rippling.com/recipes/zendesk-ticket-on-hold-over-7-days-alert" target="_blank">Don’t lose track of your On-hold tickets</a></h2>



<p>The <a href="https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/4408889282458-Adding-the-On-hold-ticket-status-to-Zendesk-Support">On-hold status</a> in Zendesk is helpful for both agents and managers, allowing them to easily distinguish between tickets that an agent hasn’t responded to yet versus tickets that need input from third-parties to be resolved.&nbsp;</p>



<p>But the risk of putting a ticket On-hold is that they may be forgotten in the rush of fresh tickets assigned to agents every day—leading to the unwanted situation of a missed SLA.&nbsp;</p>



<p>Well, not anymore with this out-of-the-box workflow that provides a timely alert if a ticket has been On-hold for more than a week. That way you can follow up on the ticket before a customer is forced to follow up with you.&nbsp;</p>





<p>Again, you can customize this <a href="https://www.rippling.com/recipes">workflow template to fit your exact needs—whether that’s alerting the assigned</a> agent to the issue as well, or shortening the period that the ticket needs to be On-hold before the alert is triggered.</p>



<h2>4.&nbsp;<a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://rippling.com/recipes/zendesk-ticket-open-after-due-date-alert" target="_blank">Get alerted quickly to missed SLAs</a></h2>



<p>But even the best-laid plans and precautions may not catch every ticket before they exceed their due date. .&nbsp;</p>



<p>In those unfortunate situations where an SLA is missed, this workflow alerts you quickly to the situation so you can prioritize and resolve the ticket before your customer gets frustrated and follows up.&nbsp;</p>





<h2>5. <a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://www.rippling.com/recipes/zendesk-incident-alert" target="_blank">Ensure potentially ‘costly’ web issues are dealt with quickly</a></h2>



<p>When a support agent labels a Zendesk ticket as an incident, it typically points to a larger, underlying issue causing widespread customer issues—like a site outage or shopping cart malfunction—versus a one-off problem with a customer’s service experience or order.</p>



<p>In cases like this, It’s important to get the right people involved to solve the issue—and fast—to try and reduce the number of customers exposed to the problem.</p>



<p>With this automated workflow, you can ensure that important issues affecting customer experience are managed fast. When an agent labels a Zendesk ticket as an Incident, Rippling will automatically send a notification to your Web team or whoever in your company issues like these are typically escalated to, for example, your VP of Customer Experience.&nbsp;</p>





<h2>Automate everything you need with Rippling</h2>



<p>Unlike other employee management platforms, Rippling has an unparalleled level of integration with your third-party systems—from Zendesk to Slack, Google Workspace, and more—allowing you to create workflows that just aren’t possible with other automation tools.&nbsp;</p>



<p>If you’re already a Rippling customer, check out our <a href="https://help.rippling.com/s/article/93083114224">Getting Started Guide</a> for step-by-step instructions on how to leverage our out-of-the-box workflows, or create your own custom-fit workflows from scratch.If not, be sure to <a href="https://www.rippling.com/request-demo">schedule a demo</a> with our team today to learn how you can use our no-code, custom workflow builder to not only maintain the high quality of support you deliver, but make it easier than ever to manage your team as well.</p>







<h5 class="is-style-overline">See Rippling</h5>



<p class="text-28 leading-36 mb-16 w-250 ml-auto mr-auto md:ml-0 md:mr-0">See Rippling in action</p>








5 Zendesk tricks to help your support team hit their SLAs every time


<p>The use of HR software tools was on the rise even before the pandemic started. Now, over two years in, workplaces have fundamentally changed. Remote and hybrid work is here to stay. Company demographics continue to skew younger. And companies are waging an international search for talent.&nbsp;</p>



<p>Businesses need HR systems—especially their HRIS—to be dynamic, flexible, and user friendly.</p>



<p>The right HRIS partner can ensure that new hires have the best possible onboarding experience. It can also ensure that your business stays ahead of compliance issues in multi-state and international scenarios, and it can provide workflow tools that adapt to your business’s ever-changing needs.</p>



<p>How does one sift through a crowded marketplace with limited time and resources? These are the steps I encourage my clients to follow to find the systems that best fit their needs:</p>



<p><strong>Step 1: Assemble your project team&nbsp;</strong></p>



<p>First, get your team together and bought in on the project.</p>



<p>The last thing that you&#8217;ll want to do is spend hours falling in love with a certain software platform, only to find out that your teammates aren&#8217;t on board with the decision.</p>



<p>We always recommend having a kick-off call with your cross-functional stakeholders. This meeting allows you to hear all the opinions early on. It also makes the project real for everyone involved.</p>



<p>In this meeting, ask each member of the project team three questions:</p>



<ul><li>What do you hope to get out of this transition?</li><li>What do you need to see from a vendor to be comfortable enough to move?</li><li>What time-consuming processes should ask vendors if they can automate?</li></ul>



<p>By the end of this meeting, you should have a clear idea of what the team’s priorities are and who your project advocates will be. You’ll also know which team members are skeptical and what they need to see.</p>



<p><strong>Step 2: Determine your priorities </strong>&nbsp;<strong>&nbsp;</strong></p>



<p>If you don’t create clear objectives early in the process, then it will be difficult to discern between different options and you&#8217;ll open yourself up to being sold unnecessary features and functionality.</p>



<p>We always recommend our clients boil their needs down to five key outcomes. If this project could only succeed in five areas, what would those be? Often those outcomes are:&nbsp;</p>



<ul><li>Better integrations</li><li>Better reporting</li><li>More responsive support</li><li>Fewer systems</li><li>More scalability</li></ul>



<p>Most buyers make the mistake of starting their requirements-building process by creating a long list of features and functionality that they will need. And while there is some merit in this action, the problem is that almost every major HRIS vendor will be able to mark ‘Yes’ when you ask if they can offer that feature.&nbsp;</p>





<p>Remember, you’re trying to decide how easy actions are to complete, how integrated the HRIS is with the rest of your tools, and what support is available to you when you get stuck.</p>



<p>Get your key outcomes together and agreed upon first, then start to think through functionality and features.&nbsp;</p>



<p>If one of your key outcomes is “reducing the time to onboard each new hire from 5 hours to 1 hour” you can stay open-minded about how that’ll be accomplished. My clients are rarely looking for an integrated IT solution, but Rippling’s ability to provision software licenses automatically for new hires often achieves their desired outcome of reducing time to onboard, in a way my clients didn’t envision for themselves.</p>



<p>And if you need help building those requirements, this <a href="https://outsail.typeform.com/to/nVnOQmWo"><strong>Requirements Builder</strong></a> tool can save you time.</p>



<p><strong>Step 3: Cast a wide net</strong></p>



<p>When looking for potential vendors, don’t be afraid to gather quite a few names. Most people build their initial list by canvassing review websites and blogs, as well as reaching out to colleagues and peers to see which names pop up the most. Ask your insurance broker, accountant, and other third-party advisors you already work with.&nbsp;</p>



<p>It may seem counterintuitive to start with a longer list, but it will be easier to feel confident in your final decision if you&#8217;ve already ruled out a number of competing options.</p>



<p>There’s nothing worse than getting to the end of an evaluation process and not having an answer for a stakeholder when they ask, “Why didn’t we look at Vendor X?”&nbsp;</p>



<p>Also keep in mind that there are <a href="https://www.outsail.co/purchases/hr-software"><strong>free services</strong></a> that can recommend the right vendors for you, based on your requirements and goals.</p>



<p><strong>Step 4: Eliminate vendors quickly&nbsp;</strong></p>



<p>The key to building a targeted list is learning how to <a href="https://www.outsail.co/post/3-ways-to-rule-out-hris-vendors-without-getting-on-a-demo"><strong>rule out options without demos</strong></a>. Here are four ways to do that:</p>



<ol><li><strong>Missing functionality:</strong> Visit software vendors&#8217; websites to see if any of them are missing key modules that are in your requirements (i.e., vendors that can’t process payroll, vendors that don’t have an ATS, vendors that can’t support asset management).<br></li><li><strong>Size match</strong>: Visit software review websites and see the size of companies reviewing these platforms. If all of the reviews come from companies with fewer than 50 employees, you&#8217;ll know the tool is designed for SMBs and might be too limiting. If all of the reviews are from companies with 1,000+ employees, you&#8217;ll know the tool is designed for enterprise-scale companies.<br></li><li><strong>Scalability</strong>: While your short-term needs are most important, check for functionality that will grow with you over the next few years. Expect to grow your team? Expand into additional states? Make sure your vendor is a good fit both for where your company is today and where you’re headed.<br></li><li><strong>Vendor company’s trajectory</strong>: Ensure the vendors you evaluate are continuing to invest in improving the quality of their product and support so that two years from now you’ll still be using the best software on the market.&nbsp;</li></ol>



<p><strong>Step 5: Create a demo guide</strong></p>



<p>The next step is to ensure you don’t arrive to demo meetings empty-handed—your job is to be the one driving the evaluations. Set a meeting agenda and create questions to support your key criteria.</p>



<p>Let’s say your key criteria include: integrations, employee experience, payroll &amp; tax filing support, and scalability. You should send your potential vendors an agenda outlining how you want the meetings structured. Here’s an example:</p>



<ul><li>Initial overview covering company history &amp; trajectory</li><li>Demonstration of a day-in-the-life for employees</li><li>Admin experience including the build-out of custom workflows</li><li>Overview of support and implementation model (including how integrations are built)</li></ul>





<p>Create follow-up questions. For example, instead of asking, “Can you integrate with Vendor X?” Instead ask, “How is that integration built? Who is responsible for building it—us or your team? Will we have to maintain the integration over time?”</p>



<p>Sharing your criteria and questions in advance will also give the vendor time to prepare to give you meaningful answers in the moment. A little preparation will go a long way in ensuring you get everything you need out of your 60-90 minute demonstrations.</p>



<p><strong>Step 6: Get the best deal&nbsp;</strong></p>



<p>The final step in the process is often one that is most underutilized: negotiations. Most buyers just assume that a list price is fixed and can&#8217;t be moved. But in our experience, almost every single buyer who negotiates ends up with a better deal.</p>



<p>We&#8217;ve <a href="https://www.outsail.co/post/how-to-negotiate-an-hris-agreement"><strong>built a guide detailing how to negotiate</strong></a>, but a few of the key things to keep in mind are:</p>



<ul><li>It&#8217;s a give and a take, so if you want better terms, you&#8217;ll likely have to agree to signing a contract by a certain date, or agreeing to a multi-year contract</li><li>Your sales rep is your ally, so arm them with what they need to bargain on your behalf. The best course of action is almost always to have honest communication with your salesperson about your priorities and your decision making process.</li><li>Many HR/payroll vendors will operate on a monthly payment model but some offer annual billing terms where you pay your entire software fees upfront for the year and can negotiate a further discount</li></ul>



<p>The software your HR team chooses will dictate how long many of your team’s recurring tasks like payroll, employee onboarding, open enrollment, and more will take you. Your time is your most valuable asset. It’s easy to get bogged down in feature or price comparisons, but at the end of the day, don’t lose sight of the most valuable comparison: how much more can your team accomplish for your organization with one software platform vs another?&nbsp;</p>



<p><em>Brett Ungashick is the founder of <a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://www.outsail.co/" target="_blank">OutSail</a>, a Denver-based company that provides free services to help HR teams research, evaluate and select new technologies. </em></p>




How lean HR teams should evaluate HR and payroll software


<p>Onboarding matters. From work authorizations and open enrollment, to helping new employees transition into their roles, the onboarding experience sets the stage for how a new employee views your company. <a href="https://www.rippling.com/new-workweek">A recent survey</a> commissioned by Rippling found that 8 in 10 remote and hybrid workers believe they can predict whether they’ll like a new job based on the onboarding process.&nbsp;</p>



<p>Unfortunately, the enormous importance of onboarding comes with time-consuming tedium. Too often, your HR team is stuck wading through a long checklist of &#8220;chores&#8221; for every single new hire. The status quo of checklist after checklist, much of it including manual data entry, is inefficient drudgery that pains both HR pros and new employees.</p>



<p>There is a better way. We call it Rippling <a href="https://www.rippling.com/workflow">Workflow Automator</a>, and it’s built to make the onboarding for HR teams and new employees—dare we say—fun. It simplifies and automates your onboarding checklist by triggering alerts and actions off of any data you have within Rippling. This automation saves hours of manual work and ensures that your employees have the best possible onboarding experience.&nbsp;</p>



<p>Here are the top 5 workflows Rippling customers use to improve their onboarding process.&nbsp;</p>



<h2>1. <a href="https://www.rippling.com/recipes/new-hire-welcome-email">Automatically send welcome emails one week before the start date&nbsp;</a></h2>



<p>Automate new hire welcome emails to share important first-day details. For in-office and hybrid employees, you should share details like WiFi information, parking regulations and locations, and building access protocols. For remote employees, it is important to communicate device access logins and details, training resources, brand guidelines, and org charts.</p>





<h2>2. <a href="https://www.rippling.com/recipes/device-not-yet-shipped-for-new-hire">Automatically send a notification when a new hire’s device has not yet shipped</a></h2>



<p>Stay ahead of delivery delays, and make arrangements when needed. Automatically send a notification to a manager, IT admin—or whoever else you’d like—when an new hire’s device delivery is delayed.&nbsp;&nbsp;</p>





<h2>3. <a href="https://www.rippling.com/recipes/create-reminder-event-on-benefits-enrollment-deadline">Create a reminder event to communicate benefits enrollment deadlines&nbsp;</a></h2>



<p>When an employee has an upcoming benefits enrollment deadline, you can automatically add a block on their calendar to remind them when it’s due. This automation saves you the hassle of reminding them personally, and, more importantly, it ensures they don’t miss out or wind up auto-enrolled.&nbsp;</p>





<h2><strong>4.</strong> <a href="https://www.rippling.com/recipes/job-offer-accepted-notification">When a candidate accepts their offer, send a notification to their soon to be teammates&nbsp;</a></h2>



<p>Keep everyone in the loop and encourage team spirit right out of the gate. When a candidate accepts their offer, Rippling can automatically send a notification (through Slack or email) to their soon-to-be team, prompting them to reach out to their newest teammate with a warm welcome and prepare anything they’ll need to jump right into their role.&nbsp;</p>





<h2>5. <a href="https://app.rippling.com/custom-alerts/templates/select?active-recipe-id=24&amp;search=work">Send a notification when a new hire hasn’t received their work authorization&nbsp;</a></h2>



<p>Keep your hiring manager aware of delays with their new hire’s authorization, which can cause delays in their start date and onboarding process.</p>





<h2>Deliver a superior onboarding experience through intelligent automation&nbsp;</h2>



<p>Automating your onboarding process ensures that your new hires get everything they need, exactly when they need it. It also means less stress for your HR admins and managers—and less room for human error.&nbsp;<br>If you’re already a Rippling customer, we have a <a href="https://help.rippling.com/s/article/93083114224">Getting Started Guide</a> where you can read step-by-step instructions on how to set up all types of workflows. If not, and you’re interested in learning more about workflows, <a href="https://www.rippling.com/request-demo">schedule a demo</a> with our team today<strong>.</strong></p>




The top 5 ways to automate your onboarding checklist


<p>We’ll come right out and say it—93% of Americans currently working at least partially remotely do not expect to return to an office five days a week. A noteworthy statistic, but not altogether surprising. The past two years have fundamentally changed the way Americans think about their jobs.</p>





<p>We recently commissioned a random double-opt-in survey of 2,000 remote and hybrid workers across the U.S. to uncover how opinions on the American workweek have changed since the start of the pandemic.* That 93% statistic noted above is just one of 10 key findings showcased in our analysis: <a href="https://www.rippling.com/new-workweek" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener"><em>The New Workweek: Employee expectations after two years of working from home</em></a><em>.</em></p>



<p>These findings raise questions for organizations across the country. How should a business adapt its policies to reflect its employees&#8217; evolving sentiments? How will they act on those policies, especially with regards to key moments in an employee’s tenure like onboarding, offboarding, hardware and software changes, and performance reviews?&nbsp;</p>





<p>The organizations that can balance the shifting perspectives of their employees with the demands of their business, will be those that emerge from the pandemic more productive, agile, and resilient. And while there may be no simple answers to the challenges that have arisen as a result of two years of remote work, solutions become easier to uncover when the evolving opinions of American workers are accounted for.&nbsp;</p>



<p><a href="https://www.rippling.com/new-workweek">See the survey findings</a> &gt;&nbsp;</p>



<p class="has-small-font-size"><em>*Survey Methodology:&nbsp;This random double-opt-in survey of 2,000 Americans working remotely (fully remote and hybrid) was commissioned by Rippling between February 3 and February 4, 2022. It was conducted by market research company OnePoll, whose team members are members of the Market Research Society and have corporate membership to the American Association for Public Opinion Research (AAPOR) and the European Society for Opinion and Marketing Research (ESOMAR).</em></p>




The workweek is changing—here’s what the future may hold


<p>We’re pleased to welcome Brad Armstrong to the Rippling executive team as Senior Vice President, Business and Corporate Development.&nbsp;</p>



<p>Rippling is the first way for businesses to manage and automate everything that touches employees—from their payroll and benefits to devices and apps—in one unified platform. Now, in order to continue to deliver a great experience for our customers, we will continue to build a world-class partner ecosystem with seamless integrations. Brad will lead Rippling’s partnerships, ecosystem development, and M&amp;A teams.</p>





<p>&#8220;Our partner ecosystem is increasingly a reason to be a Rippling customer,&#8221; said Matt MacInnis, COO at Rippling. &#8220;Our customers use a lot of business systems to run their companies, and Brad is here to get every one of those integrated with Rippling. It&#8217;s a three-way win for Rippling, our partners, and most importantly our customers. There&#8217;s nobody in Silicon Valley better qualified to lead this effort.&#8221;</p>



<p>“Great platforms in enterprise software are rare. I’ve had the privilege to build ecosystems around two of the greatest: Salesforce and Slack. I believe Rippling has the potential to be the next indispensable platform for customers, developers and partners alike. So I’m incredibly excited to embark on this new journey, building partnerships that will be foundational for Rippling, for the industry at large, and, ultimately for our customers,” said Brad Armstrong, SVP of Business and Corporate Development at Rippling.</p>





<p>Brad joins us from Slack, where he spent six years building and leading Slack’s global business and corporate development functions, including partnerships, alliances, the Slack Fund, and M&amp;A. Under Brad’s leadership, Slack, entered into strategic partnerships with Salesforce, AWS, Google, Atlassian, Workday and ServiceNow, among many others, invested over $90M in early stage companies via Slack Fund, and acquired seven companies.</p>



<p>Prior to Slack, he was a VP at Salesforce, leading strategic business development. Several of the partnerships he forged later became acquisitions for Salesforce, including Mulesoft, Vlocity and Steelbrick. He was a founding member of the Salesforce AppExchange partner program, and held a range of leadership roles during his eight-year tenure at Salesforce.&nbsp;</p>



<p>We’re pleased to welcome Brad and we look forward to deepening our partnerships, expanding our App Shop, and continuing to provide a great experience for our customers.</p>



<p><a href="https://live-rippling-cms.pantheonsite.io/wp-admin/edit.php?post_type=post"></a></p>




Rippling hires Brad Armstrong as Senior Vice President, Business and Corporate Development


<p>The Rippling application is a Python monolith. Our repository has 1.91M lines of code and 8.6K Python files with 200+ developers contributing and merging 100+ PRs every day.&nbsp;</p>



<p>When I joined the development team, the application was already massive enough to put significant strain on our standard-issue development machines. It required considerable memory and CPU effort to simply run. Each time we’d open PyCharm (our preferred IDE for development) and bring our entire stack up, the laptop’s resources were pushed to the limits. Add a Zoom session to the mix and the dreaded <code>kernel_task</code> would kick in and our laptops would become unusable.&nbsp;</p>



<p>We needed to find a solution to our hardware resource challenges, one that played nice with a mostly remote development team and, most importantly, one that could handle a dynamic enterprise-scale Python repository. Here’s what we came up with.&nbsp;</p>



<h2>Working with remote servers&nbsp;</h2>



<p>From the start, we had a hunch that the solution to our hardware resourcing issues lay in the cloud. In June 2021, we started experimenting with offloading our application, and much of the compute load, to remote servers.&nbsp;</p>



<p>Our primary consideration was to retain developers&#8217; existing workflow of using PyCharm to develop code, run tests, access the backend server, debug issues, and use known keyboard shortcuts. Due to this, we rejected all browser-based cloud development solutions such as AWS Cloud9 and Codespaces.</p>



<p>We wanted the UX of local IDE with the resource power and scalability of the cloud. To meet these requirements, we chose to use EC2 servers hosted within our AWS account for the compute power while retaining PyCharm as the IDE.</p>



<p>In this approach:</p>



<ol><li>Developers continue to write code in PyCharm</li><li>As they write code, we sync it with the remote EC2 servers</li><li>Developers use their usual shortcuts to run tests and debug the application</li><li>Execution occurs on the EC2 servers with seamless integration to PyCharm’s output console</li></ol>



<h2>The sync &amp; testing challenge</h2>



<p>Our remote-first approach had many advantages over local machines, but we needed to solve two crucial requirements before implementing it company wide.&nbsp;</p>



<ol><li>The sync must be seamless and transparent with low latency. Developers should not wait for their changes to propagate every time they write code.</li><li>Retain the use of PyCharm as a built-in way of running/debugging tests. Developers can continue to use the same keyboard shortcuts, with minimal workflow disruption.&nbsp;</li></ol>





<p>First, we tried PyCharm’s remote deployment as it uses sftp to copy modified files. But the solution was not robust enough — whenever we switched branches or pulled new changes using git in the terminal, PyCharm could not detect all the added, modified, and removed files and sync accordingly. It was tremendously inconsistent.&nbsp;</p>



<p>In an attempt to solve for PyCharm’s inconsistencies, we turned to Mutagen, a robust open-source file synchronization tool with the ability to also forward ports. Essentially, it is a modern-day Rsync and SSH port forwarder that can be configured using a version-controlled configuration file.&nbsp;</p>



<p>Mutagen uses SSH protocol to sync with the remote instance. It runs an agent on both sides of the transmission to efficiently deduce what changes need to be shipped. To establish the SSH session, we used AWS SSM by configuring the SSH client to proxy the command through AWS CLI, thus accessing our instances without exposing those EC2 servers publicly. Once Mutagen established the SSH session, it started syncing code and forwarding necessary ports.</p>



<p>As Mutagen also handled port forwarding, developers were able to access the application through the same port (localhost:8000) as they had in the past.&nbsp;</p>





<p><em>Mutagen syncing code and forwarding ports</em></p>



<h2>Running our application and tests via PyCharm&nbsp;</h2>



<p>PyCharm’s remote deployment allowed us to use the remote instance’s Python interpreter to run Pytest. We were able to provision the instance using Terraform to have our application set up with all the necessary requirements like system libraries and Python requirements. However, this made maintaining automated instance setup and system library updates a challenge. We had to either recreate instances or run scripts on all the instances.</p>



<h2>Docker to the rescue</h2>



<p>PyCharm supports using a Docker image’s Python as an interpreter. We already had a local setup where developers could run the application using their local Docker. This has already provided significant benefits by keeping our local developer environment as close to production as possible.&nbsp;</p>



<p>We were able to use PyCharm’s remote Docker interpreter by connecting it to the EC2 instance’s Docker daemon listening over TCP through VPN. All tests ran through PyCharm seamlessly on the EC2 instance and we got the test results back inside PyCharm. The debugger works the same way. This meant there were no additional tools the user needed to use to develop.</p>





<h2>Bringing it all together</h2>



<p>To unite our new cloud development environment, we wrote a few scripts that would:</p>



<ol><li>Log in to AWS</li><li>Identify the instance for the developer&nbsp;</li><li>Start the instance</li><li>Start the sync using Mutagen along with port forwarding</li></ol>



<p>To trigger the scripts, a few PyCharm configuration files came in handy. Users run a PyCharm configuration to start the sync or the backend server or start/shut down the instance.</p>





<p><em>Users can start the sync through a PyCharm task</em></p>



<p>This would run the corresponding scripts inside PyCharm’s terminal.</p>





<p><em>All the necessary actions are provided as PyCharm run configurations.</em></p>



<p>Finally, we used Terraform automation to set up the EC2 instances with Docker daemon installed. Developers can manage all their dependencies and services through Docker. We persist Docker images, containers, and volumes on a separate disk. This makes the underlying EC2 instances ephemeral. In the end, developers raise a pull request and get approval to set up their cloud development environment, and start contributing in a matter of minutes.</p>



<h2>The benefits</h2>



<h3>1. Standardized setup for everyone&nbsp;</h3>



<p>No cases of “works on my machine.” Our code runs the same way from development to production. As we had adopted the Dockerized setup with ephemeral instances, the runtime environment was the same for every developer.&nbsp;</p>



<h3>2. Provisioned instances based on the developer&#8217;s needs</h3>



<p>We were able to use bigger CPU-optimized instances for developers in a team that worked on CPU-heavy operations. As we had “detailed monitoring” enabled, choosing the right size was metrics-driven and a simple configuration change.&nbsp;</p>



<h3>3. Faster app and test-running times.&nbsp;</h3>



<p>We saw a boost of 200% to 300% in the tests that were running. The EC2 instances were dedicated to running only the application and tests with native Docker support.</p>



<h3>4. Accelerated developer onboarding&nbsp;</h3>



<p>We saw a significant reduction in the time it took to set up the development environment for new hires—from two days to two hours.&nbsp;</p>



<h2>Rippling is hiring!</h2>



<p>As a member of the infra team, you’ll join a close-knit group of 10 as we help more than 200 engineers in India and the US run faster and safer. We’re obsessed with quality engineering and deep technical work. Even though we’ve got chops from some of the biggest tech companies on the planet, we’re always learning. No egos here.&nbsp;&nbsp;</p>



<p>We’re looking for Pythonistas to build frameworks, optimize, and find innovative-yet-simple solutions to growing problems that arise as Rippling scales multifold. You’ll guide other engineers, help them debug, understand their true needs, and help build industry-leading solutions.</p>



<p>An interest in open source is a plus as most of the code you’ll write will be business-agnostic.&nbsp;</p>



<p>Some solutions will demand knowledge across the entire stack i.e. how the code is scaled, deployed, and monitored. So knowledge of containers, deployment, instrumentation, etc. will make you more effective. Not a problem if you don&#8217;t have exposure, as long as you are willing to learn.</p>



<p><a href="https://www.rippling.com/careers" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">See the openings and apply here</a>.</p>




How we used the cloud to supercharge remote development


<p>On November 10, 2020, after over 16 months of work by a team of only 10 engineers, Rippling launched its first Professional Employer Organization (PEO). Building our PEO forced us to question all notions of typical SaaS product architectures—to say it was a challenge is an understatement!</p>



<p>Unlike other B2B SaaS products, which are built at a per client level, the Rippling PEO is a product suite that spans all of the PEO clients. This structure creates unusual security and data modeling problems not seen before in B2B products.&nbsp;</p>



<p>In this post, we’ll explain the issues we faced and how we modified the existing Rippling SaaS suite to support a PEO.&nbsp;</p>



<h2>What is a PEO?</h2>



<p>A PEO, or Professional Employer Organization, operates through a co-employment model, which means your employees are on the PEO&#8217;s books, but they are still under your management.</p>





<p>Clients prefer to join a PEO for two reasons:</p>



<ol><li>They don’t have to worry about keeping track of the myriad local, city, state, and federal compliance rules when hiring and managing employees in a remote-first world.</li><li>The PEO can provide high-quality, affordable health coverage on behalf of our worksite employees.</li></ol>



<p>PEOs can also solve an extremely messy problem for the government. To ensure compliance and accurate tax collection for small businesses, the government holds one PEO responsible, instead of thousands of smaller companies. Such consolidation saves the government time and money. </p>



<p>PEOs, by nature, create an unusual and complex multi-tenancy problem. How do we ensure that the data of one company is not accessed by another company? How do we ensure that our existing SaaS product suite, which is built for one company, can still be used for PEO clients where employees belong to multiple companies?&nbsp;</p>



<p>The solution starts with Rippling’s SaaS suite architecture.</p>



<h2>Rippling’s hub and spoke backend architecture</h2>



<p>The Rippling backend is set up as a “hub and spokes” model. The hub corresponds to core Rippling features like Rippling accounts, company and user information, and onboarding/offboarding flows. The spokes are individual services like payroll, benefits, or user provisioning in third-party apps.</p>



<p>Since a PEO requires us to file for taxes across all PEO clients under a single PEO company, we needed to modify the multi-tenant nature of the above hub and spoke architecture to support combined tax filings for PEO. However, this became more complex as the PEO filings requirement is not uniform across all states.</p>





<p>While at a federal level, a PEO is expected to pay taxes for all of its clients, at a state level, some states want a PEO to make a combined tax filing while in other states the expectation is for the PEO to file taxes on behalf of clients under the client&#8217;s own account.&nbsp;</p>



<p>For clarity we’ll call states which require tax payments under the PEO account as <em>PEO reporting states</em> and states that require tax payment under client account as <em>client reporting state</em>s.&nbsp;</p>



<p><strong>PEO reporting and client reporting states&nbsp;</strong></p>





<p><em>Source: https://www.napeo.org</em></p>



<p>The above image shows the tax reporting requirement across all US states as of 2019. Without getting into technicalities, you can imagine all grey and white-striped states as <em>PEO reporting states</em> and every other as a <em>client reporting state</em>.<br><br>We were tasked with building a platform with the following requirements:</p>



<ol><li>An employee can belong to 2 companies (client and PEO company)</li><li>A PEO company should act like a parent company of the client companies but employees should not be directly tied to the PEO company</li><li>For PEO reporting states, taxes will be paid to PEO company’s state account after the switch</li><li>For client reporting states, taxes will be paid to the same client’s state account even after switching to PEO</li><li>Maintain data consistency of company and employees before and after the client joins the PEO</li></ol>



<p>To create a robust and scalable multi-tenant architecture to support the following needs, we had to first understand Rippling’s existing tax filings architecture.</p>



<h2>Rippling’s tax filings: under the hood</h2>



<p>Payroll and filings are the most important and complex functionalities for a company. A PEO can make them even more complicated. Here’s how payroll and filings are handled in Rippling.</p>





<p>Every company has at least one legal entity (<code>CompanyTaxInfo</code> model), which is an identification number registered with the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) for an employer known as FEIN (Federal Employment Identification Number). Further, this FEIN is used to get the company registered with state agencies based on the office locations of the company. Each state agency has its tax account number, tax rate, and payment schedule which help determine the taxes being paid by the employee and employer.</p>



<p>In order to continue using the existing tax filings infrastructure, we decided to mimic a PEO company as any other company paying and filing taxes for different states and at a federal level.&nbsp;</p>



<p>We then had two different tax models, one for client and another for the PEO as detailed below.</p>







<p>To support the tax reporting of a client in both PEO reporting and client reporting states, we needed a way to tie the client’s company model to both the client’s company tax model and PEO’s company tax model. <em>We now needed to pay taxes for two FEINs for one single client company payroll account.&nbsp;</em></p>



<h2>PEO tax filings: under the hood</h2>



<p>To achieve multi-reporting architecture while still maintaining multi-tenancy, we had to first create a way to map client company to PEO company, connect both tax filing models, and enable fetching any of them on demand.</p>





<p>As you can see in the above image, we introduced a new field <code>peo_company</code> in the company model which points to the parent PEO company of a client company. For the client company, we duplicated the federal tax model to actually have two duplicate tax models. The first is the original tax model and the second would be used after the client joined the PEO.&nbsp;</p>



<p>We duplicated the state-level tax models as well. We only duplicated the client reporting states as the PEO reporting states are used in Rippling PEO’s state tax models.</p>





<p>Technically, we now have three legal entities which can be used by the client company. Now we just wanted an intelligent and robust system to pick correct agency attributes from correct objects according to various reporting types.&nbsp;</p>



<h2>Creating combined PEO-client objects during runtime while keeping data otherwise segregated in the database</h2>



<p>Although we defined the high-level database models, we had not solved how we wanted to report a company under two different FEIN entities without mixing data in the system.&nbsp;</p>



<p>We were tasked with creating such reports as an overlay on top of existing Rippling payroll and tax filings architecture which was not intended to have so many different tax objects for a single company. To do the above, we had to generate another additional tax model during runtime which was a merger of data from different PEO and client tax models. Doing so allowed the runtime object to work with the rest of our existing tax filing architecture. We called these runtime objects <em>hybrid taxation models.</em></p>



<p>The hybrid class creates runtime objects which mimic the <code>CompanyStateTaxInfo</code> objects but with logic changed for attribute getters. The <code>__getattr__ </code>function has the logic to correctly return field values related to state from the company and PEO’s legal entity’s state details.&nbsp;</p>



<p>For example: New York (NY) is a PEO reporting state while Arkansas (AK) is a client reporting one. So the hybrid object for NY state SUI of company A will return <code>account_id</code> of Rippling PEO’s NY state SUI and the hybrid object of AK state SUI of company A will return <code>account_id</code> of company’s AK state SUI. There are also some states that are mixed reporting where the <code>account_id</code> is of client’s state tax info but the rate is of PEO’s state tax info.</p>





<p><em>Implementation of basic hybrid class</em></p>



<p>Similar hybrid classes were created for other models as well to correctly compute taxes, tax filings, create W2s, etc. The hybrid models made sure we didn’t refactor the major components of the payroll architecture, support complex PEO agency use cases, and saved us significant time in the development of the PEO product.</p>



<p>The PEO recently celebrated 1 year anniversary and the team is growing across the locations and we need engineers to built the product to impact more businesses. By the way, did we mention we’re hiring? Come, <a href="https://www.rippling.com/careers#openings">join us</a>.</p>




How a team of only 10 engineers built Rippling’s PEO from scratch


<p>Talent management is having a moment. It’s all about ensuring candidates, new employees, and organization veterans have the best experience possible, so they can help make the business perform better. Forward-thinking HR teams are using automated platforms like Rippling to provide exceptional and fulfilling experiences from recruiting to retirement.</p>



<h2>What is talent management?</h2>



<p>Put simply, talent management is the strategic HR practice of attracting, developing, and retaining employees that make an organization better. Talent management programs bring out the best in people, so they can bring out the best in their organization.&nbsp;</p>



<p>All facets of HR are impacted by a talent management program. Talent management teams and their processes are strategically essential in high-performing organizations, especially in today’s dynamic economic climate and competitive hiring market.&nbsp;</p>



<p>In well-run talent management programs, success begets success. Happier, higher-performing employees bolster an organization’s culture from the inside out—their work helps inspire the best from their colleagues. Soon their standard of work and perspectives become adopted organization-wide.</p>



<h2>What is the best talent management strategy?</h2>



<p>The most effective talent management strategies work to unify an organization’s goals with the personal and professional development of its talent, creating a positive feedback loop in which the growth of the individual is inspired by, and inspires business success.&nbsp;</p>



<p>A successful talent management strategy is broadly focused on:</p>



<ul><li>Identifying and recruiting the best talent from pools of suitable candidates&nbsp;</li><li>Unifying the needs of the talent and the organization&nbsp;</li><li>Retaining the best talent&nbsp;</li></ul>





<p>Talent management strategies are most successful when they’re implemented across the employee spectrum—from prospective hires to organization veterans. Designing a strategy for broad employee categories is just the start, however. Platforms like Rippling make it possible to <a href="https://www.rippling.com/talent">customize employee experiences</a> at the individual level, meeting the employee exactly where they are in their professional journey.&nbsp;</p>



<h2>Recruiting the best talent</h2>



<p>Recruiting is, perhaps more than ever, the single most important component of a talent management strategy. If an organization doesn’t have the people, there is no talent to manage.&nbsp;</p>



<p>Over 4.5 million people in the U.S. willingly left their jobs in <a href="https://www.shrm.org/resourcesandtools/hr-topics/talent-acquisition/pages/interactive-quits-level-by-year.aspx">November of 2021</a>. That’s an increase of more than one million from November 2020. Those departures were triggered by a strong candidate market as well as the pandemic, <em>not</em> an economic downturn. The jobs are there, but people are not satisfied with their work.&nbsp;</p>



<p>Finding the right candidates amongst hundreds, even thousands of qualified individuals is a major challenge. Then, once those candidates are identified, they must be vetted properly — organizations don’t have the time or people power to hire a wrong fit. Organization and employee mismatches only cause more work for managers and often lead to employee departure.</p>



<p>With Rippling, it’s all seamless. Talent acquisition teams can improve their recruiting processes by:</p>



<ul><li>Posting job openings everywhere, quickly building candidate pipelines with the best talent</li><li>Creating custom hiring workflows based on position, department, or seniority&nbsp;</li><li>Automating interview scheduling with Outlook, iCal, and Google integrations&nbsp;</li><li>Integrating with all the major applicant tracking systems</li></ul>





<h2>Retaining the best talent</h2>



<p>The Harvard Business Review (HBR), one of the world’s most trusted publications on business strategy and innovation, <a href="https://hbr.org/2021/11/6-strategies-to-boost-retention-through-the-great-resignation">recently published a set of recommendations</a> to boost employee retention during the great-resignation era. As they note, “&#8230;companies need to get on the same page with employees by reconceptualizing what it means to be part of their organization.”&nbsp;</p>



<p>Rippling has the capabilities to help implement all of HBR’s recommendations.&nbsp;</p>



<h3>Incentivize loyalty&nbsp;</h3>



<p>Organizations must pay people enough to take the issue of compensation off the negotiation table. Bonuses, student loan assistance, and stipends to work from home are powerful options — and they can all be tracked and reported on instantly, from Rippling.&nbsp;</p>



<h3>Provide opportunities to grow&nbsp;</h3>



<p>Ensure, at every opportunity, that all employees have a job that makes the best use of their particular skills. As HBR notes, “&#8230;show current employees that you value them even more than potential new hires by providing them with new opportunities to grow and advance.”&nbsp;</p>



<p>Talent management in Rippling gives employees the tools and training they need to be successful. Organizations can easily access hundreds of pre-made courses to support career growth or even upload their own courses in the Learning Management System. Everything’s accessible within the employee’s Rippling profile. Milestones are automatically tracked and reported.&nbsp;</p>



<h3>Elevate your purpose&nbsp;</h3>



<p>Organizations must prove to employees that there’s more to the business than the bottom line. Rippling’s ability to integrate with all the major communication platforms like Slack, Google Workspace, and Office 365, makes it easy to ensure organizations are getting their message to the people that matter.&nbsp;</p>



<h3>Prioritize culture and connection&nbsp;</h3>



<p>Research during the COVID-19 pandemic, HBR notes, has shown that “social connection has a significant impact on productivity.” While this may seem intuitive, the pandemic has provided many organizations with first-hand experience of just how vital workplace culture is to employee retention.&nbsp;</p>



<p>With its ability to automate personal announcements like birthdays and work anniversaries, as well as its integration with the most popular workplace communication platforms, Rippling helps organizations meet their employees where they are. It gives organizations the power to prioritize culture in a remote-first world.&nbsp;</p>





<h3>Care for employees <em>and</em> their families while embracing flexibility</h3>



<p>The past two years have proved to millions that it’s possible to thrive while working remotely. It’s predicted that many employees will want to retain the ability to work remotely long after it is deemed safe to return to the office. It’s essential that organizations not only recognize this trend but embrace it.&nbsp;</p>



<p>The most empathetic organizations will also acknowledge the personal sacrifices their employees have made during the pandemic, and act accordingly. Whether that means paid time off or daycare subsidies, it’s all simple to organize within <a href="https://www.rippling.com/platform">Rippling’s employee platform</a>.</p>



<h2>How Rippling helps talent management teams</h2>



<p>Rippling is built to bring the best out of a workforce by eliminating the busy work caused by employee changes as well as delivering a personalized employee experience exactly when and where it’s needed most.&nbsp;</p>



<h3>Rippling automates everything&nbsp;</h3>



<p>Rippling gives HR and talent management teams the power to post openings to every job board with a single click. It also works seamlessly with hundreds of apps—like Google Workspace, Slack, and Office 365—so once an employee is hired, they’re automatically given the right permissions in the right apps.</p>



<p>“Automated notifications can help all employees feel valued and build company culture,” says Charlie Ng, HR Solutions Consultant at Rippling. “Little moments like birthday messages, company milestones, and team introductions—nothing slips through the cracks.”</p>



<h3>Onboarding and offboarding in 90 seconds</h3>



<p>Only Rippling can fully set up new hires, end to end, in 90 seconds. Rippling instantly sets up new employees’ payroll, health insurance, laptop, apps, and more. And, if they leave, Rippling can instantly disable everything, too.</p>



<h3>Custom measurements and reporting</h3>



<p>With Rippling, HR and talent management teams can easily measure time-to-fill, pipeline, or candidate feedback, and even set alerts to trigger when there are outliers.</p>



<h3>A fully automated <a href="https://www.rippling.com/lms">learning management system</a>&nbsp;</h3>



<p>Rippling intelligently assigns employee training courses, automatically tracks progress, and sends reminders when needed. It also provides essential workflow templates and the ability to upload custom SCORM e-learning packages.&nbsp;</p>



<p>Rippling Talent Management gives HR leaders the ability to enhance their organization’s most vital asset—its people, all from a single modern platform.</p>




Everything you need to know about talent management


<p>With Rippling, brokers can automate the most time-consuming aspects of small-group work including quoting, enrollment, and case submission, making even the smallest client profitable.&nbsp;</p>



<p>In 2021, dozens of our broker partners told us that they had to turn away small groups to better serve their large-group customers. The small groups simply took too much time and delivered too little value. The math didn’t work—until now.&nbsp;</p>



<p><em>We’ve solved the small-group equation. </em>Rippling can help you serve a broader market than the competition, with less effort.</p>





<h2>Get quotes in less than an hour</h2>



<p>Your team may be using a standalone quoting engine, working with a general agency, or perhaps they’re still manually choosing options from a library and creating a spreadsheet from scratch. Quoting like this is prone to error and can take nearly a full business week—not fun.&nbsp;</p>



<p>That’s where Rippling’s quoting solution comes in. It’s engineered to automate the most time-consuming parts of the quoting process while offering a dynamic and premium experience for your clients.&nbsp;</p>



<p>Here are the highlights:&nbsp;</p>



<h3>Automatic data entry<em>&nbsp;</em></h3>



<p>Designed to eliminate data entry, everything you need to compare plans is automatically piped into our platform. Gone are the days of having to manually enter information simply to get a quote.</p>



<h3>Simple and comprehensive plan comparison&nbsp;</h3>



<p>The Rippling quoting solution automatically identifies the equivalent for your group’s expiring plans and lets you and your team “shop” for options for your clients. We’ve designed and engineered the process to mimic an e-commerce experience—if you buy anything online, you’ll be right at home with Rippling.&nbsp;</p>



<h3>Instant &amp; flexible client-ready presentations</h3>



<p>Rippling automatically creates client-ready, side-by-side plan and benefit comparisons. If your clients want to change their benefits strategy—even if they want to change it during your presentation—you can find alternative plans and generate a new comparison on the spot. No more spreadsheets. And no more wasted time.&nbsp;</p>



<h2>Enrollment done right</h2>



<p>When open enrollment rolls around, every minute is precious. We’ve made it easy for you and your clients by allowing you to compare costs and select new plans in minutes, email employees to review and enroll online, and track everyone’s progress in one dashboard.&nbsp;</p>



<p>For groups quoted through Rippling’s marketplace, configuring open enrollment is practically automatic. The platform instantly pulls in all plan information like deductibles, copays, and coinsurance, as well as rate tables and SBCs.&nbsp;</p>



<p>And it’s all built with the same intuitive user experience as the rest of Rippling, so you’ll spend less time playing tech support and answering basic questions like “what’s a deductible?”.&nbsp;</p>



<p>Carrier case submission is one-click simple. We autogenerate all the appropriate carrier requested forms and the census, so all you have to do is download the file and forward it to the carrier for processing.&nbsp;</p>



<h2>New cases in an instant&nbsp;</h2>



<p>Rippling is also the only benefits software on the market <a href="https://www.rippling.com/blog/automated-carrier-fulfillment-for-brokers">automating</a> new case submissions. (Automation is currently available in CA, GA, IL, NY, and TX. Interested in using automation in your state? <a href="https://www.rippling.com/brokers-demo-request">Let us know</a>.) </p>



<p>Rippling automatically completes all the forms carriers require during new case submission (master applications, proof of payroll and ACH, and others) when placing new coverage. Since we’re also the payroll providers, we include other documentation like quarterly wage and tax reports, payroll journals, even discrepancy letters—it’s all done right, instantly.&nbsp;</p>



<h2>Ongoing account maintenance, simplified&nbsp;</h2>



<p>All employee records are stored and maintained within Rippling, giving you a single source of truth for case submissions and general account maintenance. You’ll be able to see what’s moving, what’s working—and what’s not—and troubleshoot as needed.</p>



<p>It’s also simple for employees to make the changes they need due to qualifying life events. Any account changes are transmitted directly to the carrier via form automation, EDI or API feeds, eliminating data entry errors and guesswork, ensuring the employee receives the benefits they need as efficiently as possible.&nbsp;&nbsp;</p>



<h2>Small groups are big business&nbsp;</h2>



<p>If you’ve made it this far, it should be clear that Rippling is unlike any other HR platform on the market—flexible, dynamic, and automatic, it can shrink your small-group work from days to hours. When time is money, efficient servicing is critical for any broker to make a small group a worthwhile client. You get to build a bigger book of business, without the legwork and overhead traditionally required to do so. Profit minus the headaches? Yes, please.&nbsp;</p>



<p>We’ll also pay you up to $3,000 per referral when you partner with us. Interested? <a href="https://www.rippling.com/brokers-demo-request">Talk to a Partner Manager to get started</a>.</p>




How brokers use Rippling to make even the smallest clients profitable


<p>Tax season is around the corner, but it’s hardly business as usual. The past few years have brought rafts of new legislation. From tax reform to emergency COVID relief, there are a lot of new provisions to remember as you assist your clients this tax season.&nbsp;</p>



<p>Think you nailed it last year? Well, you probably did! But while many of the new provisions have stuck, others are being dropped. It’s tricky keeping track of the new rules when they’re constantly in flux.</p>



<p>For those who advise small businesses and business owners, it’s especially important to understand how this tax season will differ from previous years.&nbsp;</p>



<p>In this post, we’re going to cover the biggest changes to the tax landscape—including the SECURE Act, the CARES Act, and Form 1099 updates—with special attention to what’s disappearing this year, what’s staying the same, and what’s getting slightly tweaked.&nbsp;</p>



<p>We’ll cover:</p>



<ul><li>Terms to know</li><li>The SECURE Act</li><li>The CARES Act</li><li>Form 1099&nbsp;</li><li>How to advise clients where it counts</li></ul>



<h2><strong>Terms to know&nbsp;</strong></h2>



<p>Before we get into the nitty-gritty, a glossary. Most of these terms are probably known to you, but it always helps to establish a shared vocabulary.&nbsp;</p>



<p><strong>IRA&nbsp;</strong><br>Individual retirement arrangement (or “account”), as distinct from employer plans.&nbsp;</p>



<p><strong>Governmental plan</strong><br>A retirement savings plan issued for employees of state or local government or agencies.&nbsp;</p>



<p><strong>529 plan</strong><br>A savings account traditionally reserved for tuition, books, and other qualified education expenses.&nbsp;</p>



<p><strong>Roth IRA</strong><br>An individual retirement arrangement that is non-deductible, exempt from required minimum distributions, and tax-free.&nbsp;</p>



<p><strong>The “stretch” IRA&nbsp;</strong><br>Historically, <a href="https://www.irs.gov/publications/p590b#en_US_2020_publink1000230538">the “stretch” IRA</a> has allowed non-spouse beneficiaries to inherit employer plan accounts and IRAs and withdraw distributions based on their own life expectancy, rather than the original account holder’s.&nbsp;</p>



<p><strong>RMD</strong><br><a href="https://www.irs.gov/retirement-plans/plan-participant-employee/retirement-topics-required-minimum-distributions-rmds">Required minimum distributions</a>, or RMDs, are the minimum amount that an account holder must withdraw from their retirement account annually once they reach a certain age. Historically, that age has been 70 1/2.&nbsp;</p>



<h2><strong>The SECURE Act&nbsp;</strong></h2>



<h3><strong>What is the SECURE Act?</strong></h3>



<p><a href="https://www.congress.gov/bill/116th-congress/house-bill/8495?s=1&amp;r=9">The Setting Every Community Up for Retirement Enhancement (SECURE) Act </a>was signed into law by President Trump on December 20, 2019. It significantly overhauled many of the retirement plans that are most popular with Americans. Although some of these changes were already in effect last tax season, there are some updates to the SECURE Act you’ll want to know about.</p>



<h3><strong>What are the key components of the SECURE Act?&nbsp;</strong></h3>



<p><strong>Small business incentives&nbsp;</strong><br>The SECURE Act provides several tax incentives for small businesses implementing retirement plans for their employees. These include:</p>



<ul><li>A $500 tax credit for three years, simply for automatically enrolling all new hires</li><li>Up to $5,000 for setting up a retirement plan (small businesses are eligible if they adopt a new plan before the filing date)</li><li>Simplified rules and notice requirements for qualified non-elective contributions to safe harbor 401(k) plans</li></ul>



<p><strong>401(k)s for part-time employees</strong><br>Previously, employers could exclude part-time employees working less than 1,000 hours from their 401(k) programs. The SECURE Act broadened the criteria to be more inclusive. Now, part-time employees are eligible for 401(k) contributions if:&nbsp;</p>



<ul><li>They are 21 or older&nbsp;</li><li>They have worked at least three consecutive years at their employer</li><li>They have worked at least 500 hours per year at their employer&nbsp;</li></ul>





<p><strong>IRAs for graduate students&nbsp;</strong><br>Before the SECURE Act, the stipends and non-tuition payments that graduate and postdoctoral students received were not treated as compensation. The SECURE Act has reversed this. That allows students to make IRA contributions with this money.&nbsp;</p>



<p><strong>IRA contribution age eliminated&nbsp;</strong><br>As a result of the SECURE Act, employees older than 70 1/2 can continue contributing to a traditional IRA. But be advised: As long as an account holder takes advantage of this extension, they will not be able to make qualified charitable distributions with their IRA.&nbsp;</p>



<p><strong>Penalty-free withdrawals for loan debt&nbsp;</strong><br>Until now, beneficiaries have not been able to use these 529 plans to pay off student loan debt. With the implementation of the SECURE Act, 529 account holders can now withdraw up to $10,000, per beneficiary, for paying off student loan debt.&nbsp;</p>



<p><strong>Penalty-free withdrawals for birth or adoption&nbsp;</strong><br>As of 2021, account holders can make withdrawals from their retirement plan, without penalty, for costs related to the birth or adoption of a child. Each parent can withdraw up to $5,000 for each qualified birth or adoption. These withdrawals can later be repaid into an IRA without counting toward an account holder’s annual limit.&nbsp;</p>



<p><strong>Annuities in 401(k) plans&nbsp;</strong><br>The SECURE Act relaxes many of the regulations around <a href="https://www.irs.gov/publications/p575">annuities</a> so that it’s easier to add them to employer retirement plans. This allows account holders to continue using 401(k)s and 403(b)s as lifetime income streams, without the risk or cost of having to transfer those funds.&nbsp;</p>



<p><strong>RMDs delayed to age 72&nbsp;</strong><br>Account holders can now wait until they are 72 before receiving their first RMD. This rule is only applicable to individuals who did not reach age 70 1/2 by the end of 2019.&nbsp;</p>



<p><strong>Changes to the “stretch” IRA&nbsp;</strong><br>With the passage of the SECURE Act, there are some major <a href="https://www.irs.gov/retirement-plans/required-minimum-distributions-for-ira-beneficiaries">changes to the “stretch” IRA</a>. Beneficiaries who have already inherited the “stretch” IRA will be grandfathered in under the old rules. “Eligible designated beneficiaries” will also continue to follow the old rules. These include:&nbsp;</p>



<ul><li>Spouses&nbsp;</li><li>Individuals less than 10 years younger than the deceased account holder&nbsp;</li><li>Children so long as they are minors</li><li>Disabled beneficiaries&nbsp;</li><li>Chronically ill beneficiaries&nbsp;</li></ul>



<p>Any other designated beneficiaries will now have to withdraw the entire account over the course of a 10-year period, rather than a period based on their own life expectancy. This has the potential to significantly increase their income tax burden.&nbsp;</p>



<p>Non-designated beneficiaries, such as charities and trusts, will need to withdraw the entire account over the course of five years. Additionally, all beneficiaries have the option of withdrawing the inherited account as a lump sum.&nbsp;</p>



<p><strong>Penalty increases&nbsp;</strong><br>For all its benefits, the SECURE Act does carry some new penalties you need to be aware of. Filers will pay more if they file late on these forms:&nbsp;</p>



<ul><li><a href="https://www.irs.gov/retirement-plans/form-5500-corner">Form 5500</a>: $250 per day, up to a maximum of $150,000</li><li><a href="https://www.irs.gov/forms-pubs/about-form-8955-ssa">Form 8955-SSA</a>: $10 for each participant, per day, up to a maximum of $50,000</li><li>Tax withholding notice: $100 for each failure per year, up to a maximum of $50,000&nbsp;</li></ul>





<h2><strong>The CARES Act</strong></h2>



<h3><strong>What is the CARES Act?&nbsp;</strong></h3>



<p><a href="https://www.congress.gov/bill/116th-congress/house-bill/748?q=%7B%22search%22%3A%5B%22Hr+748%22%5D%7D&amp;s=1&amp;r=1">The Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act</a> was signed into law by President Trump on March 27, 2020. While some of its provisions will still be relevant this tax season, many have not been renewed.</p>



<h3><strong>What are the key components of the CARES Act?&nbsp;</strong></h3>



<p><strong>PPP loans&nbsp;</strong><br><a href="https://www.sba.gov/funding-programs/loans/covid-19-relief-options/paycheck-protection-program">Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) loans</a> have helped small businesses keep their workers employed during the pandemic. There were two rounds during which businesses could earn loan forgiveness by meeting certain criteria. Round One ended on August 8, 2020. Round Two ended on May 31, 2021.&nbsp;</p>





<p><strong>EIDL loans&nbsp;</strong><br>Economic Injury Disaster Loans, or EIDL loans, ended on June 15, 2020. But for some businesses and nonprofits that have been hit hard by COVID-19, there is still an opportunity to apply for <a href="https://www.sba.gov/funding-programs/loans/covid-19-relief-options/eidl/targeted-eidl-advance-supplemental-targeted-advance">EIDL targeted advances</a>.&nbsp;</p>



<p><strong>Cash deductions&nbsp;</strong><br>As part of the CARES Act, filers in 2020 could write off $300 in charitable cash gifts on their tax return, without itemizing. In 2021, that deduction remains $300 for single filers but has been increased to $600 for joint filers.&nbsp;</p>



<p>The limitation for cash deductions has also increased from 60% of adjusted gross income to 100%. Please note that gifts made to donor-advised funds and 509(a)(3) organizations are not eligible. The same is true for private foundations.&nbsp;</p>



<h3><strong>Which CARES Act provisions were not renewed for 2021?</strong></h3>



<p><strong>The RMD waiver</strong><br>Although RMDs were waived for 2020, they are not waived for 2021. Unlike in 2020, account holders will also not be allowed to roll over their RMDs to other IRA accounts.&nbsp;</p>



<p><strong>The early withdrawal exception</strong><br>In 2020, for those affected by COVID-19, <a href="https://www.irs.gov/newsroom/coronavirus-related-relief-for-retirement-plans-and-iras-questions-and-answers">early withdrawals</a> of up to $100,000 were allowed from retirement accounts. In 2021, account holders will once again face a 10% penalty for withdrawing early.&nbsp;</p>



<h2><strong>Form 1099&nbsp;</strong></h2>



<h3><strong>Form 1099 updates</strong></h3>



<p>The IRS has made some changes to a few of the <a href="https://www.irs.gov/forms-pubs/about-form-1099">1099 forms</a> that you’ll want to be aware of this tax season.</p>



<p><strong>1099-NEC&nbsp;</strong><br><a href="https://www.irs.gov/forms-pubs/about-form-1099-nec">This form </a>reports non-employee compensation. In 2020 the IRS re-implemented this form for the first time in almost thirty years. It replaced Box 7 on 1099-MISC.&nbsp;</p>



<p><strong>What’s changing for 1099-NEC in 2022?&nbsp;</strong></p>



<ul><li>Box<strong> </strong>1 will no longer be used for reporting</li><li>You may choose between using Box 2 on the 1099-NEC or Box 7 on 1099-MISC&nbsp;</li><li>Box 13 is now assigned to the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act&nbsp;</li><li>Taxpayers will be able to file Form 1099-NEC electronically</li><li>The filing date is January 31, for both paper and electronic filing</li></ul>



<p><strong>1099-MISC&nbsp;</strong><br><a href="https://www.irs.gov/forms-pubs/about-form-1099-misc">This form </a>reports miscellaneous income, excluding employment-related compensation. It reports payments of:&nbsp;</p>



<ul><li>At least $10 in royalties or broker payments, in lieu of dividends or tax-exempt interest</li><li>At least $600 in rent; prizes and awards; other income payments; medical and health care payments; crop insurance proceeds; cash payments for fish and other aquatic life purchased from anyone engaged in the trade or business of catching fish; cash paid from a notional principal contract to an individual, partnership or estate; payments to an attorney; and any fishing boat proceeds</li><li>At least $5,000 of consumer products sold anywhere other than a permanent retail establishment</li></ul>



<p><strong>What’s changing for 1099-MISC in 2022?&nbsp;</strong></p>



<ul><li>Box 7 is assigned to direct sales of consumer products</li><li>Box 9 is assigned to crop insurance proceeds</li><li>Box 10 is assigned to an attorney’s gross proceeds&nbsp;</li><li>Box 11 is assigned to cash payments for the purchase of fish for resale purposes</li><li>Box 12 is assigned to deferral of compensation</li><li>Box 14 is assigned to nonqualified deferred compensation&nbsp;</li><li>Box 15 is for state taxes withheld&nbsp;</li><li>Box 16 is for the state identification number</li><li>Box 17 is the amount of income earned in the state</li><li>The filing date is February 28 for paper, March 31 for electronic&nbsp;</li></ul>



<p><strong>Form 1099-K&nbsp;</strong><br><a href="https://www.irs.gov/forms-pubs/about-form-1099-k">This form</a> reports certain payment transactions from a credit card company.&nbsp;</p>



<p><strong>What’s changing for Form 1099-K?&nbsp;</strong><br>Of all the 1099 forms, this one will experience the most dramatic change. Previously, this form was required when card payments exceeded 200 transactions, in excess of $20,000. Because of the spike in online sales this past year, 1099-K will now be required for card payment transactions exceeding $600.&nbsp;</p>



<h2><strong>Advise clients where it counts&nbsp;&nbsp;</strong></h2>



<p>Obviously, learning the quirks of new legislation and updated forms is just the beginning. Any old blog post can tell you about those. The real impact you make for your clients is by understanding their unique circumstances and leveraging the tax code to their advantage.&nbsp;</p>



<p>Rippling is <a href="https://www.rippling.com/blog/rippling-for-accountants">a great tool for accountants who want to spend less time on busy work</a> and more time fulfilling that advisory role. For tax season there are many ways Rippling can help you and your clients, like automatically filing and creating powerful reports. But it can also make your life magically simple in the off season, too.&nbsp;</p>



<p>Using Rippling, you can run payroll for your clients in just two clicks. And it can do a lot more than that. Rippling will help you take hundreds of administrative headaches off your clients’ plates. You can set up employee access to third-party apps like Slack, order computers for new hires, streamline bookkeeping, and more.&nbsp;</p>



<p>Some of the things you and your clients get when using Rippling:&nbsp;</p>



<ul><li><a href="https://www.rippling.com/analytics"><strong>Unified analytics</strong></a><strong>.</strong> Build powerful reports using your clients’ and your datasets across HR, IT, and other systems.</li><li><a href="https://www.rippling.com/workflow"><strong>Workflow automator</strong></a><strong>. </strong>Automate workflows in Rippling and third-party apps, using&nbsp; custom “no-code” triggers based on your clients’ and your data.&nbsp;</li><li><a href="https://www.rippling.com/policies"><strong>Policies</strong></a><strong> and </strong><a href="https://www.rippling.com/permissions"><strong>permissions</strong></a><strong>. </strong>Apply policies, membership, and configuration to any of your business systems, within or outside Rippling, from one place.&nbsp;</li></ul>



<p>Interested in providing your clients with more than they ever knew to ask for? We’d love to hear from you!</p>







<h5 class="is-style-overline">See Rippling</h5>



<p class="text-28 leading-36 mb-16 w-250 ml-auto mr-auto md:ml-0 md:mr-0">See Rippling in action</p>








Your tax season game plan: Updates and upcoming changes for 2022


<p>For those engineers who work in a larger organization with a separate HR department or where managers handle HR tasks, allow me to illustrate the behind-the-scenes process of doing something as simple as changing an employee’s address.</p>



<p>Step 1: An employee changes their address</p>



<p>Step 2: An HR representative sees the change, sighs, and bangs their head against a desk</p>



<p>Step 3: They proceed to change the employee’s address in all of the relevant business systems and send out emails across the company to all stakeholders in order to comply with policies or change stuff in other systems</p>



<p>The exact process may vary, but imagine how many thousands of hours are wasted across your organization for simple changes like these. And that is assuming everything goes as planned—what happens when no one sees the change or someone misses one of those other emails?</p>



<p>“Why isn’t all this automated?” you ask; great question!</p>



<p>You can probably guess where I am going with this: We’ve built a product at Rippling to eliminate the busy work of administering a company while being customizable enough to adapt to the many permutations of systems and policies seen across organizations.</p>



<p>With Workflow Automator, organizations can, for example:</p>



<ul><li>Configure a Slack message to be sent to a manager who attempts to hire someone into the engineering department with a salary below a certain threshold</li><li>Send a reminder via email to an engineer with more than 5 open pull requests</li></ul>



<p>There are countless possibilities, and you can read more about Workflow Automator <a href="https://www.rippling.com/blog/go-beyond-basic-automation-with-workflow-automator">here</a>, but today, we’re going to be taking a look at one of the underlying systems that makes this a reality. Several major in-house technologies, including our new scripting language, went into building Workflow Automator; here we’ll be highlighting the workflow engine that glues everything together.</p>



<p>First, we’ll define what a workflow is, and then we’ll take a look at what the workflow engine actually does and some goals it sought to address before wrapping up with a brief discussion on its implementation.</p>





<p>So, good news, a workflow is pretty much what you are thinking of right now. It is a series of events that needs to be run as a result of some launch trigger, whether that be some new data point matching a query or someone clicking a “start” button on a webpage. In the context of Workflow Automator, it is the former—something like “if an employee’s salary changes to above $60,000, send an email to the finance department”. In the most general case, a workflow is an “if, then” series of events, and the workflow engine is a framework that 1) monitors the state of the if condition and 2) manages the execution of any follow up events while facilitating the transfer of data between these events.</p>



<p>There are two types of events in a workflow:</p>



<ul><li>Trigger: an event that launches a workflow</li><li>Action: an operation that is performed after a trigger fires (the canonical workflow step)</li></ul>



<p>In most cases, the sequence and dependency tree of events is formatted as a directed acyclic graph (DAG). I say most cases as you can nest workflows, which breaks the traditional definition, but that is an implementation detail beyond the scope of this discussion.</p>



<p>There is something important that we have failed to mention here—something that derives from the fact that actions have dynamic dependencies. For example, if you want to send a Slack message, you need to know where to send it, and to make this workflow even half useful, that recipient is probably related to something in the trigger. So at runtime, you need to be able to pass data through this DAG.</p>





<p>This is where the concept of contexts comes in. A context is a blob of data that is generated by a trigger or action when it executes. In an earlier example, when the trigger “an employee changes their address” fires, we know the ID of the person in question. That ID will live as a dependency inside the trigger’s context and can be used by any action downstream of it. So if our action A here is Slack, it will be able to pull that ID from the upstream context and use it to determine its recipients. These contexts essentially form a parallel DAG at runtime.</p>



<p>For the sake of common terminology, we will refer to a single run of a workflow as a job going forward.</p>



<p>Touching on goals, our workflow engine must allow engineers and users to swap events in and out, so, for example, if someone wants to create a calendar event instead of a JIRA ticket, they can do that. As a framework level system, we also wanted an event built for one product (e.g. send an email in Workflow Automator) to be usable by some other product that may eventually get built. This is perhaps a given, but we also want to minimize or eliminate the possibility that errors outside of the event’s business logic itself result in the workflow failing—infrastructure issues chief among them. More Rippling specific, this library needs to be infrastructure agnostic and able to adapt as we grow. Currently we run on our in-house task runner, but that may change as we scale.</p>



<p>Now that we’ve discussed some of our high level goals, we’ll briefly highlight some important implementation decisions we made without getting too into the weeds.</p>





<p>For starters, our workflow engine processes workflows in 6 stages:</p>



<h3>Listen for triggers</h3>



<p>Our users have defined some conditions under which to trigger a workflow. We register these conditions and listen for matching events or data changes. If a match is detected, we spool up stage 2 and pass in the event context.</p>



<h3>Trigger state updates + anomaly detection</h3>



<p>When we detect a triggering event, we want to do two things. First, we want to dynamically update the state of our trigger to adjust triggering conditions (eg. prevent duplicate triggers on the same employee). Second, we want to ensure that this triggering event is valid before progressing to the next stage (eg. filter out a torrent of workflows caused by a bad migration somewhere else in the company).</p>



<h3>Launch new job</h3>



<p>For triggering events deemed valid, we want to create a new job, or workflow run, for each of them; that happens in this stage.</p>



<h3>Update job state</h3>



<p>Our trigger (from stage 3) or action (from stage 6) reports back to the workflow engine to update the status of the current job and determine which actions are downstream of it.</p>



<h3>Determine ready state of next action</h3>



<p>For pending actions downstream of the event that reported back in stage 5, we evaluate whether they are ready to execute. This is most relevant for actions who should only execute if upstream events completed with a certain status (eg. success or failed) or completed with a certain output (eg. created a calendar event for more than 10 people). For each action that is deemed ready, we move on to the next stage.</p>



<p>Accounting for concurrency is particularly important here as there may be multiple upstream actions reporting back simultaneously.</p>



<h3>Perform the action</h3>



<p>Simple enough, this is where we send an email, trigger a webhook, etc. Some actions, like outgoing messages via Slack, require us to rate limit our third party api requests. In these cases, stage 6 sends these messages to a rate limiting queue and a listener waits for them to be processed before continuing on. When this stage succeeds or fails, we loop back to stage 4 to update the job.</p>



<p>You can think of each stage as a function that takes as input the configuration of the workflow and the state of the job (what event triggered it, the status of upstream actions, etc.). These stages are parallelized, so a given job may be executing multiple actions simultaneously.</p>





<p>Now, how do we ensure that workflows progress through each stage even if transient and unexpected errors arise with the underlying infrastructure or external apis? This is where our system of tickets and handlers comes in. Before each stage is run, a ‘ticket’ must be created for it. A ticket is simply an entry in the database that indicates that the stage must be run. This persistence is important as it maintains our workflow’s state through external disruptions. When a worker pops this ticket off the queue, before the ticket is marked as complete, a ‘handler’ is created. This is basically the same thing as a ticket, but intra-stage as opposed to the inter-stage ticket. The stage executes while the handler is marked as in progress, and before the handler is marked as complete, we create a ticket for the following stage. Obviously errors during handoff can result in duplicates, so deduplication is critical.</p>



<p>These persisted tickets and handlers allow our recovery system to detect and restart the workflow after external disruptions at a partially complete state, meaning that an entire run of a workflow doesn’t have to be restarted due to a timed out api call.</p>



<p>Tracing these design decisions back to our initial product goals, we wanted to provide users with a configurable, but reliable, automation framework that eliminates the busy work and stress of day-to-day administration. As we continue to run this system in production at greater and greater scale, we will share our learnings, but for now, be on the lookout for articles highlighting other technical underpinnings of our Unity launch.<br></p>



<p>As always, if you’re interested in building systems like this and in tackling new product challenges with a fun team, <a href="https://www.rippling.com/careers">take a look at our careers page here</a>!</p>




The code behind Rippling's no-code workflow automation tools


<p>This isn’t the biggest launch we’ve ever done at Rippling. But it’s one of the scariest, for sure.</p>



<p><strong>Starting today, Rippling is publicly <a href="https://www.rippling.com/support-status" data-type="URL" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">publishing real-time metrics about our customer support</a>.&nbsp;</strong></p>



<p>Many companies publish “status pages” showing downtime, incidents, and so on. This is a real-time “status page” for Rippling’s support quality and responsiveness.</p>





<h2>Why is this scary?</h2>



<p>Thanks to our incredible team, our metrics today, at the height of our busiest season, are really good. Over the last 90 days, our median response time was 51 seconds on average, and 34 seconds in the last week. But we’ve had blips in the past, and it’s inevitable that, sooner or later, we will have some bad days. If we fall behind responding to customers, it’s going to be there for the whole world to see—customers, prospective customers, and competitors.</p>



<h2>So why are we doing it?</h2>



<p>To the best of our knowledge, none of our competitors publish this data. But, we’re hoping that by taking this step, we can lead the way for the entire industry.</p>



<p>Support quality is an important consideration when choosing a system that’s as core to your business as Rippling is. We’re proud that <a href="https://www.g2.com/compare/rippling-vs-gusto-vs-run-powered-by-adp-vs-workday-hcm">customer ratings on G2 Crowd</a> consistently rate Rippling’s support better than any other <a href="https://www.rippling.com/hris">Payroll &amp; HR system</a>, and also better than any other <a href="https://www.rippling.com/app-management">App &amp; Identity Management system</a>.</p>



<p>But without the actual data, customers are left guessing as to the support they’ll receive.</p>



<p>All of our competitors talk about the quality of their support. But talk is cheap. Rippling is the first company to prove it, with data.</p>



<p>And we aren’t just showing rosy averages—we’re also publishing 90th percentile response times, a far more punitive metric which shows you how long it takes us to respond in the worst 10% of cases.<br></p>



<p>We think this is the right thing for our customers and the right thing for our industry.</p>



<p><strong>That’s why we are challenging our customers and prospective customers: the next time a company tells you they have great support, ask them for public, published support metrics such as these.&nbsp;</strong></p>



<p>And if they won’t provide it, that should tell you something. This is the only way we’re going to raise the bar for the support quality we all expect.</p>




Call to Arms: Make customer support stats public


<p>Ensuring you have the right permissions governing data and systems access for your employees is critical to building a secure and high-performing organization.&nbsp;</p>



<p>But, maintaining those permissions is a hard, and manual, task in most software systems.</p>



<p>You promote each user to admin status, in each system, one at a time. And when someone leaves, or their role changes in a way that requires that their permissions change, you have to make those updates manually as well.<s>&nbsp;</s></p>



<p>This gets harder to manage when admin permissions aren’t binary, and require you to specify the scope of someone’s authority. For example, you might be an admin, but only for a certain part of the organization. Or you can make changes, but others need to sign off on them to take effect.&nbsp;</p>



<p>In systems where “approval” is required—whether it’s for a raise, an expense reimbursement, a new computer, or access to a system—that approval is always implicitly about “role” and each employee’s organizational “relationship” to others in the company. For example, you might need approval from your manager, your HR Business Partner, the VP of your department—but who each of these people are will change and evolve as your role within the company changes.</p>



<p>As your team grows, so does the effort required to maintain these permissions, and it’s inevitable that people won’t have the permissions they’re supposed to have.</p>



<p>That’s why we’re excited to introduce our latest feature: <a href="https://www.rippling.com/permissions" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener"><strong>role-based permissions</strong></a>—a new, better way to manage permissions across your company, built on top of Rippling’s game-changing <a href="https://www.rippling.com/blog/introducing-rippling-unity" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">employee graph</a>.</p>



<h2>Role-based permissions: a better way to control employee access&nbsp;&nbsp;</h2>



<p>Role-based permissions let you ‘set and forget’ your policies for admin access, approvals, and change management—all from one place.&nbsp;</p>



<p>You select the criteria that govern:<br></p>



<ul><li>which employees get admin access to your systems based on high-level employee attributes (e.g. their department, level, team memberships, location, etc.)<br></li><li>the subset of the organization their permissions apply to (e.g. only their department or direct reports)</li></ul>



<ul><li>the types of data they can access and actions they can take (both in Rippling and your integrated business systems)</li></ul>



<ul><li>when additional approval is required for attempted changes, and from whom (e.g. ‘their HR Business Partner’ or ‘their department’s VP&#8217;).</li></ul>



<p>For example, you could create a ‘Support Managers’ permission profile that applies only to Support managers Level 6 and above, and lets them access information only for their direct reports.&nbsp;</p>



<p>From there, Rippling identifies which employees match your criteria, and automatically grants them the right permissions.</p>





<p>We’ve written previously about why we think <a href="https://www.rippling.com/blog/introducing-rippling-unity">graph-based representations of employee information are going to transform HR, IT, Finance, and other functions</a>.<br><br>Importantly, because Rippling’s role-based permissions are built on top of this employee graph, you can write out generic rules for these permissions without ever referring to any specific individual in your organization—only specifying characteristics from the Graph like levels, departments, reporting relationships, and more. This is powerful stuff—individuals come and go, their roles change over time. The logic you create for permissions in Rippling is evergreen.</p>



<h2>What&#8217;s the problem with how most HR and IT systems manage permissions?</h2>



<p>The administrative busywork involved in assigning and maintaining permissions isn’t just time-consuming—it also leads to businesses encountering two big issues time and again: <strong>&nbsp;</strong></p>



<h3>Providing the wrong level of permissions.&nbsp;</h3>



<p>When manual updates are involved, it increases the risk of someone accidentally giving someone more access than they should, or forgetting to update permissions when needed. That can lead to a whole host of problems, the most serious being that an employee’s sensitive data—like compensation or SSN—is exposed to someone who shouldn’t have access.&nbsp;</p>



<h3>Inefficiencies from overly restricting permissions.&nbsp;</h3>



<p>To avoid the problems above, most companies tend to overcorrect; granting permissions to only a few key administrators instead. And while that solves the maintenance problem to a certain extent, it introduces <em>new</em> inefficiencies instead.&nbsp;</p>



<p>Things like hiring, running headcount reports, or leveraging time-saving automation tools is then limited to a small pool of admins. Which means people managers—who should ideally have the power to take actions like submitting hiring requests for their own direct reports—must rely on admins to play telephone and do it for them. This increases the burden on already busy admins and creates bottlenecks. And it means these processes end up taking longer than they really should.</p>



<h2>Why Rippling’s role-based permissions are better&nbsp;&nbsp;</h2>



<h3>The most flexible permissioning system on the market</h3>



<p>Since role-based permissions are built on Rippling’s Employee Graph, you’re able to choose from literally hundreds of employee attributes—from compensation, to devices, certifications and more—to create <strong><em>exactly the right group of individuals</em></strong> to assign your permissions to.&nbsp;</p>





<p>For example, say you already have a set of permissions for your people managers, but want to offer more advanced permissions to those managers who have passed your in-house Managerial Certification course offered in your Learning Management System.&nbsp;</p>





<p>Because every manager&#8217;s LMS results are housed in the Employee Graph, Rippling is able to identify which managers satisfy those conditions, and Rippling assigns those advanced permissions automatically.</p>



<p>And unlike other platforms, Rippling’s role-based permissions extend across the entire Rippling suite (e.g. Payroll and Time &amp; Attendance) as well your third-party integrations (e.g. Jira and Zoom).&nbsp;</p>



<p>For example, you can allow Sales Managers to manage access to key apps like Gong and Zoom for their direct reports, view their sensitive employment-related information (e.g. compensation), and terminate their employment—all within a single permission profile.&nbsp;&nbsp;</p>



<h3>Take the pain out of permissions management</h3>



<p>Setting up admin profiles for new hires, and updating those permissions when responsibilities change, is manual work that takes time away from your more pressing responsibilities.&nbsp;</p>



<p>But as we mentioned above, with role-based permissions, you only need to set up your permissions profile once, and Rippling takes on the busywork of assigning and removing permissions based on the parameters you set.&nbsp;</p>





<p>What’s more, if you need to make a change to the scope of permissions you’ve set up, you only need to update the permission profile itself, and those changes are automatically reflected across all the members of that permission profile—saving you the effort of having to make multiple manual updates.&nbsp;</p>



<h3>Give your team the power to do more, without sacrificing control</h3>



<p>Providing your people managers the freedom to do things like run their own employee turnover <a href="https://www.rippling.com/analytics">reports</a>, make hiring decisions, or create <a href="https://www.rippling.com/blog/go-beyond-basic-automation-with-workflow-automator">automated workflows</a> that alert their team to important events, can help ensure they’re better positioned to understand and manage their team more effectively.&nbsp;</p>





<p>That’s why we built role-based permissions to extend across the entirety of the Rippling platform and your third party apps—so you can rest assured that whether your employees are building workflows or reviewing reports, they’ll only be able to see the data, and take the actions, that they’re limited to in their permissions profile.</p>



<p>On top of that, you’ll also be able to implement further guardrails when it comes to making important changes in your organization—for example, around hiring or compensation—by requiring such changes go through an additional layer of approvals from other admins or executives before they can go into effect.&nbsp;</p>





<p>When setting up the approvals process in your permissions profile, you’ll be able to define:&nbsp;</p>



<ul><li>who the approval requests should be routed to</li><li>whether approval is needed from just one or multiple approvers</li><li>whether a single or multi-step approval process is needed (e.g. the decision needs to be approved by both the employee’s manager, and the manager’s manager as well)</li></ul>



<p>And because you can assign approvers based on the title they hold rather than their individual name (e.g. &#8216;VP of Employee’s Department&#8217; vs. ‘Daniel Cornfield’) you don’t have to worry about updating your permissions if the person holding that role later changes.</p>



<p>It also means that your permissions profile can apply equally to someone in Sales or Marketing without issue—in the former situation, the approval request will go to the VP of Sales, while in the latter, it would go to your VP of Marketing instead. Which means you have the flexibility to assign permission profiles across teams and departments as well.&nbsp;</p>



<h2>Permissions profiles to get you started</h2>



<p>Trying to figure out the right permissions for your company can feel like a daunting task. That’s why we created a number of permission profile templates that you can customize or use as-is, like the following examples:&nbsp;</p>





<h2>Enjoy pain-free permissions management with role-based permissions</h2>



<p>With role-based permissions, you won’t have to sacrifice power for manageability anymore—simply create the permissions that fit your needs, and let Rippling take care of the busywork of assigning and maintaining those permissions across your organization.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;</p>



<p>Stay tuned for more Unity releases over the next few months, including <a href="https://www.rippling.com/policies" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Policies</a> and <a href="https://www.rippling.com/analytics" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Unified Analytics</a>. Or secure a front row seat to our <a href="https://www.rippling.com/unity-webinars" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">upcoming Masterclass Webinars</a>, where we’ll be diving into how you can get the most out of your Rippling Unity features.&nbsp;</p>



<p>Want to see Unity in action? <a href="https://www.rippling.com/request-demo" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Schedule a demo</a> with our team today.</p>




Introducing role-based permissions: Get complete control over the data and apps that your team can manage


<p>As Rippling’s VP of People, I oversee a distributed workforce that grew 3x last year, and will double again this year. Needless to say there are a lot of moving parts, including ensuring our compliance with complex global workplace regulations. In this post, I’ll show you how we recently rolled out a sexual harassment prevention training course to all of our employees in India in just a few minutes.</p>



<p>After identifying and purchasing quality content that complies with India’s POSH Act against sexual harassment in the workplace, I was ready to enroll employees in the training. I needed help, however, from our CEO Parker Conrad, because he is one of the only full admins of Rippling the software for Rippling the company.&nbsp; So I sent him an email.</p>





<p>Parker runs payroll for our entire company, and manages benefits, systems access and single sign-on, employee laptop security policies, email lists, and more. It’s not traditionally part of a CEO’s job, but he often tells us that he considers it the most important part of his job at Rippling because it means he shares the same experience using our product that customers do. Implementing an important training course is no exception; if our CEO can do it with minimal disruption to his busy schedule, we know our customers can as well.</p>



<h2><strong>How we launched a new compliance training program in minutes (and you can too)</strong></h2>



<p>Our LMS solution, <a href="https://www.rippling.com/lms">Rippling Learning Management</a>, comes with about two dozen standard courses for free (including sexual harassment prevention training for US employees) and access to a much larger library of content through our partner, Go1. But, we also let you upload content you’ve created yourself or purchased from another third party, if it’s formatted as a SCORM file (a common format for e-learning content).</p>



<p>The process that Parker used to fully implement the course is the same one that any Rippling customer would use for their own employee training. In this case, he had to download the course from the OneDrive link that I sent him. It was the holidays, so waiting for the file to download (and then re-uploading into Rippling) on his parents’ mediocre internet connection would take more time than every other step of this process put together.</p>



<p>From Rippling’s LMS module, he clicks “Create a new course,” chooses to upload a custom course, chooses the file from his computer, and then waits for it to upload:</p>





<p>Next, he needed to tell Rippling which employees should be enrolled in this course.</p>



<p>This is where Rippling really shines—in other systems, he’d have to construct a spreadsheet with a list of individuals to be enrolled in the course, along with their email addresses, and he’d have to remember to add new employees whenever they joined the company.</p>



<p>But <a href="https://www.rippling.com/policies">Supergroups in Rippling</a> let him tell Rippling exactly who should take this course—in this case, everyone that is an <strong><em>employee </em></strong>(contractors are not required to take this course) whose <strong><em>work location’s country is ‘India.’</em></strong> Supergroups let a Rippling admin write really any conceivable logical statement for which employees should get access to a business system, be added to an email list or Slack channel, have a certain policy applied to them, or, in this case, be enrolled in a sexual harassment prevention training course:</p>





<p>This rule is evergreen—when we hire new employees in India, they’ll be enrolled in this course automatically, because they meet the rule. If an employee relocates to India from another country, it will enroll them automatically. And, because it’s coded off the work location’s country—rather than being specific to our office in Bangalore—if we open a new office in Mumbai, we won’t need to change this rule at all; those employees will be enrolled as well.<br></p>



<p>Next, he specifies that everyone should be enrolled on January 1, they have 30 days to complete the course, and they need to repeat the course annually. Any new hires going forward will have 30 days from their hire date to complete the course.</p>





<p>He hits “Continue” and….. he’s done. That’s it.&nbsp;</p>



<p>Meanwhile, Rippling has queued up 336 people to be enrolled in this training on January 1, and he can click on the “preview” link to see the course in action—i.e. what our employees are going to see.</p>





<h2><strong>How we automated the ongoing administration work</strong></h2>



<p><strong>How we automated the ongoing administration work</strong></p>



<p>In the background, there’s a lot of other stuff that Rippling is handling automatically:</p>



<p>First, Rippling is going to invite employees to take the course as soon as enrollment opens up on January 1. It will send reminders. Eventually, it will escalate with reminders to their managers. While an admin can configure these reminders, they don’t have to set anything up—Rippling does this automatically.</p>



<p>Second, once employees are enrolled, Rippling will track their progress. Here’s what this looks like for our sexual harassment prevention training course for California-based employees—which is required for any California-based employee, whether they are directly affiliated with our California office, or are a “remote” employee that happens to be living and working in California:</p>





<p>Third, Rippling automatically handles permissions within the LMS going forward—so <strong><em>any</em></strong> manager in the company can see this same dashboard at any time to see which of the employees that report up to them have completed training, are overdue, etc. You can set up this visibility in other systems—but those systems don’t know which employees report to which managers, so those systems can’t get these permissions right <strong><em>automatically</em></strong>, without you having to specify who should have access to whom.</p>



<p>Lastly, because all the data about our employees’ course enrollments and completion is stored in Rippling’s <a href="https://www.rippling.com/blog/introducing-rippling-unity">employee graph</a>, Parker or another admin can build custom reports and workflows around this enrollment. For example, they can create a custom alert to go to the E-staff member above an employee if their training is overdue:</p>











<p>With very little work on the Rippling admin’s part, our employees in India were enrolled in this important learning course, and will be automatically going forward.</p>







<h5 class="is-style-overline">Rippling Learning Management </h5>



<p class="text-28 leading-36 mb-16 w-250 ml-auto mr-auto md:ml-0 md:mr-0">See Rippling LMS in action</p>








How we implemented a sexual harassment prevention training program in less than 15 minutes


<p>The past two years have seen massive upheavals across the business sector, from supply chain issues to a near-total rethink of the relationship between employees and their companies. The HR space has been at the center of this radical change.</p>



<p><strong>As HR is more vital to business than ever, </strong>we wanted to examine how HR has changed over time and what HR teams need to address the current, volatile business climate. The results are in and can be found in the new report by 451 Research, <a href="https://go.rippling.com/rs/345-FHM-674/images/451Research-HR-Tech-Trends.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">HR Tech Trends: How to Stay Ahead</a>.</p>



<p>The big takeaways:</p>



<h2>Core HR skills are evolving to support remote work, participate in corporate strategy, and increase data literacy</h2>



<p>More than half of the respondents said there was a stronger need for HR professionals to support a remote and hybrid workforce, to become more data literate, and to participate more in wider company strategy and vision.&nbsp;</p>



<p>The arrival of COVID-19 placed this need into sharp relief; HR became the point of contact for supporting remote work and managing expectations. Data helped HR leaders understand productivity loss, employee engagement impact and more, which made HR more strategically valuable.&nbsp;&nbsp;</p>



<h2>Core HR tools remain vital but investments are expanding across the employee lifecycle&nbsp;</h2>



<p>Three-quarters of the respondents use payroll tools at their organization, while 71% use them for benefits and compensation deployments, and 67% have workforce management solutions &nbsp; in place.&nbsp;&nbsp;</p>



<p>But more than half also use performance management tools, recruitment tools, and learning and development solutions. While value-added areas like compliance are in high demand for analytics and insights, measuring the employee lifecycle and experience is becoming equally valuable for HR leaders.&nbsp;</p>



<p>There’s also a growing desire for software that helps companies capture data, consolidate it with other data through integrations, merge that data with the systems of record in use and, ultimately, improve its availability and use, which has become an increasingly important part of HR buying decisions.&nbsp;&nbsp;</p>



<h2>HR pain points include lack of agility, sluggish onboarding and inefficient non-core processes (performance&nbsp; management, employee engagement, etc.)&nbsp;</h2>



<p>Less than half of survey respondents found “very easy” or “somewhat easy”&nbsp; to respond to external market changes such as new regulatory requirements, economic conditions or technological innovations. In addition, only about 5% of respondents said less than one day to fully onboard a new employee, while&nbsp; 3% said it took two weeks or more, while 18% took one to two weeks. After widespread furloughs and hiring freezes due to COVID, quickly ramping up employees has become a priority.</p>



<p>When asked which outcomes are driving the modernization and digitization of their organization’s HR processes, our HR leader respondents highlighted improved employee experience, improved company privacy and data security, fewer manual tasks so HR can focus on more strategic initiatives, better insights to make decisions faster and, yes, improved agility.</p>



<h2>HR buying patterns reflect closer collaboration with IT, demand for low/no-code solutions, and a significant preference for integrated suites&nbsp;</h2>



<p>When asked about product choices, 53% of our respondents said they preferred integrated suites, while 30% preferred point solutions. When asked their reasons for choosing</p>



<p>integrated suites, more than half said better reporting and analytics, more efficiency, stronger integrated feature sets and increased cost-efficacy.&nbsp; The evidence suggests that HR seems to be looking at how its tools work together and what complementary value they&nbsp; bring to adjacent tools and processes in a workflow.</p>



<h2>What’s next?</h2>



<p>Businesses looking to invest in new HR solutions should go about it in a certain way.&nbsp;</p>



<ol><li>Bring in stakeholders early for evaluations. Lack of budget as a buying challenge may be alleviated when you have multiple parties supporting HR in a consensus buying scenario.&nbsp;</li><li>Align needs across departments and get a list of required functionalities and their prioritization before beginning the buying process. Look for low- or no-code solutions to help solve for the technical expertise challenges, as such solutions also have the potential to support the automation of workflows and processes. This in turn frees up HR teams to think and act strategically.</li><li>Consider the broader ecosystem around the tool itself. Look for opportunities to bolster automation to support HR in eliminating administrative tasks and leveling up its strategic identity.</li></ol>



<h2>The long and the short of it:&nbsp;</h2>



<p>HR is simply not what it once was—it now includes progressive tools and processes, all underpinned by data and strategic execution. HR wants to improve its own processes, the&nbsp;employee experience, and engagement across the employee lifecycle.&nbsp;</p>



<p>By doing this, and by investing in the requisite tools and technologies that support this shift, HR is strengthening its roots as a strategic partner to the business and permanently changing the way in which businesses view the people function.</p>







<h5 class="is-style-overline">See Rippling</h5>



<p class="text-28 leading-36 mb-16 w-250 ml-auto mr-auto md:ml-0 md:mr-0">Modern software built for modern HR</p>








HR tech trends: How people teams are staying ahead of rapid change


<p>Rippling is the first way for businesses to manage all of their HR &amp; IT—payroll, benefits, computers, apps, and more—in one unified workforce platform. In order to provide a seamless experience for our customers, a significant amount of work goes on behind the scenes. One team that is particularly important to how we serve our customers is Compliance.&nbsp;</p>



<p>The Compliance Team ensures Rippling is compliant with the various rules and regulations in the spaces we operate. As a platform that executes important functions of a business, whether it’s providing insurance, running payroll, or offering professional employer organization (PEO) services, each of the categories and products requires distinct compliance programs.</p>



<p>Compliance has been hardwired into Rippling’s DNA from day one. We’ve worked with industry experts, former regulators, and many outside advisors to design a cutting‑edge infrastructure, and we’ve gone to great lengths to make sure every part of our business stays compliant by implementing redundant controls and safeguards.&nbsp;</p>



<p>Eliminating potential risks, ensuring we’re compliant, and building proper safeguards is necessary and important, but it’s only the first step. We also believe transparency is critical to running a best-in-class workforce platform. That’s why we are fully transparent with our current and potential customers about our Compliance programs for our numerous products and services.&nbsp;</p>



<p>Our compliance programs are updated regularly and go through a full review each year.</p>



<p>Below you’ll find all of our up-to-date compliance and licensing information. This information can also be found on <a href="https://www.rippling.com/compliance">Rippling’s Compliance Hub</a>, a centralized page where you can read or download more information about our Insurance, PEO and Payments and Risk compliance programs.&nbsp;</p>



<h2>Insurance</h2>



<p>Like many other companies in our industry, Rippling maintains a separate insurance subsidiary that’s fully licensed to sell insurance across the United States. That subsidiary is called Rippling Insurance Services, Inc. (formerly known as Waveling Insurance Services, Inc.).</p>



<p>Every employee who sells insurance is also properly licensed—their licensing information is <a href="https://app.rippling.com/rippling-insurance-licensing">available here</a> and is updated daily. While selling insurance is a small part of Rippling’s overall business (less than 10% of our revenue), we strictly maintain the integrity of licensed insurance activities by separating them from the rest of the business. Our business structure—a fully licensed insurance agency subsidiary of a parent company that has non-insurance operations—is considered a best practice and is the same one used by our peers.</p>



<p>Among other things, it makes it easier to ensure the integrity of licensed activities, and to make sure that individuals transacting insurance are supervised by licensed personnel. To that end, Rippling Insurance Services has its own management team who report to Rippling&#8217;s Insurance and Regulatory Committee. Rippling Insurance Services, Inc. and its president are fully licensed in all 50 states and D.C., although we only broker insurance products in 34 states. That means our insurance entity has been reviewed and licensed by each and every state insurance regulatory agency.</p>



<p>Read the full Insurance Compliance program <a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://go.rippling.com/rs/345-FHM-674/images/Whitepaper-Insurance-Services-051221.pdf" target="_blank">here</a>.</p>



<h2>PEO</h2>



<p>Rippling PEO enables small and mid-size businesses to provide their employees with professional employer organization (PEO) services, such as access to better, more affordable benefits and comprehensive HR services—payroll, compliance, and workers’ compensation. Rippling PEO (legally known as Rippling PEO 1, Inc.) is a wholly owned subsidiary and maintains all required licenses and surety bonding to support and ensure the reliability of its PEO operations.</p>



<p>While the rules governing PEOs are unique and complex, Rippling PEO stays ahead of the curve by participating in leading industry groups like the National Association of Professional Employer Organizations (NAPEO), leveraging Employer Services Assurance Corporations (ESAC) regulatory and compliance tools, building in-house technology to automate compliance notices across the United States, and working with trusted PEO leaders and advisors with decades of experience in the PEO industry.</p>



<p>Read our full PEO Compliance program <a href="https://go.rippling.com/rs/345-FHM-674/images/Whitepaper-PEO-Compliance-Program-051221.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">here</a>.&nbsp;</p>



<h2>Payroll &amp; Payments</h2>



<p>As a provider of world-class payroll services, ensuring the integrity of our payments platform is of paramount importance.</p>



<p>Rippling maintains a robust anti-money laundering program incorporating automated transaction monitoring and other controls to detect and report suspicious activity and meet relevant regulatory requirements. As part of this program, Rippling utilizes automated sanctions screening to prevent terrorist financing through our platform and enhanced due diligence procedures to meet Know Your Customer requirements.</p>



<p>Rippling is also committed to robust fraud detection and risk mitigation to ensure a safe and healthy financial ecosystem. Specifically, Rippling has developed a prevention, detection, and investigation program to identify and control credit, fraud, and operational risks and protect our customers, their employees, and our partners from bad actors.</p>



<p>Rippling collaborates with trusted fintech advisors and regulatory counsel to stay current with the legal landscape and industry best practices, and regularly tests our systems with independent audits of our payroll platform and controls.</p>



<p>As part of Rippling&#8217;s ongoing efforts to enhance its payroll program, Rippling is seeking money transmitter licensing, where applicable, for its wholly-owned subsidiary Rippling Payments, Inc., with plans to provide its payroll services through the Rippling Payments entity in the future.</p>



<p>Read our full Payments Compliance and Risk program <a href="https://go.rippling.com/rs/345-FHM-674/images/Whitepaper-Payments-Compliance-Risk-Programs-051221.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">here</a>.</p>




Compliance and Transparency at Rippling


<p>Back in November, we published a <a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://www.rippling.com/blog/how-to-easily-keep-track-of-employee-vaccination-status-ahead-of-the-federal-mandate" target="_blank">blog post</a> explaining how employers can automate <a href="https://www.rippling.com/recipes/vaccination-status-bundle" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">keeping track of employees’ vaccination status</a>, and why you might want to make plans for doing so ahead of the proposed <a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://ogletree.com/insights/osha-issues-covid-19-emergency-temporary-standard-employers-with-100-employees-must-ensure-workers-are-either-vaccinated-or-tested-weekly/" target="_blank">federal mandate</a> for companies with over 100 employees, known as the Occupational Safety and Health Administration’s (OSHA) COVID-19 Vaccination and Testing Emergency Temporary Standard (ETS).</p>



<p>While the rule has faced multiple legal challenges, and a stay was issued on November 12 by the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, that stay was dissolved in a <a href="https://www.natlawreview.com/article/sixth-circuit-dissolves-stay-osha-s-covid-19-emergency-temporary-standard-and-osha" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">new ruling</a> by the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals on December 17. To coincide with the decision, OSHA released new deadlines for employers: ​​Covered employers must now comply with the majority of the provisions of the ETS by January 10, 2022. If an employer opts to permit employees to test in lieu of vaccination, then testing of unvaccinated employees must begin on or before February 9, 2022.</p>



<p>The ETS may still face a challenge in the Supreme Court, but as it stands, covered employers have only a few weeks to plan for compliance. To help companies do just that, <a href="https://rippling.zoom.us/webinar/register/rec/WN_Tn1aBQMpQPmIRKmA-AcVeQ?meetingId=Ym7AtfJn8awHk-4kOdEJpR03groDLIgX7BfCe74AJpVYzBJXQ_fPtkgVrG6dCyNY.ozytci91U4u8BuEQ&amp;playId=&amp;action=play" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">our Legal Team hosted a webinar on December 16</a> explaining in further detail how employers who use Rippling can easily automate compliance with OSHA’s new requirements, saving HR staff hours of manual work. Because the webinar was held the day before the most recent legal ruling, compliance was framed in the discussion as voluntary—but now that it’s mandatory, companies have even more reason to make the process as painless as possible. Rippling can help.</p>



<p><a href="https://rippling.zoom.us/webinar/register/rec/WN_Tn1aBQMpQPmIRKmA-AcVeQ?meetingId=Ym7AtfJn8awHk-4kOdEJpR03groDLIgX7BfCe74AJpVYzBJXQ_fPtkgVrG6dCyNY.ozytci91U4u8BuEQ&amp;playId=&amp;action=play" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Watch the webinar <strong>Rippling&#8217;s Legal Team on OSHA&#8217;s New Requirements—and How We Automate Compliance</strong> on-demand now</a>.</p>




OSHA's vaccination rules are back in effect: Will your company be ready by January 10, 2022?


<p>People get a lot of things wrong about startups—even the people who lead them. There’s a lot of advice out there about how to run a startup and much of it is good. But a lot of the conventional ideas about what a startup should do and how it should operate are approaching their expiration date. While there’s no universal formula for building a sustainable, scalable business that can grow and adapt as the market shifts, there are ways to approach your startup from the very beginning that can dramatically change your reach and impact.&nbsp;</p>



<p>Rippling CEO Parker Conrad understands the value of breaking from tradition, and he’s witnessed the benefits firsthand. By applying different principles to Rippling from Day One, Parker earned a perspective that he now shares with other startup leaders. He shared these ideas at the <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BbSNA64TQ7s">Startup Grind Global Conference 2021</a> and we’re expanding his advice here to give you even more insight into building a successful startup.&nbsp;</p>



<h2>Key Idea #1: A narrow focus leads to missed opportunities and steeper competition</h2>



<p>For years, startup leaders <a href="https://fi.co/insight/the-one-secret-to-a-successful-startup-focus-focus-focus">have been told</a> to create a super narrow focus for their products and services, and even warned that broadening the scope would be dangerous. Parker wholeheartedly disagrees with this advice. Speaking primarily of SaaS startups, Parker says having a super narrow focus “has held back the industry and has held back a lot of really important companies that could have been created but have not been.”</p>



<p>By definition, restricting your startup to a narrow focus limits the types of problems that you work on. “When you think about the problems your clients have, they often span a lot of different business systems or point solutions,” says Parker. “In fact, I think some of the biggest problems and therefore the problems that potentially could give rise to the most valuable companies tend to be things that span a lot of different point solution products within a business. And therefore, only building one point solution product can&#8217;t really address them.”</p>



<p>Once upon a time, a small company could dominate a super niche space, Parker acknowledges, but now “there are actually a lot of different companies operating in all of these different narrow point solution verticals. So there is actually now a lot more opportunity if you can go bigger and combine a bunch of these different point solutions into one product.”&nbsp;</p>



<p>There’s also a bit of a myth around the notion that you should start small and expand later on. Historically, that doesn’t happen often. “Companies that focus early on tend to continue to focus,” Parker says.</p>





<h2>Key Idea #2: The “compound startup” can be more effective</h2>



<p>The remedy to the pitfalls of a narrow focus is a compound startup.&nbsp;</p>



<p>“A compound startup is a startup that instead of just doing one very narrow thing, tries to build a whole set of different point solution systems in one coherent product and tackle several different related point solutions at once to solve a much larger problem for businesses,” Parker says. “Why would you do this? Because there are a lot of reasons why it&#8217;s hard. The first thing is this idea that these compound startup opportunities are relatively unexplored, because everyone has been focusing for so long. If you take on a series of different but closely related products and do them all at once, there are these islands of undiscovered product market fit that are just beyond the horizon line—that no one has sailed out to because of all of this advice that you should narrow your ambition and your focus to just one very specific thing, which often isn&#8217;t enough to get you from point A to point B.”&nbsp;</p>



<p>When you break out of the narrow focus, you can really work on solving your customers’ problems. “The companies that tend to be bigger and more ambitious are solving the whole problem as opposed to just building a tool,” says Parker.&nbsp;</p>



<h2>Key Idea #3: Integration is the product</h2>



<p>When your approach to your products and services is very narrow, you miss out on opportunities left and right. Parker urges startup leaders to think about integration first and foremost.&nbsp;</p>



<p>“The types and the depth of integration you can have when you&#8217;re building a set of related products together in-house is so much more powerful than what you can do through a set of APIs with other vendors,” says Parker. “There are a set of often shared components. You can identify certain bits of functionality or certain parts of the product that end up being reused across a number of different products that you&#8217;re building, and you can build those once and gain some advantages on R&amp;D efficiency. But more importantly, you can afford to go much deeper and invest much more deeply on those critical pieces that are shared across these different products.”</p>



<p>Doubling down on these shared components benefits your process, helps you build better solutions, and also vastly improves the user experience. When you have multiple solutions within one UX, customers spend less time learning and more time doing.&nbsp;</p>



<p>“When they learn how to use your product, they also learn how to use four different products,” says Parker. “They don&#8217;t have to do things in four different ways across four completely separate products.”&nbsp;</p>



<p>This isn’t just about adding integrations across your products, though. To reap the full benefits of this approach, Parker says, “the product <em>is</em> the integration.” This allows startup leaders to create more robust solutions and continue growing as you work on solving new or different problems.&nbsp;</p>



<p>While this idea isn’t the standard startup approach, the concept isn’t brand new. There are tons of proven examples, many of which we touch on a daily basis. Microsoft is a key example, with the integration of Active Directory across countless product lines—with the advantage of having the same contract, same deployment, and consistent user experience across the range. Rippling was built in a similar way, to address disparate employee data records and give customers a seamless experience.&nbsp;</p>





<h2>Key Idea #4: Maximize the price of bundled solutions</h2>



<p>Parker recognizes a key competitive advantage in the compound startup approach: bundled pricing. When your startup creates multiple integrated solutions rather than a single tool, you can undercut competitors on the price of each product and effectively compete with vendors that only focus on one thing.&nbsp;</p>



<p>“There&#8217;s this incredible contracting and pricing advantage where the bundled contract or system allows you to optimize your price for the value of the bundle rather than the value of any specific point solution,” says Parker. “The focused startup has to maximize their revenue from one single SKU. But a compound startup can maximize revenue across a bundle and optimize for the bundled price, and therefore deliver cost savings to clients on the individual products and focus startups in aggregate. If a client has a lot of different point solutions, eventually it becomes a real headache to manage. Compound startups reduce complexity by consolidating a lot of these systems into one.”</p>



<h2>Key Idea #5: The structure of your startup matters—a lot</h2>



<p>The structure of a compound startup might look a little different from a traditional startup, too, and that’s not incidental. Parker insists startup leaders must organize for parallel execution, using product owners or business units to distribute areas of responsibility.&nbsp;</p>



<p>“We (Rippling) have an engine of about half the company in engineering,” says Parker. “First of all, it&#8217;s a much higher percentage than most other SaaS businesses. But it&#8217;s not a monolithic team. There&#8217;s really this loose federation of much more individually focused teams—there&#8217;s a team that builds payroll, there&#8217;s a team that builds device management, there&#8217;s a team that builds insurance and benefits administration. Each of those teams individually have a tremendous amount of focus. It also means you need to hire people differently, so you need people who can run those teams like business units that are both engineering teams and also cross-functional. They include customer support, product management, design, and so on.”</p>





<h2>Building a compound startup is hard work but worth it</h2>



<p>Parker’s advice for startup leaders represents a shift away from old habits. His experience building Rippling, which offers a wide variety of solutions on a single platform, convinced him of the value of the compound startup approach, and as we look to the future, we believe the demand for integrated solutions will increase. Companies that commit to a narrow focus now will struggle to adapt or, more likely, get left behind as new startups embrace the compound approach from the beginning.</p>




5 reasons startup leaders should go big from the start: lessons from Rippling CEO Parker Conrad


<p>Rippling is now in Warsaw, Poland!&nbsp; It’s our second development center outside of San Francisco after Bengaluru, India, and is an important step towards building our $100 billion product dream with the world’s top engineering talent.</p>



<p>Our mission is to create an operating system for work, and achieving it takes a lot of work. Warsaw is a growing tech hub, home to a thriving community of developers, product owners, and entrepreneurs. We’re thrilled to join that community and connect with great engineers who will help lead our next stage of growth as the first way for businesses to manage all of their HR &amp; IT—payroll, benefits, computers, apps, and more—in one unified workforce platform.&nbsp;</p>





<p>We’ve raised a total of $450 Million, including <a href="https://www.rippling.com/blog/rippling-raises-250m-in-series-c-funding">$250 Million in Series-C funding</a> at a $6.5B valuation in October 2021, and we have <a href="https://medium.com/sequoia-capital/rippling-the-rebundling-of-enterprise-software-89b9250e8258">an exciting, ambitious roadmap ahead</a>. Rippling has also featured in <a href="https://www.ycombinator.com/topcompanies/">Y-Combinator&#8217;s Top Companies</a> List 2021 and was named one of <a href="https://www.forbes.com/companies/rippling/?sh=59d3c2db655e">America&#8217;s best startup employers</a> by Forbes (#12 out of 500).</p>



<h2><strong>Building the tech team in Poland</strong></h2>



<p>Poland has become a hub for tech talent in recent years. Tech giants like Google have set up new technology development centers, making Warsaw a cloud capital of Europe.</p>



<p>Rippling is more than 200 engineers strong overall and planning to grow its Warsaw team from one engineer to 10 engineers in the near term, and 100 engineers in the coming years. Rippling&#8217;s Warsaw tech hub will focus initially on Rippling&#8217;s Identity Management product, which uses Rippling&#8217;s HR data to manage employee identity in more than 400 cloud services, such as Google Workspace, Slack, Dropbox, GitHub, AWS, etc. Over time, we&#8217;ll build infrastructure and frontend teams out of Warsaw, with the goal to have the Warsaw hub be a full R&amp;D center on par with Rippling&#8217;s current hubs in San Francisco and Bangalore.</p>



<h2><strong>Why should you join Rippling?</strong></h2>



<p>Rippling has over 10 distinct product lines that have contributed to hypergrowth year-over-year. As we plan to build our presence in Poland from scratch, this is an incredible opportunity to work with talented people and learn alongside engineers from Google, Facebook, and other tech giants, including 12 former Y-Combinator founders.</p>



<p>We’re also a great place to hone entrepreneurship skills: Our massive product roadmap means every product is built and run by a small team of engineers that move fast and build software from the ground up. Our Engineering organization includes teams in Platform, Infrastructure, Device Management, Hardware, Apps, Product &amp; Data Engineering, Security, Banking, and others.</p>



<p>Engineers love working here because there is less time in meetings and more time getting code shipped and getting things done. We have an engineering-first, &#8220;automate everything&#8221; culture and a bias towards speed and transparent and effective communication.</p>



<p>We are looking for engineers who will own the products end-to-end and quickly ship a high-quality, minimally-scoped v1. Then make it better and better.</p>



<p>Right now we’re looking to hire <a href="https://www.rippling.com/careers/4680545003?gh_jid=4680545003">senior engineers</a> and <a href="https://www.rippling.com/careers/4683071003?gh_jid=4683071003">engineering managers</a> in Poland; later in 2022, we&#8217;ll employ more junior and mid-level engineers.</p>



<p><strong><em><a href="https://www.rippling.com/careers" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Join us</a> to build innovative products alongside the world’s best engineers.</em></strong></p>




Cześć! Introducing Rippling’s engineering hub in Poland


<p>A few weeks ago we <a href="https://www.rippling.com/blog/introducing-rippling-unity">announced the launch of Rippling Unity</a>—our biggest release to date, consisting of five powerful capabilities that we believe will be truly game changing for businesses.&nbsp;</p>



<p>Today, we’ll be shining a spotlight on the first of these five new capabilities: <a href="http://rippling.com/workflow">Workflow Automator</a>.&nbsp;</p>



<h2>What is Rippling Workflow Automator?&nbsp;<strong>&nbsp;</strong></h2>



<p>Workflow Automator is Rippling’s new, no-code automation tool that lets you kick off automated actions in both Rippling and third-party apps connected to Rippling—like Slack or Google Calendar—based on custom triggers that <em>you</em> can define.</p>



<p>With Workflow Automator, you can take nearly any manual, time-intensive task off of your plate—whether that’s a simple, one-off task, like sending automated onboarding emails two weeks before every new hire&#8217;s start date, or complex, daisy-chained workflows that help you advance your larger, strategic vision.<br><br>For example, you can build a workflow that ensures fair pay by alerting your HR team if they’re about to make an offer to a candidate at a salary point significantly below what their future peers’ would be.</p>





<p>Right now, you’ll be able to build workflows that send automated emails, Slack DMs, tasks, calendar events, and use webhooks to drive any number of other actions. We’ll be adding more direct actions like Google Sheets and others over the coming months.&nbsp;</p>



<h2>What makes Workflow Automator better than other automation tools?&nbsp;&nbsp;</h2>



<p>The biggest thing that sets Workflow Automator apart from our competitors boils down to one word: <strong>data</strong>.&nbsp;</p>



<p>Workflow Automator is built on top of a single source of truth for employee data that pulls in employee information from nearly every system in and outside of your company.&nbsp;</p>



<p>We call this combined data system Rippling&#8217;s <a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://www.rippling.com/blog/introducing-rippling-unity" target="_blank">Unified Employee Graph</a>.&nbsp;</p>





<p>Similar to Facebook’s Social Graph—which lets you navigate from one person to the next based on their social network—Rippling’s Unified Employee Graph lets you navigate <strong>every piece of data related to an employee</strong>.&nbsp;</p>



<p>That includes information like who their manager is, their salary, devices and time cards, and even the tickets assigned to them in systems like Zendesk, Jira, or Salesforce.</p>





<p>Which means you can create workflows that go far beyond basic if/then automation tools like Zapier which—while powerful in their own right—don’t have the same knowledge and understanding of your organization and employees to be able to drive automation at anything more than a surface level.&nbsp;</p>



<h3>Automate almost anything with nearly limitless triggers</h3>



<p>While other workflow tools limit what you can automate to a narrow set of triggers, Workflow Automator lets you build your own custom triggers to kick off workflows, based on almost any employee or employee-related data in your company—their <a href="https://www.rippling.com/recipes/new-hire-welcome-reminder">start dates</a>, <a href="https://www.rippling.com/recipes/retroactive-compensation-change-payroll-task">salary changes</a>, <a href="https://www.rippling.com/recipes/fsa-balance-expiring-reminder">FSA balance</a>, <a href="https://www.rippling.com/recipes/poor-battery-health-alert">device health</a>, <a href="https://www.rippling.com/recipes/lms-course-completed-notification">courses taken</a>, and more.&nbsp;</p>



<p>And events that happen outside of Rippling are covered as well with the ability to trigger workflows based on third-party data, like when an <a href="https://www.rippling.com/recipes/when-unreviewed-pull-request-merged-assign-debrief-task">unreviewed pull request is merged in GitHub</a> or a <a href="https://www.rippling.com/recipes/low-zendesk-csat-score-alert">support agent gets a low CSAT score in Zendesk</a>.&nbsp;</p>





<p>And if what you need falls outside of what we natively collect in Rippling, you can even create Custom Fields to trigger workflows based on information you collect from employees—like their commercial license expiry dates or dietary restrictions.&nbsp;</p>



<p>Or derive brand new values with Formula Fields–Rippling’s new Excel-like formulas you can use to combine and calculate data into a new data point.</p>



<p>For example, your IT team could use a Formula Field to create their own definition of what poor device performance is—like a higher-than-average CPU or Memory usage over an extended period of time—and trigger an alert when an employee&#8217;s device exceeds that threshold.&nbsp;</p>





<p>That way, IT can proactively address problems before they occur and ensure everyone stays fully productive.</p>



<h3>Automate workflows across Rippling and your third-party apps</h3>



<p>Since Rippling understands who your employees are across every system, you can automate actions across your third-party systems right from Rippling itself, with full confidence that they’ll always reach the right person.&nbsp;</p>



<p>For example, you can create a workflow that triggers an alert over Slack to a support agent’s manager if they’ve racked over 75 open tickets in Zendesk, and Workflow Automator will be able to identify who the agent’s manager is, and what their username is in Slack.</p>





<p>Similarly, since Rippling has access to both your employee’s time off schedule and their username in Jira, Workflow Automator can make the connection that the employee that’s just been <a href="https://www.rippling.com/recipes/high-priority-jira-assigned-to-ooo-employee-alert" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">assigned a high-priority ticket in Jira is actually on leave</a>, and trigger an alert to their manager, urging them to reassign it.&nbsp;</p>





<p>Because other automation tools don’t have that same understanding of your employees and organization, let alone retain that understanding across your third-party integrations, it’s impossible to build the same targeted, relationship-based workflows with other automation tools.&nbsp;</p>



<h2>Give your whole company the power to get more done with Workflow Automator&nbsp;</h2>



<p>The sheer breadth of what you can automate with Workflow Automator makes it an incredibly powerful time-saving tool not just for HR admins, but for the entire organization as a whole, including your <strong>Finance</strong> and <strong>IT teams</strong>, and your <strong>people managers</strong> as well.&nbsp;</p>



<p>And since Rippling’s <a href="https://www.rippling.com/permissions">Permissions</a> give you granular control over exactly what systems and data your team can manage, you can give managers across your company the power to use Workflow Automator to help streamline their day-to-day tasks—without giving up control.&nbsp;</p>



<p>Here are just a few examples of how managers and admins can use Workflow Automator to save time and get more done:&nbsp;</p>



<h3>HR workflows</h3>



<p><strong>Automate your welcome emails</strong><br>Save time without sacrificing that personal touch with this workflow that triggers an automated email to your new hires a week before their first day, letting them know what to expect and who to meet on their first day. (<a href="https://www.rippling.com/recipes/new-hire-welcome-email">See Recipe</a>)</p>





<p><strong>Create automated calendar events for LMS course deadlines</strong><br>Make deadlines hard to miss with this workflow that creates an all-day calendar invite on the last day that employees can enroll for an LMS course. (<a href="https://www.rippling.com/recipes/create-reminder-event-on-lms-course-enrollment-deadline">See Recipe</a>)</p>





<h3>IT workflows</h3>



<p><strong>Trigger automated reminders for unregistered 2FA devices</strong><br>Reduce the risk of security threats with this workflow that sends an automated notification to an employee and their manager if an employee hasn’t registered their Yubikey device. (<a href="https://www.rippling.com/recipes/unregistered-yubikey-alert">See Recipe</a>)</p>





<p><strong>Get alerted to shipment delays that affect onboarding</strong><br>Give yourself time to think of a Plan B with this workflow that triggers an alert to the IT team and a new hire’s manager if their laptop isn’t expected to reach them in time for their first day. (<a href="https://www.rippling.com/recipes/device-delivery-delayed-alert">See Recipe</a>)</p>





<h3>Finance workflows</h3>



<p><strong>Escalate compensation requests based on your threshold</strong><br>Ensure important decisions get the right level of sign off with this workflow that automatically escalates compensation requests above a certain threshold. (<a href="https://www.rippling.com/recipes/when-comp-increase-is-over-threshold-assign-review-task">See Recipe</a>)</p>





<p><strong>Get timely reminders for referral bonuses</strong><br>Ditch the manual calendar reminders with this workflow that automatically creates a Task for Payroll when an employee’s referral bonus is due. (<a href="https://www.rippling.com/recipes/when-referral-bonus-is-payable-assign-pay-run-task">See Recipe</a>)</p>





<h3>Engineering workflows</h3>



<p><strong>Get notified if high-priority Jira tickets are assigned to OOO engineers</strong><br>Ensure that important Jira tickets don’t slip through the cracks with this workflow that alerts managers when a high-priority Jira ticket is assigned to an engineer who’s out on leave. (<a href="https://www.rippling.com/recipes/high-priority-jira-assigned-to-ooo-employee-alert">See Recipe</a>)</p>





<p><strong>Get alerted when pull requests are stale&nbsp;</strong><br>Keep your projects organized and up-to-date with this workflow that alerts the author and their manager when a pull request remains unreviewed for a prolonged period of time. (<a href="https://www.rippling.com/recipes/stale-pull-request-alert">See Recipe</a>)</p>





<h3>Support workflows</h3>



<p><strong>Get notified if urgent tickets are assigned to OOO agents</strong><br>Ensure that time-sensitive tickets are attended to quickly with this workflow that alerts you if an ‘Urgent’ Zendesk ticket is inadvertently assigned to an agent on leave (<a href="https://www.rippling.com/recipes/urgent-zendesk-ticket-assigned-to-ooo-agent-alert">See Recipe</a>)</p>





<p><strong>Automatically alert your team to ‘Incident’ tickets</strong><br>Ensure that ‘Incident’ tickets in Zendesk get the quick attention they deserve with this workflow that automatically notifies your engineers when a Zendesk ticket is marked as an “Incident”. (<a href="https://www.rippling.com/recipes/zendesk-incident-alert">See Recipe</a>)</p>





<p>For more workflows that you can use right out of the gate, or customize to your exact needs, be sure to check out our growing <a href="http://rippling.com/recipes">Recipes library</a> to get inspired.</p>



<h2>More to come</h2>



<p>We’ve just scratched the surface of what’s coming with Unity.&nbsp;</p>



<p>Stay tuned for more Unity releases over the next months, including <a href="http://rippling.com/policies">Policies</a>, <a href="http://rippling.com/permissions">Unified Permissions &amp; Approvals</a>, and <a href="http://rippling.com/analytics">Unified Analytics</a>. Or secure a front row seat to <a href="https://www.rippling.com/unity-webinars">our upcoming masterclass webinars</a>, where we’ll be diving into how you can get the most out of your Rippling Unity features.&nbsp;</p>



<p><em>Want to see Unity in action? </em><a href="https://www.rippling.com/request-demo"><em>Schedule a demo</em></a><em> with our team today.</em></p>




Go beyond basic automation with Workflow Automator


<p><em>Editor’s note: This is the debut edition of HR Hackers, Rippling’s series of profiles highlighting the innovative work of leaders who are changing the future of HR.</em></p>



<p>Meet <strong>Sara Bokhari</strong>, Head of People and Culture at <a href="https://www.mursion.com/" data-type="URL" data-id="https://www.mursion.com/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Mursion</a>, a virtual reality platform for leadership training. This is her first formal HR role as well as the first of its kind at Mursion—Bokhari wrote the job description with the CEO. Despite being ‘young’ in HR, as Bokhari puts it, her background primed her for this role.</p>



<p>Long before joining Mursion, Bokhari taught fifth grade in New York City and also taught English at an NGO school in Pakistan. She left the classroom to work for a management consulting firm in the K-12 space, where she learned about talent management, talent development, and recruiting. Bokhari joined Mursion in 2019 and initially worked as their director of education partnerships until September 2020, when she transitioned into her current position.&nbsp;</p>



<h4><strong>Driven by people-centric values</strong></h4>



<p>At Mursion, people drive the culture and everything is connected to the company values, which Bokhari helped define. “It was an iterative process and we involved everybody from the company,” she says, “from just out of college, fresh graduates, all the way up to the CEO. And we got to a point where our values felt truly descriptive of who we are, as well as being aspirational about who we want to be. They are the foundation of what&#8217;s important to us. And those values have been like the North Star for everything we have developed in our department.”</p>





<p>Mursion’s values shape everything from the cadence of communications to lunch and learn topics to performance management and compensation. All of the organization’s processes and programs, including performance evaluations, point back to the values. “We use Culture Amp as our performance management and engagement system. In Culture Ampthere is a feature called a Praise Wall, and it&#8217;s a way to give feedback publicly to your colleagues,” Bokhari says. “When people post praise on the Praise Wall, I&#8217;ll often ask them to actually frame that in the language of the values. For instance, you can say someone led with curiosity when they did X Y Z, and what the impact was. And so that&#8217;s helped keep the values alive for people, because now you&#8217;re creating sort of a schema for what concrete behaviors aligned to the values look like.”</p>



<p>Infusing the company values in all these processes is what ensures that the culture, and therefore all new employees, are enmeshed in these ideas. This is particularly important at Mursion, since two-thirds of the current workforce were hired after the values were defined. Those newer hires may not have been directly involved in the creation process, but they engage with the values regularly, which fosters a sense of ownership and identity. Bokhari says this helps Mursion support employees so everyone can be their best selves at work and at home.&nbsp;</p>





<h4><strong>How Rippling enables Mursion’s progressive culture</strong></h4>



<p>Bokhari credits Rippling with making it possible to devote appropriate time and energy to building culture at Mursion. Because Rippling is easy to use and requires no coding skills, Bokhari finds it easy to run reports and get insights across many stages of the employee lifecycle. Doing this quickly frees her up to focus more on people.&nbsp;</p>



<p>Another big perk is the way Rippling streamlines the onboarding process—from collecting new hire information to turning on access to different systems through the many integrations. “I just have to click, click, click, decide what it is they get access to. Then I can set it and forget it and walk away so that on the day that they start, I&#8217;m not trying to wrestle with the IT side of things. That’s saved us a lot of time and cut down on the mental load of having to think through the checklist of what&#8217;s needed at the point of hire.”</p>





<h4><strong>Off the clock</strong></h4>



<p>Bokhari lives and breathes the work-life balance she strives for at Mursion, and prioritizes screen-free family time with her husband and two young children when she’s not at work. “My kids are a barometer for my well-being,” Bokhari says. “Being in a people role, it is an emotionally labor intensive role. And if I get to the end of the day and I don&#8217;t have enough emotional bandwidth to be present for my kids, then I&#8217;m not being the type of parent or the type of employee that I want to be. I don&#8217;t want any of our employees to feel that way, either. I don&#8217;t want them to feel so spent from their work that they can&#8217;t be fully present outside of work.”</p>





<p>Spending time at the library or playing tabletop games with her husband are some of Bokhari’s favorite pastimes. She admits that she reads a lot of HR and organizational psychology books in her free time but she also enjoys kicking back with some young adult fiction or novels inspired by current events, like <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/32075671-the-hate-u-give?ac=1&amp;from_search=true&amp;qid=tU1FND79Lx&amp;rank=1">The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas</a>, about a teenage girl who witnesses a friend murdered by the police. She’s also recently gotten into fantasy and science fiction, and recommends <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/9969571-ready-player-one">Ready Player One by Ernest Cline</a> to anyone curious about the genre—especially if you work for a VR company like she does.&nbsp;&nbsp;</p>



<h4 class="text-16"><strong>The future of HR is all about people</strong></h4>



<p>When Bokhari thinks about the future of the HR industry, she hopes to see more organizations putting people first. “Today, your strongest leaders are ones who really think about developing people,” she says, “the ones who see people as the most important resource in a company and see people as the lifeblood that makes the company move. That’s the sea change: The People Function as a key part of the business, and the key part in keeping a business healthy.”&nbsp;&nbsp;</p>



<p>She also hopes to see technological advances that support leaders in this effort, primarily the ability to gather and connect more data across the employee lifecycle. Today’s tools and integrations are moving in the right direction, she says, but she hopes to see even more in the coming years, so leaders can better understand what’s happening with their employees and make better informed decisions to support their people.</p>







<h5 class="is-style-overline">Modern HR Software</h5>



<p class="text-28 leading-36 mb-16 w-250 ml-auto mr-auto md:ml-0 md:mr-0">See why HR leaders choose Rippling</p>








Mursion Head of People and Culture Sara Bokhari: using company values to shape every employee experience


<p>To our CEO Parker Conrad, the conventional wisdom of building a startup focused on solving a niche problem is obsolete. There is far more potential for success when one builds multiple products in parallel, addressing a large and complex business problem from multiple angles. He calls it a compound startup.&nbsp;</p>



<p>Speaking with Connie Loizos of Strictly VC, Parker expands on this vision and how Rippling’s been built to fulfill it. He also touches on how his personal journey as an entrepreneur helped Rippling succeed in the ultra-competitive world of SaaS startups.&nbsp;</p>



<p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AwI_oQL6OO0" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Watch the conversation</a> &gt;&nbsp;</p>





<h2>The highlights</h2>



<ul><li>Just like Salesforce ties everything together through the customer,<em> </em>Rippling is building an operating system for business that ties everything together through the employee. As Parker puts it, Rippling is like “this bizarro-world version of Salesforce where everything is re-centered around employee data.” </li><li>Employee data helps create a unified schema across many different types of business software. With such a schema in place, you can start to build dynamic workflows that trigger, and are triggered by, employee actions in Rippling as well as those in other pieces of software. </li><li>Rippling is what Parker calls “a compound startup.” Compound startups require building multiple different products in parallel and help solve larger business problems that span distinct business systems. While they may be trickier to launch than a traditional SaaS startup, compound startups provide far greater opportunities for growth and returns. </li><li>Most of the conventional wisdom around building a company is focus, focus, focus—set your sights on a narrow problem, and solve it well. While that advice was right at one point, it’s wrong today. It’s exactly why businesses have a collection of 100 separate point source solutions that they must manage independently, and exactly why Rippling exists. </li><li>Rippling employs more than 50 former founders to help build specific product lines and run them as general managers.</li></ul>







<h5 class="is-style-overline">See Rippling</h5>



<p class="text-28 leading-36 mb-16 w-250 ml-auto mr-auto md:ml-0 md:mr-0">See Rippling in action</p>








"A bizarro-world Salesforce": Parker Conrad talks compound startups with Strictly VC


<p>Today we&#8217;re announcing Rippling <strong><em>Unity</em></strong>, the largest product launch we&#8217;ve ever done at Rippling.</p>



<p>We talk a lot about &#8220;employee data&#8221; at Rippling, and the ways in which an <strong><em>employee system,</em></strong> like Rippling, is more fundamental than just a payroll and HR system. An employee system manages employee data broadly across your company, in many business systems beyond just the ones used by the HR department.</p>



<p>We believe that employee data is important in part because it is a linchpin that can be used to connect and bind together all the different point SaaS systems in use at your company.</p>



<p>For database nerds, we think employee data is the secret ingredient required to create a single, unified schema across all of business software. Because almost all business systems have a dimension table for an employee in their own schemas, you can use employee data as a join condition to bind all these systems together.<strong><br></strong></p>



<p>Once you integrate your systems together, a lot of cool new stuff is possible. You can automate workflows across every business system within your company, run reports on combined data sets from all your different business systems, and more.</p>



<p>And this is where Unity comes in. It gives businesses this new set of capabilities, none of which have been possible before due to disconnected systems, by taking advantage of our unified data schema.</p>



<p>We call this combined schema Rippling’s <strong><em>employee graph</em></strong>, because it incorporates not just data about employees, but data from other business systems which are one or more degrees of removal away from the employee object itself.</p>





<p>This is, of course, a homage to the concept of a &#8220;Social Graph&#8221; popularized by social networks 15 years ago. Instead of navigating from one person to another based on social relationships, in Rippling’s employee graph, you can start with support tickets from Zendesk, navigate to the employee responding to those support requests, from there move to that employee&#8217;s most recent timecard and the number of hours they worked during the pay period in which they responded to those support tickets, from there to the person that signed off on the overtime they worked, and so on and so forth.</p>



<p>Unity sits on top of and taps into this employee graph to give Rippling customers, third-party developers, and our own internal product development teams powerful new capabilities.</p>





<h2>The Unity launch includes five separate products that are built on top of this employee graph.</h2>



<h4>Workflow Automator</h4>



<p><a href="https://www.rippling.com/blog/go-beyond-basic-automation-with-workflow-automator" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Workflow Automator</a> is a &#8220;no-code&#8221; system that lets you create custom triggers which then kick off automated system actions in Rippling and in third-party apps connected to Rippling.</p>



<p>For example, you can create a workflow to automatically detect and notify HR of potential pay inequity via email or Slack.</p>





<p>Or create a cross-system workflow to notify engineering via Slack that an engineer <a href="https://www.rippling.com/recipes/high-priority-jira-assigned-to-ooo-employee-alert" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">can’t resolve a high-priority ticket in JIRA</a> because they are out on PTO.</p>





<p>If you&#8217;re familiar with Zapier or IFTT, Workflow Automator is like those products, in that you can write out logic in the form of &#8220;if this arbitrary set of conditions becomes true, then do this thing.&#8221;&nbsp;</p>



<p>Actions can include alerts, tasks, Slack notifications, approval requirements, and more, and the conditions can really be any conceivable logical condition based on data in Rippling or in a third-party system you&#8217;ve connected up to Rippling.</p>



<p>But, Workflow Automator is supercharged because it&#8217;s built on top of Rippling’s employee graph:</p>



<ul><li><strong>Workflow Automator has a built-in understanding of <em>cross-system identity</em></strong>, which means you can set up a workflow where the &#8220;action&#8221; in a workflow targets the same employee that was the subject of the trigger, but in a completely different business system.<br><br>As one example, you can set up a workflow in Rippling so that when a pull request fails in your CI system, it notifies the engineer that raised that pull request, and their manager, in Slack. That seems obviously useful—but it&#8217;s hard to build outside of Rippling because GitHub and Slack have incompatible identity systems, so it&#8217;s hard to figure out that the handle &#8220;CodeGuy37&#8221; in GitHub is actually &#8220;jsmith@rippling.com&#8221; in Slack. But this is trivial in Rippling, because we already map identities in all these different systems back to specific employees in Rippling.<br></li><li><strong>Workflow Automator has a built-in understanding of the data model of a company</strong>. It understands that you have employees, pay runs, computer devices, timecards, departments, work locations, and it understands how these things relate to one another, and you can take that understanding for granted when you&#8217;re building workflows in Rippling.</li></ul>



<ul><li><strong>Workflow Automator also understands all the dimensional values for your specific company</strong>—it knows what departments you have, where your work locations are and which ones are in the United States and which ones are abroad, what employment types you use, what the levels and teams in your company are, and all of this understanding can be built into the workflow logic you set up in Rippling.</li></ul>



<p><a href="https://www.rippling.com/blog/go-beyond-basic-automation-with-workflow-automator" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Read more about Workflow Automator here</a>.</p>



<h4>Unified Analytics</h4>



<p>As part of Unity, we are launching an analytics suite that has been re-built from the ground up to support analysis of very large datasets, with arbitrary joins and data transformations across multiple different datasets and even business systems.</p>



<p>This all starts, of course, with Rippling’s employee graph. You can use the employee graph to identify data you want to add to a report or analysis—which can include any data in Rippling, but also data from third-party business systems like Greenhouse, Zendesk, Github, Jira, Salesforce, Google Workspace, and more. That way, you can easily create a report with data that originates in multiple different datasets or even business systems.&nbsp;</p>



<p>For example, many companies pay their employees referral bonuses when they hire candidates that they referred to recruiting. Normally, you have to export data from multiple systems—like Greenhouse or Lever and your HRIS—into Excel to figure out who to pay, how much to pay, and if they’re eligible for a referral bonus.</p>



<p>But with Rippling, you can view, add, and report on all of that data in one place.&nbsp;&nbsp;</p>





<p>And because Rippling understands your org and who your employees are across every system, it can <a href="https://www.rippling.com/recipes/task-to-pay-referral-bonus" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">automatically figure out who is eligible for a bonus</a> and how much to pay them.&nbsp;</p>





<p>You might also want to create a report with shift-level data such as hours worked, and shift date, from your time-tracking system, and then add information about the insurance plans each employee is enrolled in from your benefits administration system, and then data about company contributions to those insurance plan premiums from your payroll system.&nbsp;</p>



<p>Why would you want to look at this data together? Well, it turns out that is the information you would need, for example, to calculate your company&#8217;s liability for <a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://sfgov.org/olse/health-care-security-ordinance-hcso" target="_blank">Healthy San Francisco taxes</a>, an annual rite of passage for many finance teams that is challenging to calculate precisely because it requires data from so many different and—before Unity—disconnected systems.</p>



<p>That data—daily shift data from time tracking, insurance enrollment, and payroll—come from three very different systems and the data is at three very different levels of resolution—at the daily level for shifts, the pay-period level for employer contributions, and at the employee level for benefits enrollment status. But, as a user, you don&#8217;t have to worry about that. Rippling seamlessly handles the data transformations and joins between these datasets to produce the report you&#8217;re looking for, and does it in seconds even across surprisingly large datasets.</p>



<p>Before Unity, a company that wanted to report on these different datasets together would have to build out a complex data and analytics pipeline, incorporating ETL / ELT tools like Fivetran for data transformations, a data warehouse like Snowflake, and Analytics / BI tools such as Tableau. But Rippling condenses all of that, by standardizing all the data transformations and joins around the employee and the employee graph.</p>



<p>The net result is that if you can install Candy Crush on your phone, you can install third-party apps in Rippling—and once you do that, you can report on data from those apps just by selecting the fields you want from the employee graph.</p>



<h4>RQL and Formula Fields</h4>



<p>As part of Unity, we are launching a scripting language inside of Rippling called RQL, which you can use to create Formula Fields inside of our analytics suite, and extend functionality elsewhere across Rippling.</p>



<p>Any advanced Excel user will be familiar with RQL&#8217;s syntax—it borrows many core concepts and syntax from Excel. But, we&#8217;ve also incorporated some powerful capabilities from SQL such as &#8220;select&#8221; statements, as well as some elements from Python such as advanced support for lists.</p>



<p>If you download data from your HRIS system, and then analyze it in Excel or a third party analytics suite like Tableau, you might find that unnecessary going forward, because you can set up the same analysis and Formula Fields directly inside of a Rippling report.</p>



<p>What&#8217;s more, you can use RQL to create persistent Formula Fields that show up everywhere across Rippling. For example, I have created a new formula field that shows up on timecards for hourly employees in Rippling, which shows a simple ratio of the number of Zendesk tickets an employee closed out during a pay period, divided by the number of hours they worked in that pay period.&nbsp;</p>





<p>It&#8217;s a rough measure of efficiency—but one that&#8217;s impossible to create inside of Zendesk, which doesn&#8217;t know how many hours an employee has worked or what pay schedule an employee is on. But, when you join Zendesk tickets into the employee graph, it&#8217;s also joined to other systems that are connected to that graph, such as your time tracking system—and once you have set up this unified schema, it&#8217;s easy to calculate and analyze data across multiple business systems.</p>



<h4>Supergroups</h4>



<p>Supergroups let you apply policies, membership, and configuration to any business system (within or outside of Rippling) from one place.</p>



<p>Part of the daily drudgery of managing point SaaS products is configuring employees’ access within those systems. You might need to add employees to email lists in Google Workspace and to the right channels in Slack. You’ll need to set up the right “license types” for employees in Salesforce, Zoom, and Zendesk. You’ll add employees to the right spending policies in your corporate card or spend management system, the right PTO policies in your PTO system. And, you’ll manage group memberships, configuration, and access across dozens of other systems.</p>





<p>Supergroups in Rippling eliminates all of this, because it lets you write out complex business logic—including using logical expressions written in RQL—for which employees should be included in a group, policy, configuration, license type, and more in each of your business systems.</p>



<p>These group memberships can then be used to control different HR, IT, and Finance policies like:</p>



<ul><li><strong>Systems access in third-party business systems outside of Rippling</strong>—for example, engineers with more than 6 months of tenure, above a level 6, and with an active hardware security key on their account should get administrative access to AWS.<br></li><li><strong>Which employees should be added to a particular email list or Slack channel</strong>—for example, everyone who is a manager, and in the sales department, should be on the &#8220;salesmanagers@rippling.com&#8221; email list.<br></li><li><strong>Spending limits on corporate cards</strong>—for example, employees at the VP level should have one set of spending policies that apply to them, and below that level, a different set of policies apply.<br></li><li><strong>Membership in PTO policies</strong>—for example, full-time employees in India get one holiday policy, employees in work locations in the United States get a different holiday policy.<br></li><li><strong>Keycard access to your office</strong>—for example, only employees who have been fully vaccinated for COVID should get keycard access to your office.</li></ul>





<h4>Role-based Permissions and Approvals</h4>



<p>Unity lets you set up <a href="https://www.rippling.com/blog/introducing-role-based-permissions-get-complete-control-over-the-data-and-apps-that-your-team-can-manage" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">role-based permissions</a> and relationship-based approval requirements, which are then honored across Rippling.</p>





<p>For example, I have set up our own company so that any <strong><em>manager</em></strong> at <strong><em>level 7 and above</em></strong> should be an admin in Rippling for their direct reports. If someone is promoted to that level within the org, they will automatically inherit these permissions for their direct reports. If reporting structures change, all permissions will adjust accordingly.</p>



<p>Instead of having to configure administrative permissions one person at a time, I can set up rules for who should be able to do what within the system using Supergroups, and Rippling will automatically make sure everyone has the right access going forward.</p>



<p>And, these permissions apply everywhere in Rippling—these admins can build their own reports and analytics, set up their own workflows, and create RQL expressions based on the employees and data fields they have access to in Rippling.</p>



<p>Further, you can set up approval requirements for any changes these admins make, based on relationships between employees across Rippling’s employee graph—for example, I have specified that any changes in Rippling need to be approved first by a director above this manager in the org chart, then the executive team member above that person, and then finally by me, before taking effect.</p>



<p>You can even configure approval requirements based on any data in Rippling’s employee graph and any custom logic you want to apply to it—for example, you can say that any increase in <strong><em>annual salary </em></strong>by <strong><em>more than</em></strong> <strong><em>20%</em></strong> requires additional approval from finance before it takes effect.</p>





<p><a href="https://www.rippling.com/blog/introducing-role-based-permissions-get-complete-control-over-the-data-and-apps-that-your-team-can-manage" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Learn more about role-based permissions and approvals here</a>.</p>



<h4>What Unity means for the future of workforce management</h4>



<p>These five Unity products share some common themes.</p>



<p>First, they are all built on top of Rippling’s employee graph.</p>



<p>Second, they use this employee graph to join together—to unite—data across multiple business systems, and allow you to act on, analyze, and manage these different point-SaaS systems in a single place.</p>



<p>Third, these products are all highly configurable—in fact, we think of them internally less as specific features in their own right, and more as “frameworks” that allow you to build your own functionality inside of Rippling, without code, to match our system to your company’s own bespoke needs.</p>



<p>And fourth, role-based permissions are embedded in the fabric of each of these products, so that these capabilities can be distributed broadly across your organization. Every manager in your company can create reports, build out workflows, use Supergroups and write out RQL expressions.</p>



<p>Beyond that, we view each of these products as &#8220;platform capabilities&#8221;—they are useful products on their own, but they are also capabilities that will be embedded into every future Rippling product going forward.</p>



<p>This is the promise of Unity: A single employee system and source of truth that can be activated for nearly any task with any connected tool. What we’re launching today is the foundation, and there’s a lot more to come.</p>







<h5 class="is-style-overline">Learn More</h5>



<p class="text-28 leading-36 mb-16 w-250 ml-auto mr-auto md:ml-0 md:mr-0">See Rippling Unity in action</p>








Introducing the future of workforce management: Rippling Unity


<p>Today’s cybersecurity landscape is growing more complex by the second. The volume and sophistication of malware continue to grow as bad actors evolve their tactics to claim ransoms, commit fraud, and cause widespread brand damage. Ransomware attacks happen every 11 seconds and are projected to claim $20 billion in 2021, a 225% increase over the year before.&nbsp;</p>





<p>No organization, regardless of size or industry, is immune. It’s not just highly visible Fortune 500 companies that fall victim to cyberattacks. More than half of all cyberattacks are committed against small and medium-sized businesses, 60% of which go out of business within six months of the attack.&nbsp;&nbsp;</p>



<h4><strong>The importance of an endpoint protection platform&nbsp;</strong></h4>



<p>Endpoints, or end-user devices like laptops, are frequently exploited as entry points by malicious actors. This will only become more widespread as companies adopt a BYOD culture and transition to remote work. That’s why an endpoint protection platform (EPP) that can meet the highest threat detection standards is essential for any company with data distributed across employee devices. The EPP solution you implement must rapidly keep up in order to detect, analyze, block, and quarantine attacks before they inflict irreversible damage on your business.&nbsp;</p>



<p>An EPP solution is especially important for any organization trying to meet SOC 2 compliance. Antivirus and endpoint security are critical to maintaining a strong cybersecurity program and being prepared for an audit.&nbsp;</p>



<h4><strong>Introducing endpoint security with Rippling + SentinelOne&nbsp;</strong></h4>



<p>We’re excited to provide Rippling customers a solution to protect against evolving cyber threats with SentinelOne. SentinelOne’s AI-powered platform makes precise, context-driven decisions autonomously without human intervention in order to detect emerging threats in real time.&nbsp;</p>



<p>We chose to work with SentinelOne because of its track record protecting millions of endpoints for organizations of all industries and sizes, including Fortune 10 and Global 2000 companies. In 2021, Gartner named SentinelOne a leader in its <a href="https://www.sentinelone.com/blog/sentinelone-is-a-leader-in-the-2021-gartner-magic-quadrant-for-endpoint-protection-platforms-heres-why/">Magic Quadrant for endpoint protection platforms</a>.</p>



<p>SentinelOne offers superior malware detection for ransomware, phishing, network attacks, and web threats. Recent <a href="https://www.sentinelone.com/blog/mitre-attck-engenuity-ai-big-data-powered-edr-human-powered-products/">MITRE Engenuity ATT&amp;CK Carbanak and FIN7</a> results show SentinelOne leading all other cybersecurity vendors with 100% visibility and zero missed detections.&nbsp;&nbsp;</p>



<p>At Rippling, our team applies a rigorous evaluation to any integrations we’re considering for our customers. We’ve found SentinelOne to be innovative and extremely responsive in keeping up with the latest emerging threats as well as the latest versions of Mac and PC operating systems. In our own technical review, SentinelOne has shown very low CPU usage and false positives, which means it will not slow down the computers or impact your team’s productivity.&nbsp;</p>





<p>Because Rippling operates from a single directory across IT and HR, customers will not only <a href="https://www.rippling.com/recipes/device-locked-alert" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">see which devices threats are detected</a> on but also which employees are impacted. The ability to determine which departments or locations are most often impacted by threats will help you identify parts of the organization where more education on best data security practices may be needed.</p>



<h4>With the Rippling + SentinelOne integration, customers will have the ability to:&nbsp;</h4>



<ul><li>Access zero-touch installation and configuration, all handled by the Rippling Agent</li><li>View threats in Rippling by employee, department, or location</li><li>Take action on threats from Rippling, including kill, quarantine, or mark as benign&nbsp;&nbsp;</li><li>Get 1-click remediation and rollback on unauthorized changes&nbsp;</li><li>Push SentinelOne agent updates to devices automatically and on-demand</li><li>Generate antivirus enforcement reports for compliance audits&nbsp;</li><li>Manage SentinelOne licensing, billing, and support through Rippling&nbsp;</li></ul>





<h4><strong>Better security and control with Rippling integrations&nbsp;</strong></h4>



<p>Since Rippling integrates its core directory and device management solutions with SentinelOne, you’ll have a holistic view of your device inventory. We make it easy to keep your entire device fleet secure and protected by a best-in-class EPP.&nbsp;&nbsp;</p>



<p>Ready to step up your security posture? Check out the SentinelOne product <a href="https://app.rippling.com/app-shop/app/SentinelOne">here</a> or <a href="https://www.rippling.com/request-demo">request a demo</a> today.</p>




Rippling + SentinelOne: autonomous endpoint security


<p>Hack Week is a week-long, bi-annual (by popular demand!) competition open to everyone at Rippling, tech skills notwithstanding. Categories include product feature prototypes, internal tooling, marketing and promotion, customer experience and more!&nbsp;</p>



<p>Hack Week helps Rippling tap the wealth of experience, knowledge, and new ideas that our employees are always coming up with to create inspirational changes to our product. So many times, our clients have been delighted by the changes that have come about as a result of Hack Week.&nbsp;</p>





<p>And it’s a process that helps us continue to be a company and a product that Frees Smart People to Work On Hard Problems.&nbsp;</p>



<p>We promise our employees that when they work at Rippling, they will be empowered to test their limits, and hopefully, surpass them. Hack Week is just one more way we like to give our employees the opportunity to fly.</p>



<h3><strong>How the magic happens</strong></h3>



<ul><li>Jot down your lofty, ambitious ideas on a platform open to all employees. This time we had nearly 90 awesome ideas that people across the company, including Ripplers from Product, Sales, Engineering, Finance, and Marketing, wanted to make into a reality. Despite the challenges of remote work and collaboration, people came together to support each other.&nbsp;</li><li>Identify and collaborate with your volunteer team over the course of the following two weeks to execute. Employees get time off from their regular responsibilities to help them brainstorm and collaborate with their team.&nbsp;</li><li>Present your Hack on Demo Day!</li></ul>



<h3><strong>Hackstream: because ambition seeks inspiration</strong></h3>



<p>H<em>a</em>ckstream is a four-day schedule of 30-minute learning sessions — a mini-conference, if you will! Open to all employees, the goal of Hackstream is to get you to think outside of the box and learn something new from your peers. Whether it is negotiation tips from the OG <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/parkerconrad/">Parker</a> himself, quick and dirty personal finance tips, or advice in navigating the complexities of human behavior, Hackstream had it all.&nbsp;&nbsp;</p>





<p><em>Finally, we arrive at&#8230;</em>D-day! With 20-plus presentations, we were in for a hell of a ride. Most of us were shocked at both the quality and number of awesome ideas that were executed perfectly in a matter of days. As if technical brilliance wasn’t enough, the presenters regaled us with hilarious performances, commentary, and props.</p>



<h3><strong>Voting and winners&nbsp;</strong></h3>



<p>After the presentations, we asked people to vote in a variety of categories to select the winners.&nbsp;</p>



<p>We celebrated the Best Presentation, the Best No-Code (non-technical) hack, the Moonshot hack for something truly audacious, and many more. What are the rewards? Gift cards, bragging rights, and most importantly, a chance to work your hack into the Rippling Product and directly impact thousands of companies and the experience of their employees!&nbsp;</p>



<p>Though this event lasted only a couple of weeks, the improvements and scalability it added to the experience of both our customers and internal employees was tremendous and outsized. We learned so much about our culture and values in action, and what is truly meaningful to people—both at Rippling and outside.&nbsp;&nbsp;</p>





<p>To get people in the mood, we sent them all these cute little T-shirts and tote bags to rock on the video call on Demo Day. With everyone spread across the world and timezones, it took a concerted effort to bring the vision to life but the stellar behind-the-scenes team did its magic nonetheless.&nbsp;</p>



<p>What happens to these ideas now? Well, some of them are already on their way to production and others will be worked on, improved, and implemented as soon as possible. Using dedicated Slack channels and progress update trackers, these teams are continuing to plug away at their ideas until they’re ready for the world.&nbsp;</p>



<p>At Rippling, We Run Hard. We have lofty ambitions and we know what we need to do to get there. You’d think that there would be no room for more! How energizing it is to be proven wrong, again and again. To find out that not only are people willing to Run Hard on the problems that we want to solve for our customers but to also Push The Limits of Possible as soon as they are given the slightest opportunity to, is special to Rippling. We know we want to build a company where people feel empowered, encouraged and free to push us all towards a better future. This Hack Week felt like a little bit of proof that we are on the right track.</p>



<p>Want to join us? We’re <a href="https://www.rippling.com/careers">hiring across all roles</a>.</p>




Rippling Hack Week: ideas, application, ambition, and imagination


<p><em>Update: OSHA&#8217;s COVID-19 Vaccination and Testing Emergency Temporary Standard (ETS) are moving forward and will go into effect for enforcement as of January 10, 2022. Read our more recent blog post to get the details and find out what you can do to help your business comply quickly and easily.</em></p>



<p>A federal vaccine mandate is very likely coming soon. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) has drafted the mandate, now under review by the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), which may require businesses with 100 or more employees to require COVID-19 vaccinations or regular testing for employees as a condition of continued employment. The hotly debated new rule is estimated to impact around 80 million American workers. The federal government not only supports the upcoming mandate but has <a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://thehill.com/policy/healthcare/574986-biden-presses-companies-to-get-ahead-of-vaccine-mandate" target="_blank">urged employers</a> to implement their own vaccine verification programs now, instead of waiting for the rule to become active.</p>



<h2>Why you should consider establishing a vaccine database now</h2>



<p><a href="https://www.rippling.com/recipes/vaccination-status-bundle" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Tracking and managing vaccine status</a> and testing results could create hours of work in research, planning, and implementation, and it&#8217;s understandable that companies may want to delay that investment until the new fiscal year or until they’re sure the rules will withstand any legal challenges. But organizations can’t afford not to prepare for the rule to take effect—companies will face fines of up to $14,000 per violation for non-compliance with the federal mandate, and depending on the size of the company, the fine could be prohibitive.</p>





<p>Implementing your own vaccine requirement, ahead of the mandate, also has implications for employer branding, the importance of which is at an all-time high given the record levels of talent mobility. Job seekers are already asking about vaccine requirements and they want to hear how employers are managing this process and the data produced by it.</p>



<p>Being proactive about vaccine requirements also establishes your organization as a decisive leader that prioritizes public health and the welfare of your employees and customers. Having a process up and running before the mandate becomes effective will help you hit the ground running.</p>





<h2>How Rippling can help</h2>



<p>The good news is that implementing vaccine requirements may be much simpler than you realize. Rippling allows employers to invite employees to confirm and record their vaccination status electronically, saving time and manual work for employees—and for their colleagues who have to manage the tracking.</p>



<p>Ever since vaccines became widely available in the U.S., Rippling has had a vaccine requirement for anyone coming into our office. Because the Rippling platform is our centralized employee system of record, it was simple to create a custom field in the product to compliantly track vaccinations and even upload a photo of their vaccine card. This feature has taken all of the manual checking and guesswork out of enforcing our own company policy, and it will make complying with the upcoming federal mandate a much easier process for Rippling customers affected by the rule. It’s also an effective and compliant way for smaller companies to manage an in-house vaccine requirement or at least track employee status. For those smaller teams, Rippling makes it possible to set the vaccine card upload as an optional step. If you’re already a Rippling customer, <a href="https://help.rippling.com/s/article/372933838472" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">visit our Help Center for easy step-by-step instructions</a>.</p>



<p>Preparing early means your team will have additional time to integrate this new task with your existing processes, which means a better experience for all your employees.</p>




How to easily keep track of employee vaccination status ahead of the federal mandate


<p>Many business owners feel like they just can’t quite get payroll right. They may be inclined to blame themselves when, really, it’s the inefficiency and legacy payroll systems, and their inability to integrate easily with other systems, that have failed business owners for a long time. And many of the simpler, more modern systems lack the features that support your business as it grows.</p>



<p>So what exactly should business owners look for in a modern payroll system? Our <a href="https://www.rippling.com/resources/payroll-switch-guide" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">newest guide</a> to switching payroll systems spells out the why, what, and when. Here’s a preview of some of our top tips.&nbsp;</p>



<h2>The six main benefits of a modern payroll system</h2>



<h4>1. Automatically updates payroll when employee changes happen</h4>



<p>Modern payroll systems ought to integrate with your other HR tools and systems of record, so that employee information is accurate and up-to-date. When this process isn’t automated, it’s left up to busy business owners or their employees to manually manage, which <a href="https://www.rippling.com/recipes/when-bank-details-missing-assign-task-and-send-reminder" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">can lead to missing information</a> and critical errors, like valued employees not receiving their correct pay (and potentially significant tax liabilities).&nbsp;</p>



<h4>2. Proactively surfaces discrepancies in pay runs</h4>



<p>You’re only human, so you likely won’t be able to remember whether there was a discrepancy between one pay run and another. A modern payroll system does the work of comparing pay run data and will alert you when there’s a potential error that needs confirmation or correction.&nbsp;</p>



<h4>3. Builds any kind of report you can imagine&nbsp;</h4>



<p>Today, you’re likely spending countless hours fiddling with finicky spreadsheets. A good payroll system should provide you with the means to create any kind of report that you want, so you can <a href="https://www.rippling.com/recipes/payroll-report-template" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">focus on analyzing the data</a> and improving your business.&nbsp;&nbsp;</p>



<h4>4. Tracks and analyzes your labor costs with job codes</h4>



<p>Companies use job codes to track the cost (time and money) of employee labor, by location, client and project. Many legacy payroll systems have custom job codes, while others don’t allow you to customize job codes at all, which hinders your options. Rather than be trapped between two less-than-ideal solutions, model payroll systems allow you to customize job codes so you can more accurately estimate labor costs.&nbsp;</p>



<h4>5. Integrates with your general ledger</h4>



<p>The general ledger—or the GL, as it’s often called—is the bedrock of all your bookkeeping. As such, it’s critical that this document can be integrated seamlessly with your payroll system. Though many of the largest payroll vendors today claim that their platforms seamlessly integrate your general ledger with your payroll system, this often happens via a clunky CSV template import/export (essentially, an entirely manual and inefficient process). You’re going to want a payroll system that can truly integrate with and pull data from other systems, without a manual upload.&nbsp;</p>



<h4>6. Automates complex tax filings for multi-state workers</h4>



<p>State tax penalties are never a fun surprise. Avoid them by investing in a payroll system that is able to flexibly and accurately withhold the correct amount of taxes from employee paychecks. This is especially important if your business employs people who regularly need to work across state lines.</p>



<p>And that’s just the tip of the top tips iceberg. For more on the fundamentals of modern payroll systems, check out our <a href="https://www.rippling.com/resources/payroll-switch-guide" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">new guide</a>. And remember: You don’t have to wait until the end of the year to switch systems! (We expand more on that in the guide, too.)&nbsp;</p>




How to solve your payroll woes: tips for switching to a better system


<p>We’re excited to announce that Rippling has raised $250M led by Sequoia Capital Global Equities and Global Growth, with participation from Greenoaks and other existing investors.&nbsp;</p>



<p>I’m grateful for these investors’ conviction in Rippling, for the employees that have gotten us to this point, and for our clients, without whom none of this would be possible.</p>



<p>This round of financing values the company at $6.5 billion.</p>



<p>Fundraising is of course a means to an end, but it’s a gratifying signal that we’re on the right track. If you’re curious why Sequoia decided to invest in Rippling, I encourage you to check out Sequoia Partner Mike Vernal’s blog post about the investment.</p>



<p>Rippling’s core thesis is that employee data is critical to a surprisingly large number of business systems, including the ones well outside of HR.<br></p>



<p>Maintaining the fidelity of the same employee data across all these disconnected systems—effectively, across multiple separate databases—is the reason it’s a lot of work for companies to have many different business systems in the first place.</p>



<p>Rippling solves this problem by giving companies and employees a single place to make changes, which then propagate everywhere automatically.</p>



<p>The system that does this isn’t just a time-saver—we believe it will be a critical primitive for business software going forward.</p>



<p>Products built on top of a rich graph of data about the organization, employees, and their apps and <a href="https://www.rippling.com/recipes/device-health-report-template" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">devices aren’t just easier to manage</a>. They are better as software products—with more intelligent workflows and approvals, better role-based policies and permissions, and more powerful analytics.</p>



<p>We are, of course, <a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://www.rippling.com/careers" target="_blank">hiring across all roles</a>.</p>







<h5 class="is-style-overline">Learn More</h5>



<p class="text-28 leading-36 mb-16 w-250 ml-auto mr-auto md:ml-0 md:mr-0">Ready to see Rippling in action? </p>








Rippling raises $250M in Series C funding


<p>Every small business essentially has two customers: its paying customers and its internal customers (a.k.a its employees). For any business to thrive, it’s important that employees are well taken care of, which includes the security of knowing that they’ll get paid the correct amount they’re owed, regularly and on time.</p>



<p>As an employer, you have certain tax responsibilities like making sure that you’re not only paying your employees their wages, but that you’re also withholding the correct amount of taxes from their checks. You’ll also need to determine which tax returns you need to file for your business every year.</p>



<p>“Some employers are still manually calculating employees’ paychecks every month,” says Ben Becker, Payroll Implementation Manager at Rippling. “Which fundamentally tells you that calculating payroll tax is something that you <em>can </em>do with a calculator, but it doesn’t mean that you should.”</p>



<p>All to say: setting up a payroll process for your company is a necessary task, but it doesn’t have to be a daunting one. Here are the six basic steps to getting your payroll process up and running.</p>







<h5 class="is-style-overline">Payroll Software</h5>



<p class="text-28 leading-36 mb-16 w-250 ml-auto mr-auto md:ml-0 md:mr-0">Automate payroll with Rippling </p>









<h2>1. Apply for Your Employer Identification Number (EIN)</h2>



<p>First, you’re going to want to <a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://www.irs.gov/businesses/small-businesses-self-employed/apply-for-an-employer-identification-number-ein-online" target="_blank">register for an Employer Identification Number (EIN</a>) with the federal government. EINs are a tax identification number issued for the purpose of tax administration by the IRS.</p>



<p>How do you know if you’re eligible to apply for an EIN? If your principal business is located in the United States or one of the U.S. Territories, then you’re eligible. The application will also require information such as:</p>



<ul><li><strong>Responsible Party:</strong> This should be the name of the primary owner or operator of the business.</li><li><strong>Taxpayer Identification Number (TIN):</strong> The person named the Responsible Party will need to have a valid Taxpayer Identification Number. This is usually a Social Security Number (SSN), but an ITIN or another EIN is sometimes also acceptable.</li></ul>



<p>For more information on current tax and withholding rates, check out <a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/p15.pdf" target="_blank">Publication 15 (Circular E) — The Employer’s Tax Guide</a> which the IRS updates every year. The good news is, once you’ve secured your EIN, the number is yours forever.</p>



<h2>2. Confirm State and Local Tax Regulations</h2>



<p>Like we mentioned, as a small business owner and employer, you’ll be responsible for collecting—or more accurately, “withholding”—taxes like federal, state, and sometimes even local or municipal taxes from your employees’ paychecks. There are also federal payroll taxes that fund programs such as social security, unemployment, and Medicare Part A, the cost of which employers and employees share. Staying on top of these tax regulations and calculating them correctly is crucial because it’ll spare both you and your employees from a potentially costly tax bill later on.&nbsp;</p>



<p>Similarly, employers are expected to withhold income and unemployment tax at a state level. Bear in mind that some states, such as Alaska, may have slightly different rates and regulations, so it’s important that you do your due diligence and check state regulations for each place that you’ve hired employees.&nbsp;</p>



<p>If you plan on hiring employees from different states, it’s a good idea to get into the habit of <a href="https://www.rippling.com/recipes/when-employee-moves-states-assign-tax-registration-task" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">checking state tax regulations</a> beforehand so you’re not blindsided come filing time. Local taxes can vary as well, and they’re usually used to cover municipal costs like funding schools and regional transit and transportation systems.</p>



<h2>3. Distinguish Between Employees and Independent Contractors</h2>



<p>In any payroll system, you’ll need to demarcate your full-time or salaried employees from part-time contractors and hourly-based workers. This distinction is important because the status of an employee will determine their pay schedule, which in turn affects how you’ll report your taxes.</p>



<p>It comes down to a tale of two forms. According to the IRS, an employee is someone who maintains a permanent position at the company and receives a designated salary. Once a year, you’re required to provide employees with a W-2 form that contains an itemized record of the employee’s pay, tax withholdings, deductions, and benefits.&nbsp;</p>



<p>On the other hand, contractors or freelance workers—who get paid varying amounts at various times—will not only require you to process payments more frequently, they will also require you to provide a 1099 form (unless the contractor has been paid less than $600 by the company for the year).</p>





<h2>4. Prepare Employee Documents, Including W-4 and I-9 Forms</h2>



<p>Good recordkeeping is fundamental to being a responsible employer. Aside from maintaining accurate accounting and financial records, employers also need to make sure to have two specific forms on file for each employee:</p>



<ul><li><strong>Employee’s Withholding Certificate (W-4)</strong>: Ask all new employees to complete their income tax withholding form (W-4) before they start work. Make sure that these withholdings are applied to their very first payment. According to the IRS’s website, “If a new employee does not give you a completed Form W-4, then withhold tax as if the employee is single.” If your employees have questions about how much tax to withhold, you can refer them to the <a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://www.irs.gov/individuals/tax-withholding-estimator" target="_blank">IRS tax withholding estimator</a>.</li><li><strong> </strong>: As the name suggests, all employees working in the United States must complete Form I-9 to signify that they are authorized to work in the country. Meanwhile, all employers are required by law to have this information on hand in order to help verify an employee’s identity and eligibility for work.</li></ul>



<p>It’s of the utmost importance to remember that Form I-9 can only be presented to a prospective employee <em>after</em> they have signed their job offer. This is a measure to prevent employers from discriminating against candidates based on their immigration status.</p>



<p>Another thing to be aware of is that most payroll processing systems will provide you with the right tax withholding rates. “Some payroll systems allow for the override of those numbers, but I wouldn’t recommend changing them,” says Ben.</p>



<h2>5. Choose the Right Platform to Manage the Process</h2>



<p>Gone are the days of spending late nights tallying employees’ wages with nothing but a pencil, paper and calculator in hand. These days, payroll processing platforms can help do a lot of the heavy lifting (while ensuring a higher degree of accuracy, too).</p>



<p>Investing in a payroll processing system is especially handy when you lack the time and personnel to oversee the job. An added bonus is that a good payroll platform can sync with other HR and recordkeeping systems so that business owners can keep employee records accurate and up-to-date with less effort.&nbsp;</p>



<p>But it’s automation that often sets a good payroll processing platform apart. From automatic compliance to automatic tax-filing, it’s wise to choose a platform that gives you a one-stop shop for payroll processing and administration.</p>



<p>“If you employ mostly salaried workers, I would highly recommend automating your payroll,” says Ben. “If you have hourly employees that you pay on a weekly basis, you can automate that too, but you’ll probably want to check that those numbers are accurate since they’re more flexible and get paid out more frequently.”</p>



<p>Then there’s the practical reason that matters most to small business owners: a payroll processing system can save you a lot of money by protecting you from potentially high cost fees and fines incurred from misfiled taxes.</p>



<p>Think of it this way: One missing employee form or even a small error in tax withholdings from an employee’s wages could amount to big expenses for your business. A good payroll system will spare you time in the short-term and save you money (and headache) in the long-term.</p>



<h2>6. Maintain All Required Records</h2>



<p>Employers are expected to abide by what’s known as a burden of proof for business taxes. That means that business owners must be prepared to present documentation to the IRS when called upon. These can include receipts and expenses, bank statements, invoices, tax returns, and payroll records.&nbsp;</p>



<p>How long do you need to keep your records handy for? Most accountants will advise you to retain records for at least seven years, since the IRS and Department of Labor (DOL) each have varying mandates for document retention and they can technically ask you for documents reaching as far back as seven years.</p>



<p>Some of the common records that business owners are expected to retain include:</p>



<ul><li>Employee names and contact information</li><li>Employee pay stubs</li><li>Payroll tax records</li><li>Invoices</li><li>Cancelled checks&nbsp;</li><li>Vendor contracts</li><li>Operating license / Business registration&nbsp;</li></ul>



<p>Modern payroll processing systems should be equipped with features that allow you to easily generate business reports and maintain clean, up-to-date records.</p>





<h2>Rippling Solutions Are Simple and Secure</h2>



<p>The benefits of modern payroll processing solutions is that they can save you a lot of time on administrative overhead while also protecting you from hefty tax bills.&nbsp;</p>



<p>Take <a href="https://www.rippling.com/payroll">Rippling</a> as an example. Our platform syncs with all your business’s HR data, so that your employee information and records are <a href="https://www.rippling.com/recipes/missing-employee-in-pay-run-alert" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">consistent and free of discrepancies</a>. When payroll time comes around, all you have to do is click “Run” to get the process started.&nbsp;</p>



<p>Not only is Rippling secure, it’s a smart system too. Rippling automates compliance, ensuring that your necessary “burden of proof” forms and documents are in all in order. The system can also automatically file your payroll taxes with the IRS and other federal, state and local agencies, at the right time, every time.&nbsp;</p>



<p>Employees expect to be paid what they’re due, on time, and with Rippling that’s sure to happen. There’s also the added bonus that employees will be greeted with some lovely celebratory artwork to welcome their well-earned payday.&nbsp;&nbsp;</p>



<p>Being an employer comes with a lot of responsibility, but the right payroll processing system can make a complex process much more simple and effective for busy business owners and their valued employees.</p>







<h5 class="is-style-overline">Rippling Payroll</h5>



<p class="text-28 leading-36 mb-16 w-250 ml-auto mr-auto md:ml-0 md:mr-0">See Rippling Payroll in action</p>








How to do payroll for small businesses


<p>Anyone who runs a business knows that a good oversight into corporate spending is a key piece of a healthy business strategy. You have to make sure that you don’t spend too much or misallocate funds, but you also have to let employees make decisions about spending that will help them do their jobs more effectively.&nbsp;</p>



<p>But having a keen sense of money and priorities isn’t enough—modern spend management is about maximizing value through tracking, categorizing, and analyzing spend data. To do this well, corporate credit card programs need to provide transparency into a wide variety of relevant data from multiple sources, as well as automate processes; however, an <a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://www2.deloitte.com/us/en/insights/focus/cognitive-technologies/state-of-ai-and-intelligent-automation-in-business-survey.html" target="_blank">IDC study</a> found that 61% of companies used disconnected sets of tools and processes to track spending.</p>



<p>These are among the many reasons we’re thrilled to announce Rippling’s integration with <a href="https://ramp.com/rippling?partner_promo=rippling-500" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Ramp</a>, the corporate card designed to help organizations save money through smarter spending. This integration gives employers greater control and flexibility over the way their cards are used. Now customers can manage their corporate card spending through the Rippling dashboard and use the employee data customers already have within Rippling to customize their corporate card program with the right level of access and spending privileges for each team or employee.</p>





<h2>What does the Rippling + Ramp integration help you do?</h2>



<p>Organizations need a way to quickly adapt their corporate card policies as their organization grows or as they make changes in their departments and employee roles. This integration allows you to automatically assign credit cards during onboarding and update employee spending limits whenever you make changes in their employment status. Features supported by this integration include:</p>



<h3><strong>Ramp Single Sign On (SSO)</strong></h3>



<p>Connect Ramp with Rippling so employees can access Ramp in one click. Admins can instantly log in and start issuing cards to employees.</p>



<h3>Account creation and removal in Ramp</h3>



<p>Easily manage card policy changes. Automatically grant or lock and terminate card access whenever you update employee status, like transfers or title changes, within the Rippling dashboard and have it dynamically apply it to Ramp approval flows.</p>



<h3>Automatic Ramp card assignments as part of employee onboarding</h3>



<p>Issue Ramp cards to employees as part of their onboarding workflow, and automatically assign role-based spending limits based on employee team, location, seniority, and more.</p>



<h3>Ramp Card Programs with granular Rippling access policies</h3>



<p>Tie your Rippling groups to Ramp Card Programs so your team can automatically issue templatized Ramp Cards to your employees based on attributes stored in Rippling. Manage spend with built-in controls like restricted category spending and pre-approved daily, monthly, and one-time limits that eliminate out-of-policy purchases.</p>



<h3>Merchant blocking</h3>



<p>Automatically approve or block charges for specific merchants using the <a href="https://techcrunch.com/2021/07/13/ramp-adds-merchant-blocking-to-corporate-credit-card/" data-type="URL" data-id="https://techcrunch.com/2021/07/13/ramp-adds-merchant-blocking-to-corporate-credit-card/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Merchant Blocking feature</a> Ramp released in July of this year. Admins can restrict spending to businesses they have preferential pricing agreements with, and protect against inflated or falsified reimbursement claims.</p>





<p>Simply put, connecting a powerful employee directory system like Rippling to a modern spend management solution like Ramp provides organizations more control of their spending strategy. Admins can automatically assign corporate cards to pre-approved groups, keep card assignments up-to-date, and manage employee spend without having to manually enforce their corporate card policies.&nbsp;</p>



<p>And employees will always have access to the appropriate budget without having to manually check on their corporate spending or spend valuable time submitting every expense for reimbursement—whether that’s to support an upcoming business trip or to claim a recurring wellness stipend.<br>As an extra benefit, Rippling customers get a $500 bonus once they spend $1,000 on the Ramp card. Check out <a href="https://app.rippling.com/app-shop/app/ramp" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Ramp</a> in the App Shop today!</p>




Automate corporate card management with the Rippling + Ramp integration


<p>It’s no secret that distributed workforces are becoming the norm for many industries. Less obvious is how that change affects IT operations—specifically, the management of physical devices like laptops and monitors. While many IT functions can be managed remotely, unexpected complexities arise from having to physically manage a fleet of devices when your employees are working from, literally, anywhere.</p>



<p>When everyone is working in the same office, it’s easy to give new hires their laptop and get employees’ computers back after they leave. Distributed teams, though, are another story.&nbsp;</p>



<p>If you’re the person responsible for managing remote employee devices, then your life probably looks very different. You’re constantly boxing and shipping computers or trying to get the departing employee to ship their laptop back asap. Your living room is full of computers because you’re remote and have no way of storing them in the office. Meanwhile, the new employee is starting in 2 days but the laptop you’ve ordered for them is on backorder because of an inventory shortage.</p>



<p>This is where Rippling <a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://app.rippling.com/app-shop/rippling-app/inventorymanagement" target="_blank">Inventory Management</a> comes into play. It’s the world&#8217;s first cloud IT closet. It&#8217;s a simple solution that allows businesses to retrieve, store, ship, set up, and manage employees devices&#8217;—100% remotely. We built this solution to free everyone up from busywork and eliminate messy IT closets entirely.</p>





<h2>Here’s how it works</h2>



<h3>Retrieve remote employees’ devices—100% hassle-free</h3>



<p>Let’s imagine you’re offboarding a remote employee. Think about all the steps you would take to retrieve their device. You find a box, ship it to the employee, ask them to ship the device back (“Quickly, please!”), receive it, assess the condition, and store it until it gets reassigned to a new hire. Whew!&nbsp;</p>



<p>Then you have to do it all over again when the next employee offboards.</p>



<p>Or you can choose to let Rippling manage that process for you. When you offboard an employee, we&#8217;ll automatically send them a return box with a prepaid shipping label. You can track the status of their return, too—right in Rippling.</p>



<h3>Retrieving and reassigning devices:</h3>







<p class="is-style-p1">Rippling Way</p>





<p class="is-style-p1">The old way</p>










<p></p>






<p class="h3 mb-30 text-22 leading-30">The Rippling Way</p>










<p></p>





<p class="is-style-p2 leading-18 pb-26">Automatically ship a return box and prepaid shipping label to employee</p>











<p></p>





<p class="is-style-p2 leading-18 pb-26">Have devices returned, assessed, wiped, and stored in a secure warehouse</p>









<p class="is-style-p2 leading-18">Remotely set up and ship device to new hire without having to pack it</p>











<p></p>




<p class="h3 mb-30 text-22 leading-30">The old way</p>










<p></p>





<p class="is-style-p2 leading-18 pb-26">Exchange 10 emails with departing employee to coordinate device return</p>













<p></p>





<p class="is-style-p2 pb-26 leading-18">Employee finds a shipment box, packs up the device</p>











<p></p>





<p class="is-style-p2 leading-18 pb-26">Figure out how to reimburse the employee for the shipment</p>











<p></p>





<p class="is-style-p2 leading-18 pb-26">Track shipment on the FedEx website once employee ships the box</p>











<p></p>





<p class="is-style-p2 leading-18 pb-26">Unpack the package and manually assess device condition upon receipt</p>











<p></p>





<p class="is-style-p2 leading-18 pb-26">Manually wipe and lock the device</p>











<p></p>





<p class="is-style-p2 leading-18 pb-26">Update device status in spreadsheet</p>











<p></p>





<p class="is-style-p2 leading-18 pb-26">Throw it into the device pile in your IT closet</p>











<p></p>





<p class="is-style-p2 leading-18 pb-26">Rummage through the closet to find a device for the new hire</p>











<p></p>





<p class="is-style-p2 leading-18 pb-26">Set up the device for the new hire</p>











<p></p>





<p class="is-style-p2 leading-18 pb-26">Find a box, pack it, ship it, track it</p>









<p class="is-style-p2 leading-18">Update device reassignment in spreadsheet</p>













<p></p>




<p class="h3 mb-30 text-22 leading-30">The old way</p>










<p></p>





<p class="is-style-p2 leading-18 pb-26">Exchange 10 emails with departing employee to coordinate device return</p>













<p></p>





<p class="is-style-p2 pb-26 leading-18">Employee finds a shipment box, packs up the device</p>











<p></p>





<p class="is-style-p2 leading-18 pb-26">Figure out how to reimburse the employee for the shipment</p>











<p></p>





<p class="is-style-p2 leading-18 pb-26">Track shipment on the FedEx website once employee ships the box</p>











<p></p>





<p class="is-style-p2 leading-18 pb-26">Unpack the package and manually assess device condition upon receipt</p>











<p></p>





<p class="is-style-p2 leading-18 pb-26">Manually wipe and lock the device</p>











<p></p>





<p class="is-style-p2 leading-18 pb-26">Update device status in spreadsheet</p>











<p></p>





<p class="is-style-p2 leading-18 pb-26">Throw it into the device pile in your IT closet</p>











<p></p>





<p class="is-style-p2 leading-18 pb-26">Rummage through the closet to find a device for the new hire</p>











<p></p>





<p class="is-style-p2 leading-18 pb-26">Set up the device for the new hire</p>











<p></p>





<p class="is-style-p2 leading-18 pb-26">Find a box, pack it, ship it, track it</p>









<p class="is-style-p2 leading-18">Update device reassignment in spreadsheet</p>









<p></p>






<p class="h3 mb-30 text-22 leading-30">The Rippling Way</p>










<p></p>





<p class="is-style-p2 leading-18 pb-26">Automatically ship a return box and prepaid shipping label to employee</p>











<p></p>





<p class="is-style-p2 leading-18 pb-26">Have devices returned, assessed, wiped, and stored in a secure warehouse</p>









<p class="is-style-p2 leading-18">Remotely set up and ship device to new hire without having to pack it</p>








<h3>Kill the IT closet with a secure offsite warehouse</h3>



<p>At Rippling, we pride ourselves on having a pretty amazing workspace, but the IT closet at our San Francisco office used to be a royal mess. When work went remote last year, that mess just moved into the home of our Employee Experience Manager.&nbsp;</p>





<p class="caption">Images are of the actual Rippling “IT closets” at our office and at the home of our Employee Experience Manager. Does your IT closet look like ours?</p>



<p>If you’re responsible for handling laptops, you dread the moment you have to collect an offboarding employee’s device and find somewhere to store it.</p>



<p>Rippling Inventory Management eliminates the need for you to physically store devices. We&#8217;ll store your new and used devices offsite at our secure warehouse. You can manage your company’s entire inventory right from your Rippling dashboard—no matter how big your team is or where your employees are located.</p>





<h3>Easily monitor and restock your offsite inventory</h3>



<p>If someone asked you about the condition of all your unassigned devices, how would you get them an answer? You’d probably have to sift through all of them, turning each one on and labeling its condition with a sticky note.&nbsp;</p>



<p>That might not seem like a big deal in the abstract. But who sets aside the time to do that? It might not seem as pressing as your other work until you’re scrambling to replace someone’s laptop and get it to them ASAP.<br></p>



<p>Rippling can give you full visibility into your <a href="https://www.rippling.com/recipes/device-inventory-report-template" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">device inventory</a>. Every time you store a device in our offsite warehouse, we physically check it for damage and tag it in Rippling. On your dashboard, you can see which devices are in stock, what each one&#8217;s condition is, and more.</p>



<p>And if you run low on inventory, you can even order new devices right in Rippling and store them at the warehouse for those hires that accept an offer on Friday and start on Monday.</p>



<h3>Reassign and ship your unused devices to employees</h3>



<p>Most businesses without a fully staffed IT team lack a scalable process for device onboarding and offboarding when their organization grows or downsizes. If a new employee is starting next week or a current employee’s laptop suddenly stops working, multiple people have to&nbsp; stop what they’re doing and scramble to set up and ship a laptop.</p>



<p>As complex as it can be, delivering laptops on time is huge for making a positive first impression on new hires. It’s also key to productivity.</p>



<p>We make it easy for you to reassign devices from your inventory in minutes, directly from your dashboard. As soon as you choose the device, shipping speed, and address, we take care of the rest.</p>





<h3>Gain 100% control of your device fleet with Rippling Inventory Management</h3>



<p>Adjusting to the remote world presents many challenges, but managing your device inventory doesn’t need to be one of them. And since Rippling<a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://app.rippling.com/app-shop/rippling-app/inventorymanagement" target="_blank"> Inventory Management</a> is connected to the employee record, it’s incredibly easy to assign and deliver, or unassign, retrieve, and store devices whenever you onboard and offboard employees with just a few clicks.</p>



<p><em>Interested in seeing the product in action? <a href="/request-demo">Schedule a demo</a> with our team today!</em></p>




Introducing Rippling Inventory Management


<p>With remote and hybrid workforces becoming the norm, it’s becoming increasingly hard for IT managers to implement security policies that can protect their organization’s data. This is especially true when their remote workforce has a bring-your-own-device policy.</p>



<p>Modern organizations prioritize the implementation of multi-factor-authentication (MFA) to ensure that the person logging in to company systems is who they say they are. For companies with sensitive data, MFA is critical for maintaining a strong identity management system.</p>



<p>But some basic MFA methods, like SMS tokens or security questions, put the onus on individual employees to determine whether they’re entering their information into a legitimate website or being phished by a fake website. As amazing as your employees are, a policy that relies on employee vigilance isn’t a resilient one. What results is a loosely implemented MFA policy that leaves sensitive company data susceptible to hackers.</p>



<p>This is where the YubiKey comes in. The YubiKey is a modern, hardware-based security key that allows employees to authenticate into their systems via USB, lightning, or NFC, with a simple tap. Of the various MFA types, a hardware key like the YubiKey is proven as the most effective and trusted authentication methods for safeguarding your data and mitigating phishing attacks.&nbsp;</p>





<h2>Security made easy with the YubiKey Ordering app</h2>



<p>We’re excited to announce the launch of Rippling’s <a href="https://app.rippling.com/app-shop/app/yubikey" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">YubiKey Ordering app</a>. It takes the security busywork out of employee onboarding while enabling administrators to implement security protocols that really protect the business. Even simpler? With the YubiKey Ordering app, you can manage YubiKey licenses directly through the Rippling dashboard. No need to set up a new vendor or manage the logistics of shipping a physical key to every remote employee.</p>



<p>Here at Rippling, we believe that the YubiKey hardware key is a critical part of cybersecurity—so much so that we’re implementing YubiKey authentication across our entire organization to protect our accounts and company data. Below, we’ll explain why YubiKeys are more resilient than other means of MFA.</p>





<h2>Why do you need a YubiKey to prevent phishing?</h2>



<p>Let’s take a look at why YubiKey is the preferred authentication method for stopping sophisticated phishing attacks.&nbsp;The YubiKey fits a standard USB, USB Type-C, or Apple Lightning port, as well as NFC functionality for use on mobile devices. </p>



<p>Security keys are generally more secure and usable than common alternatives like SMS and Time-Based One-Time Password (TOTP) applications. TOTP codes can be vulnerable to man-in-the-middle attacks, a common type of cybersecurity attack that tricks the user into entering their TOTP code into a fake web page. </p>



<p>YubiKeys use modern, WebAuthn standards to create a unique key pair between the service and the physical device. The key must be origin-bound to the domain for which it is registered, preventing phishing and other sophisticated man-in-the-middle attacks.&nbsp;</p>



<p>Imagine one of your employees receives an email trying to trick them to log into a fake website. With a YubiKey, any authentication attempt will fail, preventing the phishing attack, because the device will only communicate with the domain it is registered on. The YubiKey only allows the public key to be sent to the correct and intended domain—never a fake URL. It’s also easier to use than TOTP because your employee just has to tap their key instead of entering a 6-digit code.&nbsp;&nbsp;</p>



<h2>How Rippling streamlines YubiKey ordering and management</h2>



<p>We partnered with <a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="http://yubico.com/" target="_blank">Yubico</a>, creator of YubiKey, to make security management even easier. Rippling now integrates Yubico’s API, enabling customers with <a href="https://www.rippling.com/app-management">Rippling’s App Management package</a> to automate the purchase and shipment of security keys directly from their Rippling dashboard. Customers get direct access to YubiKeys without having to manage a Yubico account or custom integrations.&nbsp;</p>





<p>As an Identity Management platform, Rippling already has the infrastructure to manage provisioning as well as creating and managing accounts in third-party apps when employees join the company. For instance, admins can set up an integration with Zoom and choose which employees automatically get a Zoom account, plus assign them the right role within their Zoom account—Owner, Admin, or Member—based on their employee profile.</p>



<p>Our integration with <a href="https://www.yubico.com/products/yubienterprise-delivery/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">YubiEnterprise Delivery</a> is very similar. That’s why ordering a YubiKey is so seamless in Rippling. Admins can create an account using the YubiKey Ordering app, choose which employees automatically get a YubiKey, the type of YubiKey they will get, and manage billing—all from the Rippling dashboard.</p>





<p><strong>With the <a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://app.rippling.com/app-shop/app/yubikey" target="_blank">YubiKey Ordering app</a>, you can:&nbsp;</strong></p>



<ul><li>Bulk-purchase YubiKeys for employees directly through Rippling</li><li>Set up a policy to automate YubiKey ordering and shipping during employee onboarding</li><li><a href="https://www.rippling.com/recipes/unregistered-yubikey-alert" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Track YubiKey order status</a> for each employee in the Rippling dashboard </li><li>Consolidate licenses, billing, and key management through Rippling</li></ul>





<h3>FIDO authentication with WebAuthn </h3>



<p>Rippling customers get support for WebAuthn, a browser-based API that makes it easy for web services to integrate secondary authentication factors. That includes USB security keys, like YubiKey, and biometric readers, like Touch ID or Face ID. These options limit the authentication information to each device, so credentials are never shared across the internet. After setting up a YubiKey, customers can add their internal authenticators in order to make secondary authentication even faster.&nbsp;</p>



<p>At Rippling, we love delivering updates that make it easy for our customers to tighten their security—whether you’re a security expert or have zero domain expertise. That’s why we’re excited to launch the YubiKey Ordering app. Rippling automates away the busywork, so that you can focus on the important things.</p>



<p>To celebrate this launch, Rippling customers will receive <a href="https://app.rippling.com/app-shop/app/yubikey" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">10% off on their YubiKey orders</a>! </p>




Introducing Rippling + YubiKey: Better security, less busywork


<p>User account provisioning and deprovisioning refers to the creation, maintenance, and deletion of employees&#8217; access to internal and 3rd-party systems. It’s an important part of keeping your information, and the information of your employees, safe and in the right hands, as well as simplifying the onboarding and offboarding processes. This kind of identity management has many touch points, from the creation of user accounts, to the type of permissions granted, to the disabling of said accounts and permissions once an employee’s tenure with the company is up.&nbsp;</p>



<p>When a new employee is onboarded, they require access to everything from a company email address, to shared drives, user accounts in integrated applications, and company-wide databases. Effective user provisioning ensures that everyone is given access to exactly what they need as soon as possible in a manner that doesn’t bog down IT teams, reveal confidential information, or require multiple back-and-forth conversations to acquire all the tools needed.</p>



<p>Quick and easy creation and management of a digital identity is such an integral part of business today that a consistent and efficient management system will ensure your employees can get to work right away.</p>



<h2>Develop clear guidelines for sharing or restricting access</h2>



<p>In order to make the most of your user provisioning system, you need to clarify internally what type of information and tools must be accessible to which individuals and teams. These guidelines will help create a checklist to use when a new employee is hired, or when an employee moves into a new role. This process will not only make things more efficient, but improve security as well.&nbsp;</p>



<p>Start by creating an inventory of all the critical applications used throughout your organization, and work with IT to ensure they have a full understanding of all the tools on offer. Because of their wide use, these applications can pose the largest security risks, and should be treated with care. After everything is identified, parse out the necessary tools per department. Some applications will be shared widely across departments, some will have niche functions—the key is having oversight of each department’s needs, and how to provide timely access.&nbsp;</p>



<p>Restricting access is a piece of the puzzle that can’t be overlooked. Not only is it overwhelming to inundate new hires with information they don’t require, but there can be legal ramifications for allowing access to confidential documents to employees who haven’t, for instance, signed an NDA. Once you’ve set up your guidelines, it’s easy to work with a single sign-on system to grant and revoke access to everything your teams need. Monitoring these guidelines and their efficacy once implemented will help you evolve your process over time.</p>









<p class="is-style-p1 opacity-100 md:mb-16">Automate user provisioning with Rippling</p>








<h2>Support your IT team with the right tools, apps, and oversight</h2>



<p>It’s no wonder IT teams are often backed up with work—the sheer volume of requests is enough to overwhelm any team’s productivity. Providing IT with the right tools to easily and quickly complete ongoing tasks like identity management and digital profile creation helps to create a new roadmap for success. The more efficient the tools, the fewer requests to the help desk, the less potential for bottlenecks, and the easier it is to get back to solving more pressing issues.&nbsp;</p>



<p>Features like dashboard oversight empower an IT team to quickly solve minor issues rather than getting tied up looking for the root of a problem. Since onboarding and offboarding are facts of working life, any way to modernize the processes will result in saved time and money.</p>



<h2>Consider automated solutions to streamline the process</h2>



<p>Another simple way to save time and money comes from automating systems you know will often be repeated. Once a new hire’s digital profile is created, the ability to <a href="https://www.rippling.com/recipes/when-employee-hired-send-webhook" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">automatically add them to every application they need</a> to do their jobs—based on the guidelines you set out earlier—helps them to be ready on day one.&nbsp;</p>



<p>The ability to work with a single sign-on means that your employee will start their first day with automatic access to everything they require from one central location. Automated data collection also enables you to see which apps are being used by which employees, further helping you to refine your guidelines of who needs access to what.&nbsp;</p>



<p>Some automated features don’t just make the HR or IT departments’ lives easier, but employees’ lives as well. Being able to securely manage and share passwords means that not only can you be assured passwords meet a standard, thereby bolstering the security of your systems, but that your employees’ time will not be wasted remembering or resetting passwords for the multitude of digital tools and apps required to work these days.</p>



<h2>Do not overlook deprovisioning</h2>



<p>Unfortunately, deprovisioning is a necessary part of the workplace, and failing to cover all the bases can result in costly breaches. All of the access you doled out when onboarding must be walked back in the offboarding process, and when an employee has been with a company for years, it can be hard to keep track of just what they have access to unless you’re on top of your user provisioning.&nbsp;</p>



<p>Automating deprovisioning just makes sense—something as important as maintaining system security should not be left up to individual or institutional memory. With a dashboard view of all the tools every employee is logged into, it’s as easy as a single sign-on to automatically revoke access to all channels and applications. Having to remember to turn off multiple accounts, or <a href="https://www.rippling.com/recipes/when-employee-terminated-send-webhook" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">revoke access to apps</a>, for each employee you offboard is not an effective or realistic use of HR time, when there are many more steps needed to complete an offboarding.&nbsp;</p>



<p>Deprovisioning extends past an employee’s last day of employment, as after a decided period of time, dormant accounts should be deleted entirely from the system. Automating this process allows you to focus on the needs of current and future employees rather than those no longer working with you.</p>



<h2>Powerful, secure software for your business</h2>



<p>Effectively managing employees’ digital identities creates processes that benefit the company and the employee. Streamlined access to requisite tools helps new hires hit the ground running, and being able to provide those tools with ease transforms what can be a time-consuming process into a task as easy as hitting a button.</p>



<p>Onboarding and offboarding are rare access points with the potential to halt productivity at best and compromise security and confidentiality at worst. Choosing software that helps to automate this sensitive touchpoint provides peace of mind and, most importantly, facilitates a great first experience for any new employee joining the team.&nbsp;Learn more about a one-stop solution for all your user provisioning needs with Rippling’s <a href="https://www.rippling.com/app-management">App Management</a> software.</p>










<h5 class="is-style-overline">User Provisioning Software</h5>



<p class="text-28 leading-36 mb-16 w-250 ml-auto mr-auto md:ml-0 md:mr-0">Automate your provisioning &amp; deprovisioning </p>








What is user provisioning and deprovisioning?


<p>I’m Sowmya—Rippling’s Controller. I have helped businesses from startups to public companies, like Square, build scalable accounting and payroll processes.<br><br>In my role at previous companies, I have been the primary decision maker on payroll software selection. With so many options, I’ve personally relied on PCMag’s Reviews to identify the right fit for the company’s needs. So naturally, I’m thrilled to share that <a href="https://www.pcmag.com/reviews/rippling" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Rippling won this year’s PCMag Editors’ Choice Award for Best Payroll Software</a> for companies with hundreds of employees.&nbsp;</p>



<p>While awards are great and all, I wanted to share my experience as a controller and accountant with other finance and HR teams, because I really think Rippling can change their lives.</p>



<p>Over the years, I’ve seen a demo of every payroll system under the sun. My conclusion was that HR and finance teams only have two kinds of payroll systems to choose between.<br></p>



<ul><li>A payroll system that is simple and easy to use—like SurePayroll and Gusto (who, by the way, have also built a great product and recently won PC Mag Editor’s Choice for Best Payroll for companies with less than 10 employees) that are affordable and make running payroll a breeze for small companies, but can’t support the needs of companies as they grow due to feature limitations.<br></li><li>Powerful and configurable payroll systems like ADP and Workday, which can handle the more complicated needs of larger companies, but are really manual, hard to use, and expensive.<br></li></ul>



<p>This dichotomy has frustrated me for years, because there is no law of physics that prevents an easy-to-use payroll system from also being configurable and customizable. What’s worse, even the larger, enterprise-grade systems require heavy customer support interaction to customize reports and workflows.&nbsp;</p>



<p>At my last company, we used ADP and I was in the middle of a two-hour customer support call trying to add a column to a custom report. For some reason, they had to “do it on the back-end,” and I was caught in a game of endless phone tag with their support team.</p>



<p>I remember this moment well because it was during that phone call that an email from a recruiter at Rippling landed in my inbox. For the first time in my life, I was looking at a payroll company that offered the best of both worlds. The company culture and the leadership team drew me to Rippling, but the opportunity to help build a really incredible product for Finance and HR teams everywhere is what really sold me.&nbsp;</p>



<p>Rippling had around 100 employees worldwide when I joined, and we have now grown to 700+ employees in less than two years. We still use Rippling for payroll internally, and what’s crazy to me is that we’ve grown to 700 people without ever having to hire a dedicated payroll accountant. This is unheard of.&nbsp;</p>



<p>We have our fair share of complexity when it comes to managing our own payroll. We have non-exempt employees who use Rippling’s Time &amp; Attendance product to <a href="https://www.rippling.com/time-and-attendance">report hours</a>, and Rippling Payroll automatically manages overtime calculations, approvals and reporting.&nbsp;</p>



<p>In the last year, we’ve grown from having employees in 5 states to 35 states in the US, plus a large team in India and a handful of other countries. Using Rippling as the source of truth for all things employee payroll, including custom fields to track country-specific items, has been a life saver.</p>



<p>And the biggest win for me is the fact that Rippling Payroll runs itself. New hires, salary changes, terminations, adding hours for non-exempt employees to payroll, making <a href="https://www.rippling.com/recipes/employee-insurance-deduction-change-notification" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">changes to benefit deductions</a>—I don’t even think about these things in my job here because Rippling <a href="https://www.rippling.com/payroll">automatically takes care of them</a>.  </p>



<p>Fast-growing companies have different needs because what can be done manually today has to be automated by next month. Nice-to-have features like CSV imports and accounting integrations become table stakes in a matter of months.&nbsp;</p>



<p>Growing companies <em>want</em> an easy to use system, but they <em>need</em>:</p>



<ul><li>A powerful and flexible payroll system</li><li>Custom reports and dashboards</li><li>Workflow automation</li><li>Advanced permissions and security</li><li>Deep accounting integrations to Quickbooks, Netsuite, Sage Intacct, etc.</li><li>A native time and attendance system</li><li>Lightning-fast page load times</li></ul>



<p>Keats famously wrote that a thing of beauty is a joy forever. And what’s more beautiful to my fellow payroll admins than payroll software so powerful it can run itself.&nbsp;</p>



<p><em>You’ll believe me when you see it for yourself—<a href="https://www.rippling.com/request-demo" data-type="URL" data-id="https://www.rippling.com/request-demo">click here</a> to schedule a quick demo</em></p>



<h5 class="is-style-overline mb-24 mt-48">Posted By</h5>







<p class="text-22 leading-22"><strong>Sowmya Ranganathan</strong></p>



<p class="opacity-70">Controller, Rippling</p>



<p class="is-style-p2 opacity-70">Sowmya Ranganathan expertise is in building scalable processes in Accounting. Before Rippling, Sowmya started her career in public accounting with EY and subsequently spent two years at Square (one year pre-IPO and first year as a public company).</p>






A veteran controller explains why Rippling won PCMag’s Editors’ Choice award for Best Payroll Software for growing businesses


<p>The State Unemployment Tax Act, otherwise known as SUTA, requires employers to pay a payroll tax that goes directly into each state’s unemployment fund. Typically it is only paid by employers, but some states require both employer and employee to contribute (Alaska, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania).&nbsp;</p>



<p>SUTA, created in parallel with the Federal Unemployment Tax Act (FUTA) in 1939, was an effort to reinvigorate the U.S. economy during the Great Depression by providing funds to the record numbers of Americans who were unemployed at the time. It allows for a fund well-supplied enough to support workers who lose their jobs through no fault of their own with benefits.&nbsp;</p>



<p>Why do you need to understand SUTA? Because compliance is key.</p>



<h2><strong>What are SUTA taxes?</strong></h2>



<p>The responsibility of SUTA compliance falls to those in charge of company payroll, and payments are most commonly made in quarterly installments. The amount of tax is calculated differently depending on the state, and occasionally depending on the industry. The taxable wage base can range widely, so it’s important to check on compliance requirements in your state.&nbsp;</p>



<p>Your business will be assessed annually by the state, and the percentage you pay will be assigned somewhere in the range of your state’s minimum and maximum rate. New businesses are likely to be given a lower starting rate. As your business grows and you have more operating data to work with, your score will be dependent on the number of employees who filed for unemployment benefits the preceding year. In this case, higher turnover could mean higher tax rates.&nbsp;</p>



<p>Government employers, nonprofits, educational and charitable institutions are exempt from these taxes. Additionally, wages earned by employees younger than 21 are not required to be taxed. SUTA payments are also tax deductible for employers.&nbsp;</p>



<p>One thing to note is that, depending on where your business is located, the SUTA could fall under another name.</p>








<p class="is-style-p1 opacity-100 md:mb-16">Automate SUTA compliance with Rippling </p>








<h3><strong>State Unemployment Insurance (SUI)</strong></h3>



<p>If you’re trying to determine what your tax rate is, consider searching under the term “State Unemployment Insurance” or “SUI” instead of SUTA. Many states use the terms interchangeably, so determine the compliance regulations where your company is based.</p>



<h3><strong>Reemployment Tax</strong></h3>



<p>The Reemployment Tax is exclusive to Florida, and the Florida Department of Revenue has administered the tax since 2000. It serves the same purpose as the SUTA—collecting taxes from employers for the purposes of providing unemployment benefits. In Florida in particular, the taxable wage base is among the lowest in the country. “Only the <a href="https://floridarevenue.com/taxes/taxesfees/Pages/reemployment.aspx" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">first $7,000</a> of wages paid to each employee by their employer in a calendar year is taxable.”</p>



<h2><strong>Applying and registering</strong></h2>



<p>Check your state’s website—or the website for each state where your company employs workers—and check out the details. Each state’s process will vary slightly, but most states allow for online applications as well as paper. Once you apply, depending on the state, there will be a waiting period before receiving your tax number. The wait can vary from one day to six weeks, so gather the details and plan accordingly.&nbsp;</p>



<p>Once you have your tax number in hand you can register for SUTA online, and you will be required to <a href="https://www.rippling.com/recipes/when-employee-moves-states-assign-tax-registration-task" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">register for each state where you employ workers</a>. This can be time consuming, so automating this process through your payroll can save you a lot of time and effort, and ensure you stay compliant.</p>



<h2><strong>Calculating and paying</strong></h2>



<p>Because each state’s tax range varies, calculating your SUTA rate can be painstaking, especially if you have employees working in many different states. The money comes from a percentage of each employee’s earnings, up to a maximum. It’s important to stay on top of each state’s regulations annually if you want to remain compliant.&nbsp;</p>



<p>The most common way to pay is through withholding state income tax through your payroll and making the SUTA payments on behalf of the company monthly or quarterly. Any kind of automation in this case can help ease the process.</p>






<h5 class="is-style-overline">The Rippling Peo</h5>



<p class="text-28 leading-36 mb-16 w-250 ml-auto mr-auto md:ml-0 md:mr-0">Automate your SUTA compliance </p>






<h2><strong>What does it mean for my business?</strong></h2>



<p>In April 2020, American unemployment hit its highest level—<a href="https://fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/R46554.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">14.8%</a>—since data collection began in 1948. By January 2021, <a href="https://www.dol.gov/sites/dolgov/files/OPA/newsreleases/ui-claims/20210108.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">75 million</a> unemployment claims were filed. Because COVID-19 put millions out of work at once, the unemployment system was put under immense pressure and its resources depleted, which will take time to recover from.&nbsp;</p>



<p>Because the unemployment fund balance plays a major role in determining the rate of taxes, it’s likely your business saw an increase in taxes. It is important to keep track of the current tax rates, as neglecting to pay the accurate amount can result in fines and penalties for your company—and in the worst case scenario, criminal penalties.&nbsp;</p>



<p>Some things to consider when calculating SUTA for your business:</p>



<h3><strong>Where your employees live and work</strong></h3>



<p>The funds from SUTA taxes go directly to support the unemployment service of the state where the work was completed. That means, if all your employees are based in one state, you only need to worry about the SUTA rate of that one location. If you have employees based all over the country, a much more common arrangement since COVID, you’ll need to pay each individual state the correct amount.</p>



<h3><strong>Your taxable wage base(s)</strong></h3>



<p>Because each state sets its own minimum and maximum rates—and because they are subject to change annually—keeping up-to-date on these numbers will help keep your company compliant. As with COVID, we saw the rates change more significantly than usual, so this is an area to watch. For the most accurate and updated information, visit each state’s official website for the finalized SUTA information.</p>



<h3><strong>Your turnover rate</strong></h3>



<p>Much of your tax rate assessment will be based on the number of employees who filed for unemployment the previous year, so turnover rates are important statistics to keep track of. Whether quarterly or annually, note your stats in an organized fashion so you’re ready to prepare your reports—or, in case of an audit.</p>



<h2><strong>Powerful solutions for streamlined operations</strong></h2>



<p>While the rate of taxes your state levies is not something you are able to control, how you organize your employee information, manage your payroll systems, and track your compliance measures is.&nbsp;</p>



<p>A system that manages all your payroll duties in alignment with HR information ensures that no matter where your employees are stationed, you’re able to track what you owe the state. To be able to look at your employee statistics from a dashboard level ensures that you never lose track of what you owe.&nbsp;</p>



<p>Automating compliance is a safety net, especially for larger companies with many employees and locations to keep track of, or for newer companies with smaller HR departments. Anytime you can automate processes, especially something as complex as SUTA registration and payment, you’re saving yourself time and money.&nbsp;</p>



<p>Being able to automate tax filing is another way to ensure you’re meeting all state requirements, as well as making sure you receive all your eligible tax deductions. Pre-built or custom reports created from that dashboard of information make it easy to visualize and share data across departments, or externally when requested.&nbsp;</p>



<p>Without an effective software tool, managing state and local tax laws and keeping up with SUTA reporting, registration, and payments can be a full-time job—and a very manual one at that. Automating the tasks most important to state and federal compliance is a great way to alleviate much of the SUTA compliance burden. Learn more about how Rippling&#8217;s modern <a href="https://www.rippling.com/peo">PEO software</a> can save you hours of tedious admin work and keep your business compliant with SUTA regulations. </p>






<h5 class="is-style-overline">The Rippling Peo</h5>



<p class="text-28 leading-36 mb-16 w-250 ml-auto mr-auto md:ml-0 md:mr-0">Learn more about Rippling </p>









What does SUTA stand for? Here’s what you need to know


<p>Every day, we talk to customers who, before using Rippling, never would have believed that their HR, IT, and employee management processes could be as fast and effortless as they are with our platform. We hear the words “like magic” all the time, but as engineers we know there’s a lot of hard, complex work that goes into making it feel that way.&nbsp;</p>



<p>Making those magical experiences possible, though, is the reason for everything we do. It occurred to us that people who use Rippling for their daily jobs understand what it feels like, but what about all of the other people who should be using Rippling to simplify and automate their business? How could we share that work magic, or at least a sneak peek of it, with everyone else?</p>



<p>Enter Plum: Rippling’s “spokes-magician” and star of our very first brand campaign, “Work Magic”. Like a pantsuited Mary Poppins, Plum (and her puppet alter ego) might blow into your office and transform time-consuming tasks into instant solutions—for example, onboarding a new employee in 90 seconds versus the days or weeks it usually takes. She might also get a little carried away with her own magical powers, but don’t worry, she’ll get that ceiling fixed for you.</p>



<p><a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3YrFKYROzIY" target="_blank">Watch “Work Magic”</a> below, and share it with anyone who needs a little razzle dazzle today and every day.</p>






See how Rippling works like magic in our first-ever brand campaign


<p>When it comes to onboarding new employees and continuing to engage them for the long term, on-going education is a necessity in the workplace. Being able to streamline the process using a Learning Management System is one way to ensure you remain compliant, while also providing the skills based training that your employees are looking for.</p>



<p>What is a Learning Management System? It’s a platform that helps you create, manage, and deliver essential training and educational materials to your organization. A survey of HR managers found that <a href="https://studyclerk.com/blog/survey-shows-employees-want-more-workplace-training" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">56%</a> considered training and development to be an essential business enabler. Since virtual and mobile training both saw <a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://elmlearning.com/how-much-does-employee-training-really-cost/" target="_blank">an increase</a> during the pandemic in 2020, this type of engagement is both familiar and efficient.&nbsp;</p>



<p>For courses about everything from health and safety, to cybersecurity, to sexual harassment, it’s integral to know the information is reaching the right people at the right milestones in their employment. A Learning Management System ensures that even when employees are working from home, they’re up to date on policies and trends that affect your company and your industry.</p>



<h2><strong>What are the different types?</strong></h2>



<p>There are different styles of LMS depending on the size of your company, and the type of training you’d like to offer. Consider the number of employees you have, the amount of compliance training required annually, and the styles of learning that best suit your workforce.&nbsp;</p>



<p>Here are just a few examples of LMS types that might be right for you:</p>



<p><strong>Open Source</strong><br>Open source software is free, which could be a benefit depending on your budget. But while it can save you money upfront, it may cost you in time to keep your LMS in good working order. Upgrades, hosting, and maintenance will fall to your team, not to mention set up time.</p>



<p><strong>Commercial</strong><br>A scalable solution for companies of all sizes, this licensed type of LMS is customizable for your business. These systems commonly come complete with a library of training options and other built-in features. This is a great solution for large teams who could benefit from some automated management that sends set reminders to ensure timely completion.</p>



<p><strong>Installation</strong><br>This is a great ready-made option for companies looking to begin with a new system on your own network. It’s easy to establish and distribute across your organization’s hardware, and you can troubleshoot with your own in-house IT team. Depending on your network limitations, installation might be right for you.</p>



<p><strong>Cloud-Based (SaaS)</strong><br>The advantage of this type of LMS is the fact that it can be accessed from a multitude of devices from anywhere in the world. Because the system isn’t tethered to a specific drive or computer, employees can complete training from home, from their mobile devices, or from the office. When it comes to compliance regulations, the more access your team has to training, the more likely it will get done correctly and on time. Proprietary technical support is another great feature of this kind of software, ensuring troubleshooting doesn’t fall to your own team.</p>








<p class="is-style-p1 opacity-100 md:mb-16">The easiest way to train your team</p>








<h2><strong>What are the benefits?</strong></h2>



<p>Learning Management Systems are first and foremost a tool to help you educate your staff in ways that work for them and for you. Developing and determining required training for your operation should be where you put your energy, not in checking in on progress department by department, or sending reminder emails. Put plainly, one of the key benefits of a Learning Management System is the work it does for you. Here are some other benefits.&nbsp;</p>



<p><strong>Saves Time</strong><br>The speed with which you can set up and deliver training is a major benefit of an LMS. From course selection, to enrollment rules, to compliance checks, training sessions can be launched within minutes, saving you precious hours.</p>



<p><strong>Saves Money<br></strong>Spending on trainers, travel, and space is all cut down with an LMS. Because your employees can train at any time online, they can also fit sessions into their days rather than be forced to rearrange their most productive hours, or important meetings.</p>



<p><strong>Access to Reporting</strong><br>Access to data can give you insights into how your training is impacting your workforce. Information like training history and course progress can point out gaps in learning, and automated reminders let you know when teams are in need of recertification.&nbsp;</p>



<p><strong>Caters to Different Learning Styles</strong><br>Variation in the style of courses available also supports the diverse ways that people learn. When you cater to different learning styles, engagement goes up and training <a href="https://innovativecompany.co/importance-catering-multiple-learning-styles/">becomes more effective</a>. And remember, training is an essential business enabler.</p>



<h2><strong>Which features should I be looking for?</strong></h2>



<p>Finding an LMS with the features that best suit your industry and your company’s needs is a great way to determine which type is right for you.&nbsp;</p>



<p><strong>Library of Pre-built Courses</strong><br>Being able to select educational courses from a catalogue of pre-built options is a great way to quickly launch your compliance training program off the ground while remaining confident that the right information is getting to your team. An LMS with a course catalogue is a resource you’ll go back to again and again, and the consistency of the classes will create a familiar sense with employees who regularly train.&nbsp;</p>



<p><strong>Intelligent Course Assignment</strong><br>One of the most time consuming tasks for Learning Management is remembering to assign the right course, to the right employee, at the right time. For example, managers often have to take a different sexual harassment training course than non-managers. An LMS would be able to assign manager training automatically, once an employee has been promoted so you don’t even have to think about it.&nbsp;</p>



<p><strong>Automated Progress Tracking</strong><br>Depending on the size of your team, ensuring compliance can be a major job. A Learning Management System should update you regarding how many courses are complete, in-progress, overdue, or not even started yet. This dashboard-style overview will enable you to keep track of training company-wide so you never miss a deadline.&nbsp;</p>



<p><strong>Auto-Reminders</strong><br>For those in the progress tracker who haven’t yet begun their required training, <a href="https://www.rippling.com/recipes/create-reminder-event-on-lms-course-enrollment-deadline" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">automated reminders and push notifications</a> take the management out of learning management. Should a compliance audit ever come your way, you can rest assured you’ve hit your targets. </p>



<p><strong>Expired Certification Alerts</strong><br>Should an employee be lacking a renewed safety certification for, say, driving a forklift, you could be on the hook for hefty fines. An LMS with a time and attendance system attached can create a digital barrier to clocking in until the training is complete, and even <a href="https://www.rippling.com/recipes/certification-expiring-alert" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">send alerts before an employee&#8217;s certification expires</a> in the first place. If the LMS system is cloud-based, that training can be done on the spot from any device. This type of feature gives you peace of mind that no one is operating without the training they need to stay safe.</p>



<h2><strong>Who needs a Learning Management System?</strong></h2>



<p>Learning Management Systems are beneficial to companies of all sizes because of the way they shift the onus of repetitive tasks away from Human Resources onto an automated service. Small companies <a href="https://elmlearning.com/how-much-does-employee-training-really-cost/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">increased</a> their training per person in 2020, which means more work for your small team. For large organizations with hundreds of employees to educate and keep compliant, training alone requires full-time attention. The right LMS can solve for both of these issues.&nbsp;</p>



<p>Additionally, companies with many remote workers and offices spread across the country can apply the same training in the exact same format and know that it will be completed per the legal specifications of each state.</p>



<h2><strong>Make training your team easy with Rippling</strong></h2>



<p>Whether you’re training employees on your own products using your own programs, or selecting compliance courses from a catalogue, educating your organization on the information they need to know should be seamless. Learning Management Systems automate repetitive work, while keeping you informed with a dashboard perspective over the entire company. Investing in the right system will save you time and money, all while arming your staff with knowledge.&nbsp;</p>



<p>Learn more about how to quickly, efficiently, and confidently train and educate your employees using an automated system with Rippling’s <a href="https://www.rippling.com/lms">Learning Management System</a><strong>.</strong></p>








<h5 class="is-style-overline">Learning Management</h5>



<p class="text-28 leading-36 mb-16 w-250 ml-auto mr-auto md:ml-0 md:mr-0">See the Rippling LMS in action</p>







What’s an LMS? Here’s everything you need to know


<p>What makes for a good financial plan? That’s a question I hear a lot from founders and early finance teams. And while there’s no single answer that applies to every business, here’s a handful of principles I’ve put to work successfully at Rippling and previously Snapchat—principles I share with most startups seeking advice.</p>



<h2>1. Start with good strategic planning before you get into financial planning</h2>



<p>To get a good strategic plan in place, collaboration is key. Simply put, everyone with a stake in the business needs to be involved—because each leader has something to contribute as well as something to gain (or lose) in the process. If you don’t take the time to get the input and agreement from all stakeholders, you’re almost certain to end up with a plan that doesn&#8217;t reflect the realities of the business or help with the decision making of leaders across the company. Buy-in from all business leaders is essential.</p>



<p>Just as essential is a clear, shared vision for the business. From the CEO to every member of every team, everyone needs to agree on the why behind their work. Without this alignment, again, you’re going to have a plan that’s fragmented at best and fatally flawed at worst.</p>



<p>With a vision in place, it’s time to establish clear company- and team-level goals. At the company level, I recommend three to five thematic goals that serve as rallying cries for everyone over the next quarter or year ahead (for quarterly and annual planning cycles). These should be key initiatives that reflect the priorities of the business. It’s a little cheesy, but these goals should be SMART: specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound. The same applies to individual teams, from product and engineering to sales and marketing. Each team should agree on a set of objectives in support of the company’s overarching goals. And each team—and the company’s leadership—should revisit goals each quarter and make any necessary adjustments.</p>



<p>Frameworks can also be a big help when it comes to defining goals and organizing your activities. And good news: there are plenty of proven frameworks to choose from. <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/goal-setting-startups-adil-syed/?articleId=6661008501583728640">A few of my favorites are here:</a></p>



<h3>Objectives and Key Results (OKRs)</h3>



<p>The name says it all. The framework originated at Intel and is used by some of the most well-known tech companies around, including LinkedIn, Twitter, and Snapchat. We’ve adopted a version of OKRs at Rippling as well.</p>





<h3>Progress, Plans, &amp; Problems (PPPs)</h3>



<p>Another self-explanatory framework, this one centers on visibility into achievements from the past week, objectives for the next week, and any hurdles or blockers in sight. It’s been super helpful as we manage team-level and individual progress at Rippling.</p>





<h3>Important vs. Urgent</h3>



<p>Breaking from the three-part theme of the frameworks above, this one is a simple matrix that is great for prioritization of objectives whether for the company, teams, or individuals. Do we use it at Rippling? You bet, and it is particularly helpful in getting team leads to prioritize their projects.</p>





<h2>2. Maintain a focus on the key areas of the business, especially in the face of uncertainty (see: global pandemic and now global re-opening)</h2>



<p>It sounds like a no-brainer, but it’s not always easy to maintain a laser focus on what matters most for companies:</p>



<h3>Listen to existing customers and adapt your product</h3>



<p>Product and customer experience, together, are the lifeblood of any company. And retaining existing customers is just as important as acquiring new ones. So make sure you’re listening. You may learn, for example, that you need to introduce features now that you had planned to launch later down the line. Or it might become clear that a strategic partnership is essential to satisfying immediate customer needs. Keep your eyes and ears open at all times.</p>



<h3>Listen to prospective customers and fine-tune your marketing and sales pitch&nbsp;</h3>



<p>On the marketing side, you need to make sure that the message you’re putting out is one that resonates. You also need to ensure that you’re using the right channels to reach customers as cost-effectively as possible. For both message and channels, just because it worked six months ago doesn’t necessarily mean it’s still the best approach today.</p>



<h3>Play offense and defense strategically</h3>



<p>It’s all about balance. There will be some areas and opportunities that require more aggressive investment, even if it’s outside of your comfort zone. On the flip side, sometimes you’ll need to focus on pumping the brakes and cutting costs. The key is to keep in mind the difference between two-way doors, which allow you to reverse course if you need to, and one-way doors, which don’t provide that flexibility.&nbsp;</p>



<p>Take recruiting, for example. You can shift hiring out a few months while continuing to interview, which allows you to jump back into the marketplace for talent and hire someone amazing that appears unexpectedly. That’s a two-way door. On the other hand, you can freeze all hiring and stop interviewing altogether—which makes it really hard to ramp up recruiting if needs arise sooner than expected. That’s a one-way door.</p>





<h3>Measure and adapt</h3>



<p>Continuously measure the time you’re spending on key areas and the time you’re spending on non-key areas. Don’t overlook reporting functionality as you start to build out your company’s tech stack. While you’re small, of course you’ll have a good gut feel for how much time your team is spending on interviewing or onboarding employees for example, but as you grow, these commitments in time grow and typically are unseen costs of building a company.&nbsp;</p>



<p>It is important to identify opportunities to save time and money and where possible find solutions to the busy work that comes with building a company. Think <a href="https://www.rippling.com/recipes/new-hire-welcome-reminder" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">onboarding new hires</a>, running payroll, provisioning software apps, and administering insurance and benefits. By investing in the automation of functions like these, you can dramatically reduce the time it takes your team to complete them, from days or weeks to hours or even minutes. This is where we think Rippling can help in a big way.</p>



<h2>3. Be nimble in decision making and ensure you set yourself up with near real-time visibility into performance</h2>



<p>While you’re building and implementing your plan, as well as while you’re acting on it and monitoring results, it’s critical that you be as nimble as possible. Visibility into weekly performance is a must. Sales metrics, marketing metrics, support metrics: you need to keep a close eye on all of these areas and more.&nbsp;Be prepared to make decisions and take action quickly.</p>



<p>At Rippling, the Marketing team is a great example of what it means to be nimble in decision making. By creating a weekly budget and spend forecast and tracking it continuously, the team is able to jump on opportunities—both big and small—that are always popping up unexpectedly. If they planned and tracked on a monthly basis, waiting to take action until month’s end, these opportunities would be lost in almost every case. This kind of approach is equally applicable to product, sales, finance teams, and so on. Always set your team up to adjust plans and adapt activities at a moment’s notice.&nbsp;</p>



<p>What if you fail to change course in time? Being nimble in decision making also means learning from surprises, both good and bad. When an opportunity or event takes your business or team by surprise, the worst thing you can do is shrug it off. Even if you fail to take advantage of a good surprise or sidestep a bad one, it’s essential that you acknowledge it, document it, and derive learnings from it—so you can handle similar surprises successfully in the future.</p>



<h2>4. Use a financial checklist</h2>



<p>As you navigate financial planning and cost management in the wake of the pandemic here’s a simple checklist I use and recommend. Whether you’re VC-backed or self-funded, it’s relevant to all businesses at all stages, across industries.</p>



<h3>Headcount and professional services</h3>



<p>Balancing full-time employees with contractors, adjusting salaries and bonuses, identifying any terminations necessary—you need to be paying close attention to these things at all times. This can be very company specific, so be sure to weigh all the near-term and long-term needs of the business. When it comes to professional services and consultants, think about which non-core parts of your business can be handled—preferably automated—by software solutions like Rippling.</p>



<h3>Marketing and advertising</h3>



<p>As I mentioned above, reviewing your marketing channel spend and reallocating dollars based on what you see is a smart strategy, not just in tough times but all the time. There may be big benefits or opportunities you’re missing out on if you simply follow the same playbook month in and month out (or week in and week out).</p>



<h3>Other general and administrative</h3>



<p>There are countless other general and administrative expenses, but technology is a particularly great place to find efficiencies. Renegotiating old terms on software deals you did a year or so back is relatively commonplace and often successful, given the flexibility of many software vendors.</p>



<p>Bigger picture, make sure you’re setting business expense controls. This is an ongoing process, but it’s more important now than ever. Make sure you have a good expense management solution in place. Make sure you have limits in place for your corporate cards. On top of it all, make sure there’s a clear and consistent reporting on your biggest area of expense: headcount. Using Rippling, all the key teams helping us expand headcount are kept on the same page whether it&#8217;s recruiting, human resources, or finance.</p>



<h3>Cash impact</h3>



<p>As always, in the end, you have to measure the bottom line. Knowing how every item above is impacting your monthly cash burn and your remaining cash runway (in months) is absolutely essential.</p>



<p><em><a rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank" href="https://www.rippling.com/request-demo">Learn more</a> about Rippling HR, Payroll, IT, and Benefits Administration and get in touch if our solutions seem right for you.</em></p>



<h5 class="is-style-overline mb-24 mt-48">Posted By</h5>







<p class="text-22 leading-22"><strong>Adil Syed</strong></p>



<p class="opacity-70">Chief Financial Officer, Rippling</p>



<p class="opacity-70 is-style-p2">Adil Syed is the CFO of Rippling, where he leads business strategy, accounting, and investor relations. Before Rippling, he was a strategy and operations executive at Snap, a venture capital and growth equity investor at Redpoint Ventures, and an investment banker at Goldman Sachs.</p>






Creating a financial plan for your startup? Here’s how we do it at Rippling


<p>Hiring and onboarding employees is a continual task for companies of all sizes, so the more you’re able to automate the process, the better. Every business has its own specific needs when choosing new team members and bringing them into the fold, but there are certain boxes that need to be checked across the board.&nbsp;</p>



<p>Good hiring and onboarding practices are crucial to company success for so many reasons. It costs an average of <a href="https://www.investopedia.com/financial-edge/0711/the-cost-of-hiring-a-new-employee.aspx" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">$1,286 per employee</a> annually<strong> </strong>to train someone, so thoughtful hiring tools and practices that enable you to select the right candidate are worth investing in. And retention begins as soon as your new team member signs on—even before they’re in the office. Some<a href="https://blog.sage.hr/how-to-integrate-new-hires-into-your-team-employee-onboarding/"> </a><a href="https://www.psychologytoday.com/ca/blog/platform-success/201903/why-33-percent-new-employees-quit-in-90-days#:~:text=Simple%20suggestions%20to%20keep%20the%20good%20people%20you%20hired.&amp;text=In%202018%2C%20the%20recruiting%20firm,first%2090%20days%20of%20employment." target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">33%</a> of new employees quit within the first 90 days of employment, so ensuring a smooth transition into your workplace saves you time and effort, too.&nbsp;</p>



<p>Here’s our onboarding checklist of everything you need to integrate new employees successfully.</p>



<h2><strong>Prepare a job requisition form</strong></h2>



<p>A job requisition form is a template for what your future employee will be doing and why the role will contribute to company success. It’s both a formal request to create a new position and an at-a-glance handbook for internal stakeholders to learn everything they need to know about the role. The kind of information you might find in a job requisition form includes notes like whether the position is permanent or a contract, the budgeting for the role, and the reason for the hire.&nbsp;</p>



<p>When it comes time to begin the process, the job requisition form is an important document in your new hire checklist. Having all that information laid out plainly will aid in your automated onboarding, where you can input pertinent details and the system does the rest depending on what type of employee you’re integrating. Automation also helps streamline approvals from multiple levels of stakeholder regarding details like salary and length of term.</p>








<p class="is-style-p1 opacity-100 md:mb-16">Learn how to onboard new hires in 90 seconds</p>








<h2><strong>Complete a background check</strong></h2>



<p>There are many reasons to complete a background check as part of your hiring and onboarding process. Global HR Research determined that <a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://www.ghrr.com/survey-finds-employment-background-checks-nearly-universal-today/" target="_blank">96% of employers surveyed</a> “conduct at least one type of employment background screening.” The top reason given was safety, followed by improving the quality of hires, and complying with laws and regulations.&nbsp;</p>



<p>Adding this step to your employee onboarding checklist<strong> </strong>ensures that all the paperwork related to hiring and onboarding remains in one place. Once automated, the opportunity to E-Verify important documents also provides peace of mind that the information in-hand is accurate.</p>



<p>Once you have this vital information, the true onboarding process can begin.</p>



<h2><strong>Send an offer letter</strong></h2>



<p>When all the details are squared away and you’re ready to bring your new hire on, sending an offer letter is the next step. The art of the offer letter relies on the ability to be clear and concise, while setting up expectations and providing the candidate with everything they need to make their decision.&nbsp;</p>



<p>An effective offer letter should include the following:</p>



<ul><li>Job title</li><li>Name and role of supervisor</li><li>Expected duties</li><li>Salary</li><li>Benefits</li><li>Any other details relevant to your company culture</li></ul>



<p>Refer back to your job requisition form, and the job description it supported, for the information most relevant to the new hire. Depending on the complexity of the hire, you might need to include information about relocation budget, or more detailed information about liability. The letter can also include some details about your company culture—a taste of what it will be like to work there.&nbsp;</p>



<p><a href="https://www.rippling.com/recipes/new-hire-welcome-email" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">When your offer is accepted</a>, the paperwork begins.</p>



<h2><strong>Fill out the necessary forms</strong></h2>



<p>Anyone who does a lot of hiring understands the level of paperwork that accompanies the role. Common forms that need filling out upon hiring and onboarding include contracts, agreements, tax documents, and any legal forms relating to things like confidentiality.</p>



<p>Internally, forms will need to be filled out to enroll new staff into any benefit or pension plans, then sent along for signature. Being able to digitally send, sign, and store these forms with an automated onboarding software saves back-and-forth and multiple email chains from stakeholders across the organization. Human Resources departments spend upwards of <a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/217866" target="_blank">40%</a> of the day on non-revenue-generating activities, so getting through necessary paperwork as quickly and efficiently as possible is integral.&nbsp;</p>



<p>Once all the forms are submitted and the wheels are in motion you can begin all the steps remaining on your employee onboarding checklist in advance of the new hire’s first day to enable a smooth transition.</p>



<h2><strong>Things to do before their first day</strong></h2>



<p>Since retention begins as soon as a new hire has signed on, there’s a lot you can do to demonstrate preparedness and make new team members feel welcomed and supported. Depending on the type of role, <a href="https://sloanreview.mit.edu/article/getting-new-hires-up-to-speed-quickly/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">it can take</a> anywhere from eight weeks for a clerical position to up to 20 weeks for professionals to achieve full productivity in a new job, so starting off on the right foot can make a huge difference. Here are some items on the new hire checklist you can complete before their first day.&nbsp;</p>



<p><strong>Confirm payroll and health benefits enrolment</strong><strong><br></strong>Getting all your paperwork digitally signed and stored is a great first step to ensuring all systems have what they need to begin processing your employee right away. Confirming this information in advance means day one isn’t about waiting around, but getting started.&nbsp;</p>



<p><strong>Order and ship work computer</strong><strong><br></strong>Depending on the role, and whether or not your new employee will be working remotely, different equipment will be required. This is the kind of task you can assign to the new hire’s manager, since they will know the team’s budget, as well as the technology required to do the job. Automated onboarding enables you to assign tasks to managers and employees and helps you keep track of what still needs to get done.</p>



<p><strong>Set up G-Suite, Slack, Office 365 and other external applications</strong><strong><br></strong>No one wants to spend their first day attempting to log into various applications they need to get started. Setting up employees on everything they need access to for their role from a centralized dashboard is the simplest and most efficient way to connect them on every relevant channel.&nbsp;</p>



<p><strong>Verify I-9 information and review compliance</strong><strong><br></strong>Since all of your documents are digitally stored in one place, ensuring compliance by verifying tax and other government documents should be a snap.</p>



<p><strong>Prepare required literature</strong><strong><br></strong>Having the employee handbook ready—even sent in advance so your new hire can get acquainted—will make it easy for you to go over company rules and regulations, as well as any compliance-related training such as health and safety.</p>



<p><strong>Schedule an orientation and team lunch</strong><strong><br></strong>Dashboard access and management of employee portals enables you to schedule an orientation at a relevant time, as well as any team bonding events like a lunch or an introduction session.</p>



<p>Each new hire requires a level of care and attention, so the more you’re able to automate and template the process for yourself, the more time you’ll save.</p>



<h2><strong>Make hiring new employees easy with Rippling</strong></h2>



<p>No matter the size of your company, hiring is an ongoing task that requires both expertise and efficient systems. Being able to complete and verify background checks, write and send offer letters, send, store, and sign digital documents, and complete necessary tasks prior to their first day all from one centralized location is the key to that efficiency.&nbsp;</p>



<p>Automating tasks that can cause bottlenecks during the hiring and onboarding processes saves you and your colleagues time, and your company money. It can also help to avoid instances of human error that can come from repetitive tasks, making sure that nothing gets overlooked or creates a barrier to getting the job done.&nbsp;If you’re looking for an HR solution to help you effortlessly onboard and manage employees, learn more about Rippling’s <a href="https://www.rippling.com/platform">employee management platform</a>.</p>








<h5 class="is-style-overline">Onboarding Automation</h5>



<p class="text-28 leading-36 mb-16 max-w-275 ml-auto mr-auto md:ml-0 md:mr-0">Onboard new hires in 90 seconds</p>







New employees? Here’s our free onboarding checklist


<p>The best accountants are the proactive ones. While some may be content to service clients as needed, the proactive accountant finds opportunities to save money their clients didn’t even know they were missing.&nbsp;</p>



<p>The R&amp;D Tax Credit is a great and often overlooked way of saving money for innovative businesses. By claiming the credit, your clients can generate non-dilutive funding—and lots. In 2019, over $13 billion was claimed. The IRS expects to distribute $148 billion to corporations between now and 2026.&nbsp;</p>



<p>So why do 90% of eligible businesses miss out? For one, they might not know about the credit. Others know it exists, without understanding that they qualify. As an accountant, it’s up to you to understand the R&amp;D Tax Credit and, when possible, to help your clients qualify as a way of saving money. Here’s everything you need to know.</p>



<h2>What is the R&amp;D Tax Credit?</h2>



<p>Simply put, the R&amp;D Tax Credit rewards U.S. companies that invest in innovation. As a tax credit, it offsets past, present, and future tax liabilities dollar-for-dollar. In most cases, you can amend tax returns for prior years in which clients did not claim the credit and carry forward unused credits for up to twenty years.&nbsp;</p>



<p>First created in 1981, the R&amp;D Tax Credit was made a permanent fixture of the federal tax code by 2015’s PATH Act. And with strong bipartisan support, this incentive is something your clients can plan around.&nbsp;</p>



<p>Companies of any size and revenue can take advantage. Startups with less than five years and $5 million in gross receipts are eligible for the payroll tax offset,<em> </em>even if operating in losses. The payroll tax offset is a specific provision, which we’ll cover in greater detail at the end of this blog post.&nbsp;</p>



<p>One last thing before moving into the nitty gritty: While the R&amp;D Tax Credit is a part of the federal tax code, there are often state-level R&amp;D tax credits. Be sure to investigate those as well.</p>



<h2>What qualifies?</h2>



<p>Any company that is developing, designing, or <em>improving </em>technology might be eligible for the R&amp;D Tax Credit. The criteria is purposefully broad, so even if your client isn’t building a Martian habitat, it’s worth investigating whether they’re eligible.&nbsp;</p>



<p>The industries that qualify most often are the usual suspects: technology, manufacturing, life sciences, and engineering. You might be surprised by some of the businesses that fall into these categories. For instance, architecture firms often meet the criteria.&nbsp;</p>



<p>However, you shouldn’t count a client out just because they sit in an industry other than these ones. Plenty of companies qualify for the R&amp;D Tax Credit in unexpected industries like agriculture, cosmetics, printing, and more.</p>



<p>For example, a brewery developing a zero-calorie beverage is <em>innovating</em>. That process takes technology and knowledge of food science. So, as you’re trying to determine which clients might qualify, it pays to think <em>outside the box.</em></p>



<h2>Vetting opportunities</h2>



<p>Once you’ve gone through your book of business—with an open mind!—it’s time to qualify which companies truly have qualified research.&nbsp;</p>



<p>The quickest test is to ask whether your client, in providing goods or services, is going through a process that emulates the scientific method. To know for sure, you can ask the team these questions when raising the credit as a possibility:</p>



<ul><li>“Is your business developing a new or improved product?”&nbsp;</li><li>“Is there uncertainty or risk regarding the outcome of the project or ultimate design of the product?”&nbsp;</li><li>“Is there an iterative process of experimentation/testing with the project to resolve the technical uncertainty”</li></ul>



<p>If the team answers yes to any of those questions, their company has a strong case for the R&amp;D Tax Credit.</p>



<h2>Qualified Research Expenses</h2>



<p>After you’ve identified a good candidate for the credit, you’ll have to identify which expenses count as a Qualified Research Expense (QRE) under the IRS’s definition. There are four types of QREs:</p>



<h3>1. Internal W-2 Payroll</h3>



<p>Some or all of employees’ wages might qualify as QREs if those employees are linked to qualified research. Employees whose wages qualify could be the ones directly performing research, but they might also be personnel supervising the research or supporting the research in administrative ways. Note that only certain smaller businesses can take advantage of the payroll tax offset.&nbsp;&nbsp;</p>



<h3>2. U.S. based contractors</h3>



<p>Many businesses bring contractors on to help with research efforts. If the contractor is tied to the qualified research, their wages may also be considered QREs. Remember, though, that qualified research must take place inside the U.S. Even if you hired a contractor through a U.S. agency, they will only be eligible if they are working in the country’s borders.&nbsp;</p>



<h3>3. Supplies&nbsp;</h3>



<p>Any materials used or consumed during the qualified research process are considered QREs. That includes raw materials and prototypes.&nbsp;</p>



<h3>4. Cloud computing services&nbsp;</h3>



<p>If you’re using costly cloud services to support your qualified research, as in the case of software development, those subscriptions count as QREs, too.</p>



<p>As you can see, the tax code defines QREs broadly. And now that you know which expenses qualify, you can begin to preview for clients what their cost savings could be.&nbsp;</p>



<p>On average, companies experience a 10% return on annual QREs. Rippling makes it fast and easy to generate reports on your clients’ internal spend, seeing the exact dollar amounts going toward W-2 payroll, contracts, and software. While you’re exploring the R&amp;D Tax Credit, it can be really powerful to estimate how much your clients could save, using Rippling.&nbsp;</p>



<h2>Documenting QREs</h2>



<p>You’ll want to make sure your client is audit-ready, too. Companies should save any documents related to qualified research and be able to illustrate a “nexus” between QREs and activities related to that research. This is especially true when considering wages related to qualified research.&nbsp;&nbsp;</p>



<p>While there is no “perfect document,” you can help your clients by providing them with this checklist of relevant document types:</p>



<ul><li>Internal status reports</li><li>Technical emails</li><li>Meeting minutes</li><li>Lab notebooks</li><li>Patent applications</li><li>Product specs&nbsp;</li><li>Test result reports</li><li>Project timelines</li><li>Diagrams and drawings&nbsp;</li><li>Engineering reports</li></ul>



<p>The most common way we see companies lose the credit, or get theirs adjusted, is through a lack of documentation. As you’re recommending the R&amp;D Tax Credit to your client, set them up for success by stressing the importance of proper documentation.</p>



<h2>Calculating the credit</h2>



<p>There are two methods for calculating the credit. It’s worth evaluating them both for your client to see which will maximize their benefit.<br><br>The first is the <strong>Regular Research Credit</strong>: This provides a credit of up to 20% of the current year’s QREs that exceed a base amount. The base amount is calculated based on prior years’ gross receipts and QREs.&nbsp;</p>



<p>The second is the <strong>Alternative Simplified Credit</strong>:&nbsp; This provides a credit of up to 14% of the current year’s QREs that exceed 50% of the average QRE amount for the past three years. It’s considered simpler because it uses less historical data.&nbsp;</p>



<p>It pays to compare the benefits of both. If you’re going through your book of business, and it feels time-intensive to do this for every eligible client, TaxTaker’s software can do it for you.</p>



<h2>How big of a credit can your client receive?</h2>



<p>When thinking about tax credits, most accountants think of revenue. But the R&amp;D Tax Credit has nothing to do with revenue. It’s all about internal spend. For every qualified $100,000, companies can receive up to $10,000 in tax credits.&nbsp;</p>



<p>And if your client’s research expenses are rocketing, they might be eligible for a lot more than that. There is no limit on how much companies with QREs can claim—with one exception. The payroll tax offset has a ceiling of $250,000. Let’s quickly cover that exception in greater detail.</p>



<h2>Startups and the payroll tax offset</h2>



<p>Only certain small businesses and startups can take advantage of the payroll tax offset. Its rules work a little differently from the rest of the credit’s provisions. To be eligible for the payroll tax offset, your client must be less than 5 years old and have less than $5 million in gross receipts.&nbsp;</p>



<p>Unlike other QRE types, the credit these companies can receive against FICA payroll taxes has a cap: $250,000. Although that number is smaller than the credit your clients can claim for supplies or software, it can mean a ton of additional runway for startups.&nbsp;</p>



<p>One other benefit? Your clients can be eligible for the payroll tax offset even if they’re not profitable.</p>



<h2>Preparing for the R&amp;D Tax Credit</h2>



<p>The R&amp;D Tax Credit is a huge opportunity, but it does require some legwork. It helps to raise this credit as a possibility with clients long before tax time. They’ll need to be <a href="https://www.rippling.com/recipes/payroll-journal-report-template" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">documenting expenses appropriately</a>, just in case there’s an audit around the corner. </p>



<p><br>To keep your clients on-track, share this process checklist with them:&nbsp;</p>



<ul><li>Identify and document Qualified Research Activities (QRAs)</li><li>Identify, accumulate, and document QREs</li><li>Substantiate and document projects and build report for claim year</li><li>Calculate the R&amp;D Tax credit and complete forms for filing&nbsp;</li><li>Deliver forms to payroll provider to receive quarterly offset benefits&nbsp;</li></ul>



<p>Depending on which QRE types your client is claiming, they will need to file out one or two forms. Form 6765 is the standard for the R&amp;D Tax Credit. An additional form, 8974, is for small businesses taking advantage of the payroll tax offset.</p>



<h2>Building relationships with the R&amp;D Tax Credit</h2>



<p>The R&amp;D Tax Credit can create a huge competitive advantage for your clients, but it also creates a huge competitive advantage for your firm. It can help you win clients, score referrals, and keep in touch with your clients in the off-season.&nbsp;</p>



<p>With this overlooked incentive, you can show prospects and clients that you’re more than a bookkeeper—you’re a strategic advisor. And if you need help identifying opportunities for the incentive or preparing your pitch, Rippling and TaxTaker can help with the number-crunching so you can focus on the relationship.</p>



<p class="italic"><em>Matt Donaldson is the Head of Channel Sales here at Rippling, overseeing our Accounting partnership team. Ari Salafia is the co-founder and CEO of <a href="https://www.taxtaker.com/rippling" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">TaxTaker</a>. Tax Taker helps startups and small businesses fund their growth by maximizing their R&amp;D tax credits.</em></p>




The incentive every accountant needs to know about: the R&D Tax Credit


<p>Protecting employees and company data from unauthorized access is a top priority for every team. While <a href="https://www.rippling.com/recipes/multi-factor-authentication-change-alert" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">multi-factor authentication</a> can be very effective, it’s not always the right tool for the job. That’s why we’re proud to announce behavioral detection rules.<br><br>Behavioral detection joins Rippling’s robust identity management solution to make signing in even more secure. It gives your team tons of flexibility governing access to Rippling and the other applications that your company integrates with Rippling.</p>



<h2><strong>Why we built behavioral detection rules</strong></h2>



<p>Behavioral detection is quickly becoming a standard feature for security, but there were a few gaps we knew Rippling could fill. In addressing these, we’ve made behavioral detection more accessible and powerful than ever before.&nbsp;</p>



<p>First, we decided that more companies should have access to behavioral detection. Unlike our competitors, who offer behavioral detection as an add-on, we include it for every Rippling customer for free.&nbsp;</p>



<p>The second issue was rigidity. Other platforms’ behavioral detection rules don’t allow much customization or granularity, which businesses need when trying to balance employee experience with risk tolerance. That’s why Rippling allows you to configure triggers and actions for the use cases that are relevant to your organization.</p>



<h2><strong>How behavioral detection rules work</strong></h2>



<p>When a user is trying to authenticate, unusual behavior will prompt a <em>trigger. </em>This trigger is attached to a <em>rule, </em>which you and your organization have already set up through Rippling. And that rule causes a specific action to happen—also of your choosing.</p>





<p>You can apply behavioral detection rules to users logging in to Rippling or signing in to Rippling integrated SAML apps, as well as any request that occurs between a web client and the Rippling platform. These rules can apply to specific teams, locations, individuals, or employment types (like contractors).&nbsp;</p>



<p>Rippling gives you complete control over which triggers are active. When making rules, you can link multiple triggers, too, so that entire patterns are flagged.&nbsp;</p>



<p>Reviewing rules is easy. You can see which rules are active, even if they’re not triggered, by checking a sign-in’s activity report. All of the relevant, configured rules will be listed there.</p>





<h2><strong>How rules are triggered</strong></h2>



<p>When a user signs in, Rippling will run their IP address details through the custom rules you’ve set up in your company’s security settings.&nbsp;</p>



<p>If a user is blocked from signing in, your admins will get an email notification. This will show which triggered rules caused the restriction. If the sign-in looks legitimate, you’ll be able to unblock the employee.</p>



<h2><strong>Which rules are included</strong></h2>



<p>For behavioral detection, we’ve baked in two default rules for all new Rippling accounts. They protect against common security risks, like brute force attacks and traffic from Tor Exit Nodes.</p>



<p>The first of these default rules will be triggered after 5 consecutive incorrect attempts. Even if the password is right on the sixth attempt, the sign-in will still be blocked. The second default rule will block any traffic from Tor exit nodes.</p>



<p>In addition to these default rules, you can choose custom triggers for different groups within your organization. Rippling supports triggers for when a user tries to sign in:</p>



<ul><li>From a specific IP address type&nbsp;</li><li>From a new city</li><li>From a new state</li><li>From a new country</li><li>Using a new IP address&nbsp;</li><li>From pre-approved VPN&nbsp; IP addresses</li><li>Using an IP address not listed in a predetermined list&nbsp;</li><li>After a specified number of incorrect attempts</li><li>With an impossible velocity between 2 successive attempts</li></ul>



<p>And remember, you can combine multiple triggers for your rules.</p>





<h2><strong>Taking action</strong></h2>



<p>When a rule is triggered, an action occurs in response. You, as the administrator, can choose actions to correspond with rules. Rippling supports the following actions:</p>



<ul><li>Allow the user access, using an “allowlist”&nbsp;</li><li>Limit session lifetime, which will override session lifetimes defined in other apps</li><li>Require an additional factor for MFA&nbsp;</li><li>Block the user’s access</li></ul>



<p>In the last of these, you can select how severely to block a user. It can be for just a single attempt. It can be for a period of time, ranging from 15 minutes to a full day. Or you can simply block a user until an admin goes in and manually unblocks them.</p>





<h2><strong>Security at Rippling</strong></h2>



<p>Rippling manages data for thousands of companies—and hundreds of thousands of employees. Security is not only an offering to our customers, but a cornerstone of our business and the products we build.&nbsp;</p>



<p>Behavioral detection is a part of that promise. At Rippling we use behavioral detection rules for every employee internally. Plus, we enforce MFA using FIDO2 for many departments to ensure we are being responsible custodians of customer data.&nbsp;</p>



<p>Interested in learning more about behavioral detection rules, or any of our other security measures? Schedule a demo with us today to see the product in action.</p>




Meet Rippling Behavioral Detection Rules: Better security, automated


<p>Since the pandemic has shoved many of us into remote work for more than a year now, the issue of corporate security is top of mind for leaders and IT managers. Weak passwords and less-than-secure wireless connections while off-site are issues that are out of your control, but nonetheless can affect your entire system. Identity management software is an efficient security solution that will provide you with peace of mind while your workforce is remote and even when they return to the office.&nbsp;</p>



<p>What is identity management software? In short, it’s a system that manages your software users’ identity information in order to protect your company assets. The tool itself should both improve security, and provide the users—your employees—with a seamless and productivity-enhancing experience.</p>



<p>For both employees and IT teams, having multiple apps, passwords, and policies to manage user identities doesn’t streamline work—it increases tasks, while potentially jeopardizing security. And with so many applications in the cloud, your network’s best defence is a good offence.&nbsp;</p>



<p>Here are some of the benefits of identity management software, and how it can save your business time and money while safeguarding corporate security.</p>



<h2><strong>Allow access to apps with single sign-on</strong></h2>



<p>Setting up and creating profiles with all of the apps your company uses isn’t the most productive use of time for an employee. Single sign-on creates one-click access to everything members of your team need to get started.&nbsp;</p>



<p>When onboarding, identity management software allows you to configure smart rules to determine who gets access to a service, automating access based on department or role, and <a href="https://www.rippling.com/recipes/employee-change-tracking-report-template" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">updating access should an employee’s role change</a>. You can also configure when access is granted, so onboarding is set up before an employee’s first day, but permissions are withheld until their start date. </p>



<p>When they begin work, they’ll work from a centralized dashboard of all the apps they need and have permission for once they securely log in. Localizing all the tools your workers need behind one lock and key improves overall security of your system, for new and existing employees, especially when remote work is the norm.</p>








<p class="is-style-p1 opacity-100 md:mb-16">See Rippling Identity Mgmt in action</p>








<h2><strong>Manage passwords securely</strong></h2>



<p><a href="https://www.securityinfowatch.com/cybersecurity/article/12237216/why-bad-passwords-are-putting-your-companys-data-at-risk" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Weak passwords</a> undermine corporate security regularly, but it’s not just the strength of the password, it’s how you store that information. According to <a href="https://www.csoonline.com/article/2120384/what-is-iam-identity-and-access-management-explained.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">a survey</a>, “53% of information workers store their passwords insecurely,” and weak or compromised passwords are the <a href="https://go.rippling.com/rs/345-FHM-674/images/Rippling-Identity-Access-Management.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">most common cause</a> of data breaches. Increasing the number of apps and tools your employees use increases the chances they’ll reuse passwords across systems, making their information (and your networks) more vulnerable.&nbsp;</p>



<p>Identity management software helps combat this pain point in a few ways:</p>



<ul><li><strong>It provides self-help for employees:</strong> By guiding them to generate strong passwords with parameters that must be met, you’re starting security off on the right foot. This way, you know every password created by an employee meets a minimum security standard.</li><li><strong>It helps them to store those passwords safely in a zero-knowledge vault:</strong> This kind of password storage is accessible only by the end-user—no more forgetting which app goes with which password, or scrambling to find the scrap of paper where you noted it down.&nbsp;</li><li><strong>You can enable multi-factor authentication for cloud services: Remote work</strong> has made cloud-based services all the more popular, especially when it comes to collaborating from afar. But because cloud services take users off a secure network, it can render secure information vulnerable. Through identity management software, you can automatically enable multi-factor authentication even for cloud services that don’t offer the feature on their own. This additional barrier is in your <a href="https://www.wired.com/story/protect-accounts-two-factor-authentication/#:~:text=As%20the%20name%20suggests%2C%202FA,that%20additional%20step%20in%20place." target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">best interests</a> when it comes to securing your information.&nbsp;</li><li><strong>You can enable autofill:</strong> <a href="https://ca.news.yahoo.com/transmit-security-study-finds-passwords-110000977.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">A survey</a> by Transmit Security found that “more than 87% have been locked out of an online account because of an error-ridden password process,” a frustrating experience that leaves an employee less likely to return to that app in the future. Working from home requires employees to troubleshoot many of their own issues, so taking some of the guesswork out of log-ins just makes sense.</li></ul>



<p>Taking something we know causes issues for employees, and potential disasters for networks, and making it as simple as one-click will reduce issues that clog up IT’s time and slow down your employees’ days.</p>



<h2><strong>Feel confident in what your employees are doing</strong></h2>



<p>Ensuring that access to apps remains in the right hands requires a level of oversight that has become more difficult during remote work. One feature of identity management software that can help in this realm is an activity stream which enables you to see app usage in real time.&nbsp;</p>



<p>If there’s a breach of security, this tool shows you who was logged in to which app from which location in order to help you best determine the cause of a breach and ensure that the user&#8217;s information is updated.</p>



<p>You can also use this feature to determine which users really need access to which apps by tracking log-ins per user. Minimizing access to more secure information is always best practice, so if a user with access hasn’t logged on in the last six months, it’s possible that access is no longer necessary. This way, you’re able to tighten up security wherever needed, and you have the data to support your actions.</p>



<p>With a dashboard view of your entire directory’s account activity, you’ll be able to <a href="https://www.rippling.com/recipes/compromised-password-alert" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">identify abnormal behavior as it’s happening</a>, not when it’s too late. This level of oversight also makes collecting security analytics for compliance audits simple, and gives you results in real time.</p>



<h2><strong>Give and revoke access while maintaining security</strong></h2>



<p>Sharing account information, passwords, and log-in credentials when giving access to your network and systems has its own vulnerabilities, specifically when workers are logging in from their own networks. That’s why identity management software protects your data through encryption. Multiple, regularly-rotated keys, and end-to-end encryption ensure that when the doors are open to let someone in, your data is protected.&nbsp;</p>



<p>Of course revoking access, whether on a per-app basis or in an offboarding situation, must also be a smooth system, especially during this period of remote work. Identity management allows for automatic de-provisioning of an employee’s accounts and app access. The centralized view ensures you won’t need to remember which apps an employee engaged with, and you won’t need to go step by step removing permissions, or change existing passwords for the remaining team members.</p>



<h2><strong>Get the best software for identity management</strong></h2>



<p>If you’re looking to take over the management of your staff’s account security, choosing the best identity management software will take a lot of the work off your plate. With Rippling’s app management tool, a centralized, easy to navigate dashboard makes granting and revoking access as easy as possible. Built-in systems ensure employee passwords hit a security standard, and single sign-on capabilities reduce the chance of a security breach due to compromised passwords.&nbsp;</p>



<p>Bank-grade encryption gives you peace of mind when updating permissions from a remote workspace, and you’ll be able to track any suspicious behavior from wherever you’re working.&nbsp;&nbsp;Learn more about how to efficiently and securely manage your company’s and employees’ information with Rippling’s <a href="https://www.rippling.com/app-management">app management</a> tool.</p>








<h5 class="is-style-overline">Identity Management</h5>



<p class="text-28 leading-36 mb-16 max-w-275 ml-auto mr-auto md:ml-0 md:mr-0">See Rippling Identity Mgmt in action</p>







Why Identity Management Software is a necessity for remote work


<p>Learning and development has emerged as one of the biggest differentiators in the employee-experience world. According to a <a href="https://learning.linkedin.com/resources/workplace-learning-report-2018">LinkedIn study</a>, 94% of employees would stay at their company longer if it invested in their careers. In fact, 70% say they would move on from their current employer for a company that invests more actively in professional development.&nbsp;</p>



<p>But creating a robust learning and development program in your workplace is easier said than done. There are many learning management systems (LMS) out there, but managing your employee training programs are often time-intensive and error-prone.<br><br>Many HR teams forgo learning and development altogether for three reasons:&nbsp;</p>



<ol><li><strong>Tons of busywork</strong>: Enrolling employees in courses, tracking their progress, and reporting on course completion can bury your team in administrative busywork. <a href="https://eyquest.com/HR/HR_Benchmarking_Study_White_Paper_2019.pdf">Ernst and Young</a> estimates that the labor cost of administering a single training session for one employee is over $70.<br></li><li><strong>High cost of investment</strong>: Most organizations don’t have the time or resources to develop high-quality, custom training courses that are relevant to their employees and that can meet compliance standards.<br></li><li><strong>Expertise shortage: </strong>A lot of companies don’t have an employee dedicated to L&amp;D objectives and some may not even realize they are have mandatory compliance obligations like sexual harassment training that need to be administered.&nbsp;</li></ol>



<p>It’s a lose-lose situation. Without a learning management system in place, employees may feel like they have limited options for skills development and seek other opportunities. But with one in place, HR teams face hours and hours of busy work for unclear results.&nbsp;</p>



<p>That’s why we’ve built Rippling Learning Management to help put employee and compliance training programs on autopilot. It comes with a robust library of pre-built content for compliance training including sexual harassment training in all 50 states, all while eliminating the busywork that comes with enrolling, tracking, and <a href="https://www.rippling.com/recipes/lms-course-key-metrics-report-template" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">reporting on your learning objectives</a>.  </p>








<p class="is-style-p1 opacity-100 md:mb-16">The easiest way to train your team</p>








<h2>Here’s what sets it apart from a traditional LMS</h2>



<h3>Launch new training programs in minutes&nbsp;</h3>



<p>Every HR leader wants to attract and retain employees by offering the best professional development. The problem is creating custom courses is often an aspirational goal. Course creation is incredibly time-consuming, and even when HR teams want to take on the initiative, most have to deprioritize it in favor of other more important strategic initiatives.<br><br>With Rippling, you can fully launch your training program in just minutes. Our course catalog includes pre-built courses on compliance topics like sexual harassment training, cybersecurity training, unconscious bias training, and more.&nbsp;</p>



<p>And our entire course library is desktop, mobile, and tablet friendly ensuring your employees can learn on their own schedule in the office, at home, or on the go.&nbsp;</p>



<p>If you are looking for other topics, our <a href="https://www.go1.com/">partnership with Go1</a> enables customers to purchase custom course bundles from their library of over 70,000 courses on virtually any topic: from skills development training to industry-specific compliance.</p>





<p>Already have courses you know, love, and use? In addition to accessing our pre-built educational library, you can always upload your own custom SCORM e-learning packages to create a custom learning and development program for your employees.&nbsp;</p>



<h3>Simplify compliance training&nbsp;</h3>



<p>According to <a href="https://www.statista.com/statistics/896563/metrics-for-measuring-effectiveness-of-compliance-programs/">Statista</a>, a survey of over 700+ compliance training administrators listed limited training hours, insufficient resources (people and budget) and difficulty covering all compliance topics as the top 3 challenges their organization faces when it comes to compliance training.<br></p>



<p>There’s no doubt that staying on top of compliance training can be one of the most stressful responsibilities for an HR admin. But there’s no getting around it. For example, six states require companies to <a href="https://www.hrdive.com/news/a-running-list-of-states-and-localities-with-sexual-harassment-training-man/551248/">administer anti-harassment training</a> and it’s recommended in all 50 states by the EEOC.</p>



<p>And yet managing compliance programs can be tricky. Some states like California and Connecticut have different requirements for supervisors and regular employees. When HR teams have to manage training manually, small discrepancies like this can result in costly errors.&nbsp;</p>



<p>Rippling automates the administrative busywork that comes with administering compliance training to take the stress away. We’ve pre-configured enrollment rules for sexual harassment training across 50 states. With just a click, we’ll automatically enroll all of your current and future employees and managers into the correct, state-mandated courses, so your company’s always compliant.&nbsp;</p>



<p>This means, whenever a California employee gets promoted to manager level for this first time, we’ll automatically assign the supervisor specific sexual harassment training course for you, so you don’t have to think about it! We can even automatically re-enroll employees in training courses every year to ensure certifications are always up-to-date.&nbsp;</p>





<h3>Learning management without the management</h3>



<p>Usually, with any LMS, course enrollment is a chore and is typically done manually. You have to add every new employee to the LMS, enroll them in the right courses during onboarding, and then remember to assign new training when people are promoted.&nbsp;</p>



<p>On top of everything else you do, the LMS becomes another job unto itself. And since compliance training is mandated by law, failing to remember these tasks can result in hefty fines.&nbsp;</p>



<p>With Rippling, course enrollment is fully automated. Rippling uses specific triggers from within the platform, like signing an offer letter or promoting an employee, to assign courses. Every employee gets the right course at the right time.&nbsp;</p>



<p>But enrollment is just the start of the manual work that typically comes with an LMS. Getting employees to complete their training can be an even greater administrative headache. Some systems don’t support basic progress tracking and automated reminders. In that case, admins are forced to maintain an unwieldy spreadsheet and remind employees over email to complete courses. <br><br>Even systems that can send automated reminders, make it incredibly difficult to answer simple questions like who is currently enrolled in training, <a href="https://www.rippling.com/recipes/create-reminder-event-on-lms-course-deadline" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">who has an upcoming due date</a>, and who has missed a training deadline.</p>



<p>Rippling will automatically send your employees a reminder via email or push notification. Plus, our platform<em> </em>gives you an easy visual overview of who has upcoming or overdue deadlines. And, our built-in certification report makes it simple to see who has completed training and when they completed it if an audit is ever requested.</p>





<p>Course certifications can even be leveraged in other Rippling products. For companies with hourly workforces, certifications completed in Rippling Learning Management can tie directly to our Time &amp; Attendance product. So, you can create policies that allow employees to clock-in to a specific job only if they have completed the appropriate certification course so you’re always compliant.&nbsp;</p>





<h3>Strengthen employee retention and stay compliant with Rippling LMS</h3>



<p>We believe learning and development is a crucial pillar for every company to invest in. That’s why we’ve built Rippling Learning Management and we think it’s the easiest way to train your team and stay compliant.</p>



<p>If you’re interested in seeing the product in action, <a href="https://www.rippling.com/request-demo">schedule a demo</a> with our team today!</p>








<h5 class="is-style-overline">Learning Management</h5>



<p class="text-28 leading-36 mb-16 w-250 ml-auto mr-auto md:ml-0 md:mr-0">See Rippling LMS in action</p>







Introducing Rippling Learning Management: The easiest way to train your employees and stay compliant


<p>Hiring the perfect candidate can be integral to your company’s success, but the recruiting process is time-consuming and resource-heavy. With an applicant tracking system, many of the headaches associated with the hiring process are streamlined to create a more efficient and effective experience, so you can focus on hiring the best.&nbsp;</p>



<p>What is an applicant tracking system? It’s a centralized space for all the information pertaining to sourcing and tracking your candidate pipeline. Basically, it helps you organize and analyze large numbers of applicants at once. From one-click job postings, to interview scheduling tools, approval flows, onboarding employees, and document management, an applicant tracking system is with you from the moment talent applies, to beyond their first day of work.&nbsp;</p>



<p>The <a href="https://www.glassdoor.com/employers/blog/calculate-cost-per-hire/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">average cost-per-hire</a> in the U.S. is $4,000 and 24 days per worker, and depending on the size of your business, those costs and hours add up. By reducing repetitive tasks, and digitizing your recruitment workflow, an applicant tracking system makes candidate experience a priority, and makes everyone’s job easier.</p>



<p>Let’s dig in a little to learn more about the benefits of this kind of system and how it can save you and your organization time and money.</p>








<p class="is-style-p1 opacity-100 md:mb-16">See the Rippling ATS in action</p>








<h2><strong>Save time and resources</strong></h2>



<p>Setting up and <a href="https://www.rippling.com/recipes/talent-pipeline-report-template" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">tracking your candidate pipeline</a> can be messy and drawn-out, between searching through inboxes for the right attachment, and scheduling multiple stakeholders at once. An ATS takes the busywork out of recruiting by providing easy-to-use tools that remove unnecessary steps and provide support you didn’t know you needed. </p>



<p>From the ability to create templated custom hiring workflows that can be applied to different departments or interview stages, to incorporating approval flows into the system itself, the framework an applicant tracking system provides saves time at every stage. As well, integrated calendars allow you to view everyone’s availability at a glance which makes scheduling a one-step task.</p>



<p>With support on the digital side, a small internal team can underpin a much larger work environment to get the job done right—<em>and</em> on time.</p>



<h2><strong>Manage candidates in one place</strong></h2>



<p>When recruiting, especially for multiple positions at once, it can be hard to keep track of your talent pool. There’s a reason over <a href="https://www.jobscan.co/blog/fortune-500-use-applicant-tracking-systems/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">98% of Fortune 500 companies</a> use an ATS. Having one centralized space for all your candidate information keeps your hiring process organized. Filters that group candidates by categories, like by hiring stage, enable you to change your view to suit your needs, and an ATS allows you to generate reports for things like candidate feedback you can share with key decision-makers.&nbsp;</p>



<p>Being able to see all of your candidates at a glance does more than just save your sanity—it can help you see patterns that will make future recruiting efforts even more effective. With this kind of tool you’ll be able to see where your best talent is coming from, and which job postings are getting the most attention.</p>



<h2><strong>Easily post jobs</strong></h2>



<p>Casting a wide net doesn’t need to mean writing and rewriting job posts. The right applicant tracking system will enable you to publish job openings to multiple platforms at once, saving you time and providing you with key insights into which platforms yield the best talent so you can invest your marketing dollars where it makes the most sense.</p>



<p>With the time and effort you’ll save creating and managing your postings, you can focus on writing the most <a href="https://www.recruiting.com/blog/how-to-write-effective-job-postings-job-description-and-skills/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">effective job descriptions</a> possible to attract the right people for your business.</p>



<h2><strong>Streamline onboarding</strong></h2>



<p>Once the right candidates are hired, it’s time to welcome them with a great onboarding experience. <a href="https://www.shrm.org/resourcesandtools/hr-topics/talent-acquisition/pages/dont-underestimate-the-importance-of-effective-onboarding.aspx" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">According to statistics</a> gathered by SHRM and partnered companies in the HR space, “69% of employees are more likely to stay with a company for three years if they experienced great onboarding.” In fact, most successful companies start the onboarding process before day one.&nbsp;</p>



<p>From the offer letter, to payroll set up, and then to their introduction to the company systems, so much of an employee’s first week at work is about receiving the right information to enable them to integrate into your team. Automating people operations shows you’re organized, and takes weight off your shoulders while giving a new employee purpose and structure from day one.</p>



<h2><strong>Reduce paperwork stress</strong></h2>



<p>It’s not the cost of paper that can swell your recruitment budget—it’s the administrative time that paperwork takes up. Digitizing onboarding paperwork, for instance, can save you time, which ultimately saves you money.&nbsp;</p>



<p>HR managers spend the majority of their time—<a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://emplicity.com/how-human-resources-spends-their-time/" target="_blank">33%</a>—on payroll and administration, leaving less time for strategy, training, and engaging with employees. With an applicant tracking system, document management <a href="https://www.rippling.com/recipes/signed-documents-report-template" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">tools for digitally signing and storing paperwork</a>, or e-verifying crucial documents like background checks, all live in an employee’s central profile, along with information like their benefits.</p>



<p>Unnecessary routine tasks can be a <a href="https://online.csp.edu/blog/business/understanding-work-stress/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">cause of job stress</a>, the effects of which can result in negative physical and mental reactions. Streamlining tasks like paperwork, making it easy for you and your new employees to get documents signed and squared away, will let you both get back to more pressing tasks.</p>



<h2><strong>Improve hiring compliance</strong></h2>



<p>Once an employee is onboarded and all the paperwork is settled, company compliance is the last major administrative hurdle—and a very important one. Being compliant with all forms, laws, and regulations can be an entire job in itself, so automating the work ensures you’re never lagging behind on your legal requirements.</p>



<h3>An ATS can help with corporate and hiring compliance in the following ways:</h3>



<ul><li><strong>Payroll and labor law:</strong> Staying up to code is an absolute necessity. ACA and COBRA compliance work, like sending notices and handling payments, is automated, and policies are kept up to date based on your federal, state, and local policies.</li><li><strong>Taxes:</strong> Automatic tax filing sounds almost too good to be true, but an ATS can calculate your payroll taxes and file them with the IRS automatically and on time. Even complications, like employees who move to another state, are considered for you.&nbsp;</li><li><strong>Avoiding fines:</strong> Not being compliant with the many different laws that apply to a business can result in hefty fees, and that’s not where you want to spend your budget. An ATS takes into account federal, state, and local laws based on your location and automatically enforces policies like overtime so you’re never out of step with what’s required of you.&nbsp;</li><li><strong>Training:</strong> Sessions regarding your workplace’s health and safety policies, diversity and inclusion, sexual harassment, and cyber security are all full of important information you need to ensure new employees have absorbed. And compliance policies often change or require updating, which could make keeping staff up to date on company compliance a chore. With an applicant tracking system, since it evolves with an employee over time, enforcing and tracking training throughout your organization is easy to implement and follow up on.</li></ul>



<p>Viewable from a centralized dashboard, you can see all your areas of compliance, from completed forms to training enrollment and completion, ensuring you hit your company-wide targets and that your company is in good standing.</p>



<h2><strong>Learn more about how an ATS can help your business</strong></h2>



<p>Incorporating productivity tools, like an applicant tracking system, into your workplace will improve your business in many ways. First, it will reduce the chance of <a href="https://www.smartrecruiters.com/blog/how-to-avoid-employee-burnout-and-increase-productivity-eight-top-tips/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">employee burnout</a> by keeping tasks clear and organized and eliminating time-wasting busywork that can clog up your day. Happy, energized employees are more productive so not only will they feel more satisfied at work, their hours will be more valuable.&nbsp;</p>



<p>Second, internal communication is a funnel—one that’s easily congested by unclear workflows and too many demands on those with the least amount of time. Making tasks like approvals or scheduling simple and clear, will save everyone time and trouble.&nbsp;</p>



<p>Finally, the right tools can help your team reduce the types of human error that often come along with repetitive tasks. Streamlining candidate information and the hiring process using an ATS will ensure that no information gets lost in the shuffle, that tasks are completed on time, and that you end up achieving your ultimate goal—finding the exact right person for the job.</p>



<p>If you’re looking for an HR solution to help you recruit and develop the best talent, learn more about Rippling’s <a href="https://www.rippling.com/talent">applicant tracking and talent management systems</a>.</p>








<h5 class="is-style-overline"></h5>



<p class="text-28 leading-36 mb-16 w-250 ml-auto mr-auto md:ml-0 md:mr-0">See the Rippling ATS in action</p>







6 key advantages to using an Applicant Tracking System


<p>There are <a href="https://www.rippling.com/blog/hiring-onboarding/what-is-a-peo">a lot of advantages</a> to partnering with a professional employer organization (PEO). PEOs streamline and offload some of the most time-consuming HR functions, like compliance and payroll. They can also give small and midsize businesses the ability to punch above their weight, offering big-company benefits for reasonable prices. Whether you’re an admin hoping to offload HR tasks or a C-suite executive considering the bottom line, the data is on PEOs’ side.</p>



<p>According to the National Association of Professional Employer Organizations (NAPEO), businesses that use a PEO have higher employee satisfaction and up to 14% lower employee turnover. On top of that, NAPEO’s <a href="https://www.napeo.org/docs/default-source/white-papers/white-paper-7-the-roi-of-using-a-peo8eae50ac2ab0647c9e4fff00004fd204.pdf?sfvrsn=b21e34d4_2" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">2019 study</a> found that “the average cost savings from using a PEO is $1,775 per year per employee, while the average PEO cost per employee is $1,395, yielding an annual ROI of 27.2 percent.”</p>



<p>But as with any average, there are outliers in the mix. Although many PEOs charge a fixed rate for services, some include hidden costs by tacking on fees or calculating rates for tax services in unusual ways. <a href="https://docplayer.net/17915735-The-hidden-costs-of-peos-before-you-sign-know-what-you-re-getting-and-what-it-will-cost-you.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">According to Deisy Bach</a>, a former PEO executive, many companies fail to understand these hidden costs until they’ve already signed the dotted line.</p>



<p>Fear not. Simply by reading this post you’re arming yourself with the knowledge to ask the right questions. We’re going to cover some common hidden costs of PEOs, so you can feel confident in your purchasing decision.</p>



<h2><strong>The price of a PEO</strong></h2>



<p>PEOs will charge an administrative fee for their services, often using one of two pricing structures: a fixed monthly fee per employee, or a percentage of your overall payroll. And if that were always the case, the simplicity would be a beautiful thing. But the reality can sometimes become far more complicated—and costly.</p>



<p>Sometimes PEOs will exploit their unique “co-employer” status to generate additional revenue without fully disclosing this to clients. And depending on how the PEO defines and calculates items like “taxable wages” or “payroll tax fees,” your invoice could be a lot larger than expected. If that wasn’t enough, some also hide additional fees in the fine print for services that should be included in the first place.</p>



<p>Here are some of the common ways that PEOs may end up costing you more than you bargained for.</p>



<p><a href="#taxable-wage-base-limit">Use of Taxable Wage Base Limit</a></p>



<p><a href="#billing-on-gross-payroll">Billing on Gross Payroll</a></p>



<p id="taxable-wage-base-limit"><a href="#administration-fees-for-taxes">Administration Fees for Taxes</a></p>



<p><a href="#additional-services">Additional services</a></p>



<p><a href="#termination-fees">Termination fees</a></p>



<h3><strong>Taxable Wage Base Limit</strong></h3>



<p>A number of employer payroll taxes—like the State Unemployment Tax Act (SUTA), for example—have a maximum yearly limit against which taxes are calculated. This is called a <em>taxable wage base limit</em>. Businesses calculate and remit these taxes to federal and state tax agencies until each employee reaches the specified wage base limit. For the rest of the calendar year, they’re off the hook—they no longer have to contribute to that tax.</p>



<p id="billing-on-gross-payroll">But the unique nature of PEOs complicates this. Usually when a company joins a PEO, the PEO assumes responsibility for filing and paying all employer and employee-related taxes as a service. It’s part of the co-employment relationship. But some PEOs will continue billing the employer after an employee’s taxable wage limit has been hit, and pocket the difference.</p>



<h3><strong>Billing on Gross Payroll</strong></h3>



<p>A common PEO pricing structure is to charge a percentage of your company’s payroll. And yet a PEO’s definition of payroll might differ from yours. Sometimes their definition can include deductions that are considered pre-tax.</p>



<p>Taxable wages are reduced by pre-tax benefits, like health insurance and Flexible Spending Accounts (FSAs). When employees enroll in programs like those, they not only score great benefits—they also save money in taxes by reducing their take-home pay. Employers save on payroll taxes, too.</p>



<p>But some PEOs will ignore deductions like these when calculating fees. Instead of charging a percentage of taxable wages (like the Internal Revenue Service does), PEOs might base their fee on a figure that <em>includes</em> pre-tax pay.</p>



<p>Consider how deductions normally work. If an employee earns a total of $3,000 per paycheck, they may decide to pay a $300 premium for health insurance and invest $200 in a FSA. That leaves $2,500, which is taxable for both the employee and the employer.&nbsp;</p>



<p id="administration-fees-for-taxes">But a PEO’s contract might stipulate that it takes 15% of the gross wages, not the adjusted wages. This means that instead of 15% of $2,500 ($375), you’ll pay 15% of $3,000 ($450). And that’s just for one employee.</p>



<h3><strong>Administration Fees for Taxes</strong></h3>



<p>Another way some PEOs make a quick buck is by charging for the administration of taxes. Remember SUTA from earlier? <span id="additional-services">It’s the payroll tax that funds a state’s unemployment benefits</span>. In certain states, an employer might pay 6.2% for the first $7,000 of an employee’s wages. But a PEO might tack on a .05% as a tax administration fee. In that case, the employer would end up paying 6.25% on $7,000. Multiply this by an entire workforce, and the costs quickly add up.</p>



<h3><strong>Additional services</strong></h3>



<p>In addition to their primary pricing structure, some PEOs also charge for routine services. These fees can be for things as ordinary as enrolling a new employee, running an off-cycle payroll, or changing a new hire’s start date.&nbsp;</p>



<p id="termination-fees">But these aren’t special services. They’re what your HR team would typically do in a day’s work. Since the whole reason to partner with a PEO is to offload standard tasks, it doesn’t make sense to nickel-and-dime your company for them.</p>



<h3><strong>Termination fees</strong></h3>



<p>Leaving can be difficult. Most PEOs will let you exit the agreement with 30 days’ notice, but some carry term requirements. In those cases, getting out will result in a costly penalty. It’s just one more reason to look closely at that contract.</p>







<h5 class="is-style-overline">The Rippling Peo</h5>



<p class="text-28 leading-36 mb-16 w-250 ml-auto mr-auto md:ml-0 md:mr-0">One flat rate, no hidden fees</p>







<h2><strong>Do your due diligence</strong></h2>



<p>Is this making PEOs seem like more trouble than they’re worth? It shouldn’t. These hidden costs are exceptions, and don’t tell the full story. PEOs are an amazing way to offload administrative burdens so your business can focus on what it does best.&nbsp;</p>



<p>The question is how to determine which PEO is right for your business. That decision will probably include conversations about your company’s growth, the technology a PEO can offer you, and more. Cost is just one factor. But it’s also one of the easiest bluffs to call now that you’re knowledgeable about the different pricing structures.&nbsp;</p>



<p>As you’re narrowing down your PEO options, be sure to ask these five questions:</p>



<h3><strong>1. “What is the PEO’s pricing structure?”</strong></h3>



<p>This might be a fixed monthly fee per employee, or it might be the percentage of payroll. If it’s the latter, make sure the PEO charges based on the adjusted payroll, not a gross amount that includes pre-tax contributions.</p>



<h3><strong>2. “Will I be charged for tax administration?”</strong></h3>



<p>The tax administration burden is probably one of the reasons you’re considering a PEO. Make sure this service is included and that your PEO honors wage base limits, as well as federal and state tax rates.</p>



<h3><strong>&nbsp;3. “What other services will I be charged for?”</strong></h3>



<p>Changing a new employee’s start date shouldn’t cost you. Some PEOs tack on additional fees for routine services like this, but they should simply be part of the package.</p>



<h3><strong>4. “Do I know how much I’ll be paying every month?”</strong></h3>



<p>A PEO’s nominal pricing structure can give an incomplete picture. Before you partner with a PEO, try to understand what the actual monthly cost will be. When shopping around, it never hurts to ask for a sample invoice or fee schedule.</p>



<h3>5. <strong>“Do I believe I’m being charged fairly?”</strong></h3>



<p>You’re looking for a partner, not a penny pincher. A PEO should ultimately spare you and your admins from busy work and leave your business in better shape.</p>



<h2><strong>The Rippling PEO</strong></h2>



<p>At Rippling, we make it easy for high-growth companies to hire remotely and provide great HR and benefits without high costs or compliance headaches.</p>



<p>We partner with leading benefits carriers to provide access to large group health plans, often at lower costs than small group. And unlike with many other PEOs, what you see is what you get. At Rippling we only charge a flat fee for our PEO services, with no hidden costs buried in the fine print.&nbsp;</p>



<p>We’re also experts on the increased HR, payroll, and risk management complexities that come with hiring remote workers—like staying compliant with employer tax filings, workplace labor law posters, and state and local tax accounts when you hire your first employee in a new state. While other PEOs often charge an extra fee and rely on sending PDFs back and forth to set up state and local tax&nbsp; accounts, Rippling does it all automatically using our modern software.&nbsp;</p>



<p>In addition to simplifying compliance, Rippling streamlines everything from <a href="https://www.rippling.com/recipes/device-delivery-notification" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">setting up new hires’ devices</a> and accounts, to running payroll, to <a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://www.rippling.com/recipes/create-reminder-event-on-benefits-enrollment-deadline" target="_blank">enrolling employees in benefits</a>. We’ll even help you resolve any employment claims quickly and cost-effectively—though our on-staff HR Advisors will also advise you on best practices to avoid claims altogether.&nbsp;</p>



<p>If you’re looking for a modern HR and benefits solution for your business, or if you plan to hire remote employees, learn more about the <a href="https://www.rippling.com/peo">Rippling PEO</a> or <a href="https://www.rippling.com/peo-request-demo">request a demo</a> today.</p>







<h5 class="is-style-overline">The Rippling Peo</h5>



<p class="text-28 leading-36 mb-16 w-250 ml-auto mr-auto md:ml-0 md:mr-0">See the Rippling PEO in action</p>








Does your PEO charge hidden fees?


<p>There were massive opportunities for SaaS point-source solutions 5-10 years ago, but now many of those unicorn opportunities have been picked over. We’re entering the era of the compound startup—one that’s fueled by a drive towards integration and consolidation as well as a capital-rich market full of VCs willing to fund a new breed of companies.</p>



<p>This is the state of the startup world, according to our CEO Parker Conrad.&nbsp;</p>



<p>Parker joined Harry Stebbings on the 20VC podcast to discuss what makes his vision of a compound startup unique, the ethos behind the Rippling business model, and what founders should look for in their relationship with VCs.&nbsp;</p>



<p><a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://www.thetwentyminutevc.com/podcast/parker-conrad/" target="_blank">Listen to the episode &gt;</a>&nbsp;</p>



<h2>The highlights</h2>



<ul><li>Why Rippling? Parker’s “aha” moment came when he realized that employee data is far more distributed across companies than people realize. Not simply relegated to HR and HR business systems, the data unites all facets of a business. When successfully orchestrated, it can help improve everything. </li><li>Compound startups like Rippling are not easy to build. But, as Salesforce has proved over the decades, such companies can be incredibly powerful. </li><li>One of the biggest challenges with selling a compound startup is nailing its core marketing message. Focus on the challenge at large, not the individual product features. </li><li>There is a commonly used metaphor in the VC / startup world—the relationship between a founder and their investors is like that of a marriage. Parker sees this relationship as more like the one you’d have with a general contractor; you may disagree, but those disagreements are not going to get you kicked out of your home. </li><li>Rippling is always looking for leaders who have the right mix of impatience, humor, and something to prove.</li></ul>







<h5 class="is-style-overline">See Rippling</h5>



<p class="text-28 leading-36 mb-16 w-250 ml-auto mr-auto md:ml-0 md:mr-0">See Rippling in action</p>








The VC/founder marriage analogy is weird, and other startup BS: Parker Conrad on the 20VC podcast


<p>In November, I wrote about <a href="https://www.rippling.com/blog/company-news/how-we-pulled-off-an-in-house-rebrand-in-four-months" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">how we pulled off an in-house rebrand</a> in just four months. In this follow-up, you’ll learn how I’ve been building the team that made it possible—and that continues to refine and strengthen the Rippling brand every day.</p>





<h2>First things first</h2>



<p>You have to understand that Rippling is growing quickly. Like <em>25 new people every month</em> quickly. That’s not an exaggeration.</p>



<p>With so many new hires continuously coming on board, it’s easy for all sorts of things to go sideways. One of those things is the brand. And my job is to protect and nurture the brand.</p>



<p>In the early days, when I was a Brand Team of one in a small startup growing at a reasonable pace, I could keep up with everything to ensure the brand was being treated appropriately. It wasn’t long before this simply wasn’t possible. I needed to scale myself—which meant building a team, empowering that team, implementing repeatable processes, and managing costs while ensuring that everyone got paid.</p>



<p>In other words, I needed a structure for creating and maintaining structure. Here’s what it looked like:</p>



<h3 class="text-16 tracking-50">STEP 1</h3>



<h2>Building a full-time team: The hiring part</h2>



<p>Hiring had to be deliberate and prioritized. Since I had some contractors on board already, my guiding principle for hiring FTEs was: focus on roles that require the most subject matter expertise. In this case, that meant an in-depth understanding of our product.</p>



<p>So my prioritized list of hires looked like this:</p>





<p class="caption">Prioritized list of roles to hire.</p>



<p>Why a Program Manager above all? That’s exactly what our CMO, Matt, asked me when he first saw the list. Typically, some kind of Designer would be at the top. So I got the whole, “Really? Are you sure? Why?” treatment. Here’s a boiled-down version of my answer:</p>



<p>First, because I was getting things done sufficiently with the contract creatives in place; I could count on them in the meantime. Second—and more importantly—I knew I was in immediate need of someone to get and keep things organized so I didn’t have to manage both the operational and creative sides of things. So that’s how <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/jenniferyvonnewilliams/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Jen</a> became my first full-time hire.</p>



<p>At this time, Rippling’s Recruiting Team had their hands full building an elite team of engineers, so I didn’t want to add to their load. Instead, Jen, the contract creative team, and I focused on tapping our own professional networks for candidates. It proved to be an effective approach. To keep track of candidates and hires, we built a resourcing sheet that we continue to manage collaboratively as a team.</p>





<p class="caption">Google Sheet for team planning and resourcing. (Not actual info or addresses)</p>



<h3 class="text-16 tracking-50">STEP 2</h3>



<h2>Setting everyone up to get down to work</h2>



<p>One of the big advantages we have at Rippling is that we use our own platform, which enables us to onboard (and offboard) a contractor in 90 seconds. That means we can scale the Brand Team up and down in a flash. The system manages all employee benefits, from health insurance to retirement plans, which means a lot less manual work. And on day one, each <a href="https://www.rippling.com/recipes/new-hire-welcome-email" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">new team member is greeted</a> with a checklist and news feed right in Rippling to get them started.</p>





<p class="caption">Handy onboarding checklist in Rippling.</p>



<p>We also use Rippling to remotely provision apps. The big ones for us include Figma, Asana, Google Workspace, Adobe Suite, and Slack. The process is automated and easy, and it’s the same for full-timers and freelancers.</p>



<p>When we need to provide hardware to a team member, we use Rippling for that, too. For onboarding, we’re able to <a href="https://www.rippling.com/recipes/device-delivery-notification" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">automatically buy, assign, configure, and ship devices</a>. For offboarding, we can automatically lock and disable them. Rippling makes it ridiculously easy.</p>





<p>In addition to getting everyone set up properly in Rippling, I have an onboarding document that I use to create a personalized plan for each hire’s first 30 days. That way they have a set of clear goals and expectations to work toward from the very beginning—plus a sense of measurable accomplishment within a month of joining.</p>







<h3 class="text-16 tracking-50">STEP 3</h3>



<h2>Putting processes in place with Asana</h2>



<p>Now I’ve got a team, and that team has the right tools. It’s time for process.</p>



<p>Zooming way out, we use a classic Gantt chart to forecast projects. It’s a simple, visual way for every member of the team to know when a given project is landing, which projects they’ll be working on, which projects they <em>could</em> be working on (it never hurts to ask), and how their work fits into the broader efforts going on.</p>





<p class="caption">High-level view of our work and annual plan.</p>



<p>That Gantt chart happens to live in Asana, a digital tool we also use for project intake.</p>





<p class="caption">Project intake form in Asana.</p>



<p>With very few exceptions, we run every project in two-week sprint cycles. This enables us to see output and outcomes quickly, and to iterate rapidly based on what we see. There’s a formal kickoff, then every two weeks the project team gets together for a meeting to report progress.</p>





<p class="caption">Simple breakdown of sprint cycles.</p>



<p>Zooming in on me specifically, I made the decision early on to have set office hours each day, outside of which I’m able to focus on my own to-do’s. By maintaining this delineation in my schedule, I know when I’m “doing” and when I’m “managing,” and the team knows when I’m available and when I’m not. No guesswork or dramatic differences in the arc of each day.</p>





<p class="caption">Structuring time and calendars in a clear and consistent way.</p>



<p>Finally, zooming in on Jen, she’s done the hard, amazing work of building detailed process documents for common deliverables. Inconsistent and inefficient approaches to similar—even identical—projects used to be a huge pain point for our stakeholders and our team. Now we’ve standardized and optimized how we do just about everything, and we’ve scaled Jen in the process.</p>





<p class="caption">Keeping everyone on the same page with project-level process.</p>



<h3 class="text-16 tracking-50">STEP 4</h3>



<h2>Managing the money-related matters: From tracking to forecasting</h2>



<p>For people to get paid, they need to track their time. For the sake of velocity and simplicity, Jen and I set up a Google Sheet to start. Simple, easy, effective.</p>



<p>Referencing the sheet at the end of each month, I just add the team’s hours to Rippling Payroll and get them paid on the same schedule as the rest of the company. For contractors, that means no net-30 terms or invoicing—a freelancer’s dream, and a system that lets them stay totally focused on the work itself.</p>





<p class="caption">Google Sheet for contractors to track their time.</p>



<p>Due to our team’s growth, we’ll soon be transitioning completely to Rippling’s time tracking tool. This will allow contractors to track hours and tasks right in Rippling. And rather than manually moving hours from the Google Sheet to Rippling Payroll each month, I’ll simply review and approve the hours, and payroll will populate automatically.</p>





<p class="caption">Simple and powerful time tracking tool from Rippling.</p>



<p>In addition to keeping track of time already spent, a big part of my job is forecasting time (and talent) we’re going to need to put toward given work in the future. Luckily I have more than a year’s worth of actuals to use as a guide—with more data accumulating each day.</p>



<p>As with time tracking, I decided to use a Google Sheet to help calculate our future needs. This time I worked with <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/ko-michelle/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Michelle</a> from the Growth Team.</p>



<p>What I did (the straightforward part):</p>



<ul><li>Wrote down all the contracted roles on the team, their average rates, and proposed salaries (based on industry averages)</li><li>Met with stakeholders across the company to outline every proposed project coming in</li><li>Assigned roles across each of those projects</li><li>Estimated hours associated with each role</li><li>Added an overage for unforeseen work, which is inevitable—I went with 20%</li></ul>



<p>What Michelle did (the smart, hard part):</p>



<p>Using the information I’d gathered, she built the right formulas and linked up all the data in the sheet.</p>



<p>Using the sheet, we’re now able to know quite accurately how many people in which positions we’re going to need for how long, how soon. We’re also able to determine which roles are more cost effective as full-time employees than as contractors—and when those conversions should occur.</p>







<h2>Guiding the team through 2021 and beyond</h2>



<p>One of the major risks an internal agency faces is the potential to become a creative services organization—essentially a FedEx Office—whether gradually or all at once. There’s nothing wrong with creative services organizations, by the way; they just aren’t what Brand Teams are supposed to be (and they aren’t what brand people typically want to be a part of).</p>



<p>To avoid this fate, I find it useful to position the team clearly within the company and to wow everyone with the creative work we produce. At Rippling, I put together a Team Guide to help us do just that. A supplement to the Brand Guidelines, the Team Guide lays out exactly what we do, how we work together and with other teams, and what kind of deliverables people should come to us to create. So far, it’s been an immensely helpful tool.<br></p>





<p class="caption">Team Guide to align our team members and stakeholders.</p>



<h2>Like what you see?</h2>



<p>Feel free to take a page (or many) out of our playbook to help start or strengthen yours. Sharing is the whole point.</p>



<p>Here&#8217;s to building a great brand team!<br></p>



<h5 class="is-style-overline mb-24 mt-72">Posted By</h5>







<p class="text-22 leading-22"><strong>Nick Wiesner</strong></p>



<p class="opacity-70">Head of Brand, Rippling</p>



<p class="opacity-70 is-style-p2">As Head of Brand, Nick applies nearly 15 years of experience to guide brand expression across marketing, comms, products, events, social media, and employee engagement. His global creative team ranges from designers and writers to animators and web developers.</p>






Our working playbook for building and running a brand team


<p>Good companies take good care of their people. But with everyone working from home, it’s more challenging to deliver the kinds of perks people love about an office environment. Things like gym memberships, dry cleaning, and childcare aren’t quite as useful when you’re quarantining. And then there’s catering, one of the most common perks companies offer their employees. It seems like a distant memory, but as it turns out, eating food is still a thing.</p>



<p>Rippling already partners with key benefits partners to help employers care for their employees, like <a href="https://www.rippling.com/app-shop/app/guideline">Guideline</a> for 401K and <a href="https://www.rippling.com/app-shop/app/onemedical">OneMedical</a> for healthcare. Today, we’re excited to announce a juicy new partnership to help keep your teammates fed: <a href="https://app.rippling.com/app-shop/app/doordash">DoorDash</a>.</p>



<p><a href="https://app.rippling.com/app-shop/app/doordash"><strong>DoorDash for Work</strong></a><strong> is the first and only way to automatically give all of your employees access to meal benefits. </strong>Rippling admins simply set a budget in Rippling, employees order their lunch through DoorDash, and the charge gets added to your company’s Rippling bill. (We’ll settle up with DoorDash on your behalf.)</p>



<h2><strong>Increase employee productivity 12% &#8212; just by making it easier to get some grub</strong></h2>



<p>By reducing the need to run errands and prep food during the workday, you empower employees to focus on projects that really matter.</p>



<p>Beyond driving an increase in performance, recognizing your employees with tangible benefits can help ease tensions during the new reality of remote work. Tawni Martino from Zoom says, “Recently, due to COVID-19, our office has closed and we haven&#8217;t been ordering large team dinners like we used to. However, we are still celebrating team members’ birthdays by sending them a fun dessert that they can enjoy through DoorDash for Work.” Showing care for employees&#8217; happiness can remind us that we are all in this together. In fact, 63% of companies with a robust food program in place have seen a positive impact on company culture.</p>



<h2><strong>Automate food benefits with an easy one-time setup</strong></h2>



<p>Rippling and DoorDash bring you the first way to effortlessly offer free delivery and meal stipends to your employees. We know running a startup can be draining, but your perks shouldn&#8217;t be. You can implement food benefits in minutes using Rippling automation and smart rules. Set it up once and configure which departments and types of employees get access. For example, you can set up DashPass for only W-2 remote employees or for employees in certain locations. When new employees are hired, they’re automatically added to receive meal benefits based on your setup.&nbsp;</p>





<h2><strong>Deliver happiness to your employees, fee-free</strong>&nbsp;</h2>



<p>With a DashPass subscription, offer $0 food delivery and reduced service fees on <a href="https://www.doordash.com/en-US">DoorDash</a> and <a href="https://www.trycaviar.com/">Caviar</a> saving employees an average of $4-5 per order. And on top of that, you have happier, more productive employees.</p>





<h2><strong>Offer a customized meal stipend program in 3 minutes</strong></h2>



<p>Set budgets and guidelines for meal stipends. For example, you might choose to give your team $20 on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays between 12pm and 7pm to spend with DoorDash restaurants. Rippling gives you one place to manage DoorDash delivery and meal stipends. Instead of having to enter each employee’s information into the DoorDash portal any time a new employee gets hired, Rippling does it automatically.</p>





<h2><strong>Plus, schedule fun awards &#8211; like one-year anniversary cakes</strong></h2>



<p>Award and celebrate your employees by giving them food stipends to treat themselves. From happy hours, to cakes on birthdays, to cupcakes for work anniversaries, help your employees enjoy their favorite cuisine from the safety of their homes.&nbsp;</p>





<p>Remote work is the new normal.&nbsp; Ensure that your benefits are delighting your employees, and keeping you competitive. DoorDash for Work is a concrete way to increase both productivity and the wellbeing of your employees. Especially during a time that has reminded us all of the importance of community and connection, finding ways to show care for employees can go a long way.<br><br><a href="https://app.rippling.com/app-shop/app/doordash">Start offering your employees food benefits with DoorDash for Work today</a>.</p>



<h5 class="is-style-overline mb-24 mt-48">Posted By</h5>







<p class="text-22 leading-22"><strong><strong>Matt MacInnis</strong></strong></p>



<p class="opacity-70">Chief Operating Officer, Rippling</p>



<p class="opacity-70 is-style-p2">Matt MacInnis is Chief Operating Officer at Rippling where he oversees business operations. He was previously co-founder and CEO of Inkling, a mobile learning platform that raised over $100 million in funding before being acquired in 2018. Before Inkling, Matt spent eight years at Apple, growing the use of its products in education and the sciences. He holds an Electrical and Computer Engineering degree from Harvard, and lives in San Francisco with his husband and daughter.</p>






Rippling teams up with DoorDash to bring office meals to remote teams


<p>Over 50% of the US workforce is hourly or project-based, yet many HR leaders are still stuck between a rock and a hard place when it comes to finding the right technology solution for Time &amp; Attendance.&nbsp;</p>



<p>Generally, you have 2 options, none of which are ideal:</p>



<ol><li>Use a stand-alone T&amp;A provider that can provide a deep level of time tracking functionality, but still spend hours on administrative busywork like reconciling hours with payroll and building employee profiles in two separate systems.<br></li><li>Use a clunky, all-in-one system that integrates T&amp;A with payroll, but lacks the configurability you need to build custom policies unique to your business.&nbsp;</li></ol>



<p>To date, we’ve solved the first problem by partnering with the best T&amp;A solutions out there like <a href="https://app.rippling.com/app-shop/app/deputy">Deputy</a>, <a href="https://app.rippling.com/app-shop/app/tsheets">Tsheets</a>, <a href="https://app.rippling.com/app-shop/app/homebase">Homebase</a>, and <a href="https://app.rippling.com/app-shop/app/when-i-work">When I Work</a>. We’ve built deep integrations with them to automatically sync approved hours directly into each payrun and eliminate manual errors.<br><br>For customers who need specialized products to run their business, we’re invested in continuing to grow our app ecosystem (<a href="https://www.rippling.com/app-shop">with over 500+ app partners</a> already) because we know it’s a big reason why you love Rippling.</p>



<p>However, we realize there are a lot of companies out there that desire a <strong><em>fully integrated</em></strong> option. Where employees can clock-in, submit PTO, view their paychecks and W2’s in one single system and that eliminates the administrative headaches multiple systems can create.</p>



<p>That’s why we’ve built <a href="https://www.rippling.com/time-and-attendance" target="_blank" aria-label="undefined (opens in a new tab)" rel="noreferrer noopener">Rippling Time &amp; Attendance</a>, to automate the entire employee time tracking process from clock-in to paycheck. It empowers you to create automated workflows that resolve issues before they happen and build custom policies to manage time your way.&nbsp;</p>








<p class="is-style-p1 opacity-100 md:mb-16">Automate time tracking with Rippling T&amp;A</p>








<h2>Here’s what sets it apart from other T&amp;A systems:</h2>



<p><strong><strong>Powerful customization options let you build policies for the way you work</strong></strong></p>



<p>With Rippling, you’re always in control over the rules and logic for time tracking,<em> </em>so you can customize the system to fit your companies’ <strong><em>precise</em></strong> needs — from creating your own custom pay types and job codes to overtime and break policies.&nbsp;&nbsp;</p>



<p>Since Rippling enables you to build out your org chart and company holiday schedule in one place, you can create new policies and have them apply to every employee, without the need to import any new information. You can even configure Rippling to <a href="https://www.rippling.com/recipes/updated-leave-policy-notification" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">automatically send a notification of the new policy</a> to all employees.</p>



<p>For example, if an employee gets promoted to shift manager and becomes a new approver of time cards, Rippling will automatically change their permissions and grant them the appropriate access once you update your org chart.&nbsp;</p>



<p>Or, in a few clicks you can automatically apply overtime pay anytime an employee works on company holidays, as specified by your holiday calendar in Rippling.&nbsp;</p>





<p><strong>Automated workflows give you full visibility and control</strong></p>



<p>We also keep an eye on every time card so you don&#8217;t have to. Every HR leader’s biggest nightmare when it comes to time and attendance is an unexpected crisis: rising overtime costs, compliance violations, or unapproved timesheets.&nbsp;</p>



<p>Just set up your workflows once, and Rippling will notify you and your team before issues arise—like when an employee is approaching overtime. We even help automate the approval process.</p>



<p>For example: you can automatically send an alert via email or our mobile app to an employees’ supervisor 10 minutes before they start accruing double overtime pay. And then, if they don’t approve, auto-clock them out.</p>





<p><strong>Built-in functionality to keep your workplace safe and compliant</strong></p>



<p>Staying on top of every state and local labor compliance laws can quickly bury your team in administrative busywork. That’s why we’ve pre-built every state’s minimum wage, overtime, and break policies into our product.</p>



<p>In fact, whenever you hire a worker in a new state, default overtime and break policies are <em>automatically created and enforced</em> based on that state’s policies so you are never at risk for financial penalties.</p>





<p>And you can even create custom reports that leverage T&amp;A specific variables like missed breaks, gross overtime pay, or timecard change history to run comprehensive compliance audits.</p>



<p>Lastly, the scope of workplace safety has expanded dramatically since the pandemic and we realize it’s one of the top strategic priorities for any HR Leader. We’re excited to be able to deliver a touchless clock-in experience to our customers at launch, particularly with our kiosk app.</p>



<p>Via our QR code option, you can have employees safely scan a QR code on our kiosk and clock-in on their own mobile device while ensuring they are physically on-site and prevent buddy punching from occurring.&nbsp;</p>





<p><strong>Seamlessly integrated with payroll and HRIS to eliminate manual errors&nbsp;</strong></p>



<p>We know that payroll delays or errors can have disastrous financial consequences for your hourly workforce, especially during these times where <a href="https://www.branchapp.com/resources/the-2020-branch-report">52% of hourly workers</a> have $0 in emergency savings and 76% have already missed or delayed a bill payment.&nbsp;</p>



<p>These errors are probably more common than you think. A report on <a href="https://www.hrdive.com/news/just-two-payroll-errors-can-cause-49-of-employees-to-start-job-hunting/444377/">engaging employees through payroll</a> found that 82 million Americans are impacted by payroll issues each year.&nbsp;</p>



<p>Using an all-in-one solution for payroll, HR, and T&amp;A like Rippling ensures payroll is accurate and delivered on time, as approved hours are automatically synced to payroll. That means no more entering hours manually, data syncing issues, or late approvals from supervisors.&nbsp;</p>





<p>You’ll be able to configure automated reminders to all approvers of time to ensure employee hours are approved before each payroll deadline. You can even automatically trigger multiple approval chains or specify a new approver in the case the main approver is on PTO.</p>



<p>When you run payroll, admins can review and approve necessary timecards right inside a pay run to avoid payment delays. And since we log exactly which hours have been paid out, in the chance there are any hours that get added after a payroll run has been approved you’ll immediately be alerted so you can create an off-cycle pay run to resolve the issue.</p>





<p>Once you run payroll, you can leverage our integrations with accounting systems like NetSuite, Sage Intacct, Xero, and Quickbooks Online to automatically post a journal entry into your general ledger (GL) with all the data mapped exactly the way you need it to be.&nbsp;</p>



<p>Using Rippling, the entire time tracking process is seamlessly integrated from clock-in, approving hours, running payroll, to posting journal entries.&nbsp;</p>



<p><strong>Put time &amp; attendance on autopilot</strong></p>



<p>Interested in learning how we can save you hours on the busywork of tracking time, while giving you the visibility and control you need to proactively manage your workforce?&nbsp;</p>



<p><a aria-label="undefined (opens in a new tab)" href="https://www.rippling.com/request-demo" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Schedule a demo</a> with our team today to see the product in action!</p>








<p class="text-28 leading-36 mb-16 w-250 ml-auto mr-auto md:ml-0 md:mr-0">See Rippling T&amp;A in action</p>







Manage time your way with Rippling’s fully customizable Time & Attendance system


<p>When an employee gets paid through Rippling, they receive a paystub via email to let them know. It’s actually a legal requirement. But unlike the typical, utilitarian paystubs from providers like ADP, ours are fun—lighthearted and entertaining, in keeping with our brand philosophy of playfulness.</p>





<p>It’s not that we don’t take <a href="https://www.rippling.com/payroll" target="_blank" aria-label="undefined (opens in a new tab)" rel="noreferrer noopener">payroll</a> seriously. In fact, it’s the opposite: we see paystubs as a powerful, personal way of connecting with the business leaders and employees who count on Rippling to pay and be paid. We also make sure every stub is compliant with accessibility rules and other legal requirements.</p>





<h2>Their paystubs, not ours</h2>



<p>Sure, we make the paystubs. But ultimately they serve as communications from our customers to their employees. So naturally we have to put ourselves in the shoes of both audiences when we’re writing, designing, and animating.</p>



<p>Company owners, chief executives, and other leaders want to be sure that every stub reflects positively and appropriately on their organization. Employees want to receive a fun yet authentic message consistent with their work experience at that moment. Both audiences want to see something that feels credible and trustworthy. It’s up to us to deliver on all of these expectations.</p>



<h2>It’s all about listening&#8230;</h2>



<p>Branding work is inherently iterative. Paystubs are far from an exception. Since introducing our particular variety in 2020, it’s been a continuous loop of feedback and refinement. We take every compliment and concern into consideration. Here’s a sampling:</p>





<p>A harmlessly encouraging message, it seemed. Well, not to the business owner, who had been forced to cut pay due to the pandemic. This was the sharpest reminder yet that we need to think deeply about who’s receiving a paystub—and under what circumstances.</p>





<p>Silly and cute! That is, until you start getting questions like, “Is he suffocating?” and “Why can’t he get out of the leaves?” Arguably minor, but enough to get us to rework the stub for next year.</p>





<p>When we paystubbed a juicy burger, we were worried the vegetarians and vegans would take issue. To our surprise, no negative reactions at all! You really never know—which is why we always listen, and why we’re usually ready with a plant-based alternative.</p>





<p>Sidebar: Company administrators always have the option to turn paystub images off. We do our best to meet every customer’s needs, but we understand if the playfulness doesn&#8217;t match a particular culture.</p>







<p class="text-14 leading-16 mt-12 opacity-70">It’s payday. Eggstraodinary!</p>







<p class="text-14 leading-16 mt-12 opacity-70">It&#8217;s payday. How sweet it is.</p>







<p class="text-14 leading-16 mt-12 opacity-70">It’s payday. Out of this world!</p>







<p class="text-14 leading-16 mt-12 opacity-70">It&#8217;s payday, you superhero.</p>







<p class="text-14 leading-16 mt-12 opacity-70">It’s payday. Sweet dill!</p>







<p class="text-14 leading-16 mt-12 opacity-70">It&#8217;s payday. Shake your tail!</p>





<p><strong>&#8230;and a repeatable process</strong></p>



<p>Meanwhile, behind the scenes, we have fun turning ideas into animations.  It’s a pretty crisp process:</p>





<ol class="mt-16"><li>We<strong class="text-red">*</strong> get together (virtually), identify which months need stubs (or stub refinements), and riff together. Any reference to money is immediately dismissed as a bad idea.<br><br><strong class="text-red absolute left-0">*</strong><a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/jenniferyvonnewilliams/">Jen Williams</a>, Sr. Creative Producer<br><a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/nickwiesner/">Nick Wiesner</a>, Executive Creative Director<br><a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/mikepeart/">Mike Peart</a>, Writer<br><a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/joncorv/">Jonathan Corriveau</a>, Illustration &amp; Animation</li></ol>





<ol start="2" class="mt-16"><li>Once we narrow things down and crystalize our concepts, we start pencil-sketching the visuals and writing the one-liners.</li></ol>





<ol start="3" class="mt-16"><li>Then on to color sketches.</li></ol>





<ol start="4" class="mt-16"><li>Then initial renderings to nail down dimensions, movement, shadows, and such.</li></ol>





<ol start="5" class="mt-16"><li>Finally we animate and ship.</li></ol>





<ol start="6" class="mt-16"><li>Time to sit back (not really) and wait for reactions from our customers (really).</li></ol>





<p>Paystubs—who’d have thought? But they’re really one of the most relevant and distinctive ways we connect with our customers. We love making them, and—with the occasional exception—they love using them</p>



<h5 class="is-style-overline mb-24 mt-48">Posted By</h5>







<p class="text-22 leading-22"><strong>Nick Wiesner</strong></p>



<p class="opacity-70">Head of Brand, Rippling</p>



<p class="opacity-70 is-style-p2">As Head of Brand, Nick applies nearly 15 years of experience to guide brand expression across marketing, comms, products, events, social media, and employee engagement. His global creative team ranges from designers and writers to animators and web developers.</p>






Paystubs: From dull to delightful


<h2>The quick definition:</h2>



<p>A professional employer organization (PEO) enables small to mid-sized businesses to provide their employees with access to better, more affordable benefits and streamline a lot of administrative HR functions—like payroll, benefits, compliance, and workers’ compensation.</p>



<p>Traditionally, companies would need to fully outsource these HR functions to their PEO. But now, with the technology of modern PEOs, businesses can automate them to keep their most important information in-house while still profiting from the time savings, advisory services, and better benefits a PEO can provide.</p>



<h2>The longer definition:</h2>



<p>The HR demands of running a business can really add up—especially with the increase in remote work, which requires managing compliance across multiple states. And without offering top-tier benefits, businesses struggle to recruit and retain top talent. A PEO can help.&nbsp;</p>



<p>A PEO specializes in payroll, benefits, HR, and labor compliance services, allowing a company to streamline a lot of employee-related administrative duties and free up time and resources for higher-value activities. By co-employing a company’s staff (more on that later), a PEO is able to take over and/or automate tasks like running payroll, enrolling employees in benefits, managing compliance with current labor and employment laws, and more.&nbsp;</p>



<p>It may sound scary handing your most important asset—your employees—to an outside party. But according to the National Association of Professional Employer Organizations (NAPEO), businesses that use a PEO actually have higher employee satisfaction and up to 14% <a href="https://www.rippling.com/recipes/headcount-trends-report-template" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">lower employee turnover</a>.&nbsp;</p>



<p>And it’s not just employees that benefit. NAPEO’s <a href="https://napeo.blob.core.windows.net/cdn/docs/default-source/member-resources/white-paper-7-the-roi-of-using-a-peo.pdf?sfvrsn=d2c52ed4_10" target="_blank" aria-label="undefined (opens in a new tab)" rel="noreferrer noopener">2019 study</a> found that “the average cost savings from using a PEO is $1,775 per year per employee, while the average PEO cost per employee is $1,395, yielding an annual ROI of 27.2 percent.” Not surprisingly, the study also found companies that use a PEO grow faster and are much more likely to stay in business than companies that don’t.</p>





<p>So let’s dig deeper into how PEOs work, the benefits of using them, and whether one is right for your</p>



<p id="how-does-a-peo-work"><a href="#how-does-a-peo-work">How does a PEO work?</a></p>



<p><a href="#benefits-of-a-peo-for-small-businesses-and-startups">Benefits of a PEO for small businesses and startups</a></p>



<p><a href="#how-to-choose-a-peo">How to choose a PEO</a></p>



<p><a href="#the-rippling-peo">The Rippling PEO</a></p>



<h2>How does a PEO work?</h2>



<p>While PEO services and pricing structures vary, here’s a general overview of how a PEO works for small businesses and startups.</p>



<h3>They co-employ your employees</h3>



<p>When you join a PEO, it will co-employ your workforce for administrative purposes, like paying employees and filing payroll taxes. Importantly, you will still retain full control over who you hire, which benefit plans and designs are offered to employees, and other important human resources decisions.</p>



<p>NAPEO defines <a href="https://www.napeo.org/what-is-a-peo/about-the-peo-industry/what-is-co-employment" target="_blank" aria-label="undefined (opens in a new tab)" rel="noreferrer noopener">co-employment</a> as “a contractual allocation and sharing of certain employer responsibilities between the PEO and the client.” In other words, co-employment means that both you and the PEO employ your workers. Essentially, you divide up employer responsibilities:</p>



<ul><li>The PEO acts as an <strong>administrative employer </strong>(or <a href="https://www.irs.gov/government-entities/third-party-payer-arrangements-professional-employer-organizations" target="_blank" aria-label="undefined (opens in a new tab)" rel="noreferrer noopener">statutory employer</a>, as defined by the IRS). They employ your workers on record for tax purposes and usually processes wages, benefits, withholdings, and taxes under their federal employer identification number (EIN).</li></ul>



<ul><li>You act as the <strong>worksite employer,</strong> maintaining full authority over your employees, including who to hire (and let go) and how much to pay them. You also continue to handle your company’s overall strategy and business operations, including product research and development, marketing, sales, and customer support.</li></ul>





<p>As NAPEO puts it, “each party will be responsible for certain obligations of employment, while both parties might share responsibility for other obligations and be ‘an’ employer, but neither party is ‘the’ employer for all purposes.”</p>



<h3>They offer services that handle your HR tasks</h3>



<p>In general, the PEO takes over or automates employment-related HR administrative work, including:</p>



<ul><li><strong>Payroll</strong>: When you partner with a PEO, they take over paying employees, withholding and paying taxes, and more. Modern PEOs allow you to automate this in-house and spend only seconds on each pay run.<br></li><li><strong>Employee benefits:</strong> As a large group, a PEO can leverage its economies of scale to negotiate pricing with providers, streamline employee enrollment, process claims, and more.</li><li><strong>HR compliance:</strong> Labor and employment laws are complicated, different in every state, and often changing. A PEO helps you follow the rules and avoid costly fines.</li></ul>



<p>PEOs bring technology, HR expertise, and established processes to the table, allowing you to save time on administrative functions and keep your business compliant.&nbsp;</p>



<p>As the shift toward remote work continues, navigating the various state and local laws surrounding employment regulations—like payroll, PTO, minimum wage, and final pay—could become increasingly difficult for small businesses and startups. According to Upwork’s <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2020/12/15/one-in-four-americans-will-be-working-remotely-in-2021-survey.html" target="_blank" aria-label="undefined (opens in a new tab)" rel="noreferrer noopener"><em>Future of Workforce Pulse Report</em></a>, one in four Americans will be working remotely in 2021. And by 2025, 36.2 million Americans will be working remotely—an 87% increase from pre-pandemic levels. For businesses without in-house knowledge of each state’s specific regulations, leveraging a PEO’s expertise could be an important service to consider.&nbsp;</p>



<p>Your contract with a PEO, usually called a client service agreement (CSA), will define the exact services the PEO will provide and the specific responsibilities of each party. Read through it carefully and make sure you understand everything before signing. A good PEO will be willing to explain all the terms and answer any questions you have.</p>



<h3>They save money through economies of scale</h3>



<p>According to NAPEO, the nearly 1,000 PEOs in the United States co-employ 3.7 million people spanning 175,000 businesses. Because each PEO “employs” workers from so many individual businesses, they can negotiate with insurance providers to secure cheaper, higher-quality benefits for those small business employees—often lowering employment costs and boosting the bottom line for the business itself.</p>





<h3>How much do they cost?</h3>



<p>Your total cost will depend on a variety of different factors, including how big your company is, which services you’d like to take advantage of, and the PEO’s pricing structure.</p>



<p>PEOs typically use one of two pricing structures:</p>



<ul><li>Fixed monthly fee per employee</li><li>Percentage of payroll plus applicable taxes, workers’ compensation, and employer practice liability insurance (EPLI)</li></ul>



<p>Both methods can also come with various administrative fees, setup charges, and other costs if you want extra bells and whistles—so be careful of hidden fees. Make sure to fully understand your contract and the total cost of working with the PEO before signing.</p>






<h5 class="is-style-overline">The Rippling Peo</h5>



<p class="text-28 leading-36 mb-16 w-250 ml-auto mr-auto md:ml-0 md:mr-0">One flat rate, no hidden fees</p>






<h3>PEOs vs. internal HR teams</h3>



<p>PEOs aren’t meant to replace internal HR teams. Most small to mid-sized businesses hire PEOs to streamline time-consuming tasks and help them stay compliant with each state’s unique labor laws. This frees your HR department to focus on strategic initiatives, like building a strong company culture to find and <a href="https://www.rippling.com/recipes/employee-attrition-bundle" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">retain top <span id="benefits-of-a-peo-for-small-businesses-and-startups">talent</span></a><span id="benefits-of-a-peo-for-small-businesses-and-startups">.</span></p>








<p class="is-style-p1 opacity-100 md:mb-16">Learn how the Rippling PEO can help your business</p>








<h2>Benefits of a PEO for small businesses and startups</h2>



<p>According to NAPEO, 98% of PEO clients would recommend a PEO to a small business. From happier employees, to cost savings, to peace of mind, here are some of the major benefits of PEOs.</p>



<h3>Offer better employee benefits and a smoother HR experience</h3>



<p>As a small to mid-sized business, it can be hard to compete for the best talent if you can’t offer competitive salaries or benefits—especially since more and more companies are <a aria-label="undefined (opens in a new tab)" href="https://www.shrm.org/hr-today/trends-and-forecasting/research-and-surveys/pages/benefits19.aspx" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">increasing their benefits</a>, according to the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM).</p>



<p>Because PEOs co-employ so many workers, they’re able to harness the buying power reserved for much larger companies and provide access to more robust benefits for small business employees, allowing them to access a wider range of high quality, affordable options. Most PEOs provide some combination of the following:&nbsp;</p>



<ul><li>Healthcare plans</li><li>Life insurance and disability insurance</li><li>Worksite Benefits</li><li>Mental health support</li><li>Retirement plans</li><li>Commuter benefits</li><li>Dependent care</li></ul>



<p>Often, these benefits end up being less costly for employees. By providing access to benefits on par with Fortune 500 companies, a PEO can help keep you competitive in your search for new talent and keep your current employees happy.</p>



<p>Outsourcing HR to a PEO can lead to a better employee experience as well. Since PEOs are experts in all things HR, they’re well-equipped to answer questions and process benefits claims quickly.</p>



<h3>Save money</h3>



<p>Another benefit of PEOs co-employing so many workers is that they’re often able to negotiate better rates with insurance companies and other benefits providers.&nbsp;</p>



<p><a href="https://www.napeo.org/what-is-a-peo/about-the-peo-industry/napeo-white-papers">N</a><a href="https://www.napeo.org/what-is-a-peo/about-the-peo-industry/napeo-white-papers" target="_blank" aria-label="undefined (opens in a new tab)" rel="noreferrer noopener">APEO</a> also states that “administrative costs are around $450 lower per employee for businesses that use a PEO,” likely because PEOs are HR experts able to use their existing infrastructure to perform administrative tasks more efficiently than a small HR team could.&nbsp;</p>



<h3>Maintain payroll compliance</h3>



<p>Federal and state employment laws are complex and constantly changing, and if you don’t follow them, you may have to pay costly penalties. The IRS estimates that a whopping 40% of small to mid-sized businesses pay payroll penalties each year—and it’s possible the increase in remote work will cause that number to grow as more employees are hired and/or move out of state.</p>



<p>Staying compliant takes a lot of time. According to a recent <a href="https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20180319005739/en/Risky-Business-Majority-of-HR-and-Payroll-Professionals-Witness-Questionable-Compliance-Practices" target="_blank" aria-label="undefined (opens in a new tab)" rel="noreferrer noopener">survey</a>, HR and payroll departments spend an average of 36 hours per week on compliance-related work, whether that’s tracking regulatory changes or creating and communicating new policies.</p>



<p>A PEO helps with both compliance-related tasks <em>and</em> employee liability, “<a href="https://www.irs.gov/businesses/small-businesses-self-employed/outsourcing-payroll-duties" target="_blank" aria-label="undefined (opens in a new tab)" rel="noreferrer noopener">greatly [streamlining] business operations</a>” and giving you peace of mind. PEOs typically have compliance experts that monitor employer-related laws and ensure payroll and benefits compliance so you don’t have to. Many assist with tasks like:</p>



<ul><li><strong>Payroll compliance:</strong> Classifying employees correctly, issuing and filing tax forms, reporting/collecting/depositing taxes with the appropriate authorities, and ensuring you comply with wage law requirements, such as minimum wages and overtime<br></li><li><strong>Benefits compliance:</strong> Helping you follow Affordable Care Act (ACA), COBRA, FSA, HSA, and other benefits-related laws<br></li><li><strong>Labor compliance services: </strong>Ensuring that you follow workers’ compensation and Equal Employment Opportunity (EEO) laws and display state-required labor posters and leave policies<br></li><li><strong>Out-of-state compliance:</strong> Registering with the relevant state’s unemployment agencies and keeping compliant with local minimum wage, sick leave, vacation, and other ordinances</li></ul>



<h3>Save time</h3>



<p>Let’s face it: you and your HR team have better things to do than file paperwork, negotiate with benefits providers, and sift through ever-changing employer-related laws. While the cost savings are important, another big benefit of using a PEO is freeing up time to focus on growing your company.</p>



<p>With PEOs, you can save time on a lot of HR administrative duties. PEO services often span:</p>



<ul><li><strong>Payroll: </strong>Tracking hours and PTO, paying employees, reporting wages, withholding and paying payroll taxes, and sometimes helping to pay vendors and contractors<br></li><li><strong>Benefits:</strong> Streamlining everything from negotiating with providers to enrolling employees and processing claims<br></li><li><strong>General employee management: </strong>Administering unemployment and workers’ compensation, managing leave of absence requests, creating an employee handbook, running performance evaluation appraisals, terminating employees, training managers, and more<br></li><li><strong>Risk and safety: </strong>Reviewing safety practices, training employees to help limit claims, and providing support with Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) <span id="how-to-choose-a-peo">inspections</span></li></ul>



<h2>How to choose a PEO</h2>



<p>No two PEOs are exactly alike. If you’ve decided a PEO is right for you, be sure to compare different options and choose the best one for your business. Here are some ways to determine which is right for you.</p>



<h3>Make sure they offer all the services you need</h3>



<p>Some PEOs tailor their services to specific company sizes, industries, or geographic locations. Be sure the PEO is experienced with your company profile and can continue supporting you as you scale.</p>



<h3>Look at their pricing structure</h3>



<p>PEOs charge either a flat fee per employee or a percentage of your payroll. In general, the flat fee structure is more predictable, making it easier for you to budget. However, many flat rates also come with hidden fees, like extra costs associated with State Unemployment Taxes (SUTA). Be sure to ask about additional charges and choose a PEO that is transparent with its pricing. It might help to ask for a sample invoice so you can see whether they’re detailed enough and easy to understand.&nbsp;</p>






<h5 class="is-style-overline">The Rippling Peo</h5>



<p class="text-28 leading-36 mb-16 w-250 ml-auto mr-auto md:ml-0 md:mr-0">100% transparency, no hidden fees</p>






<h3>Watch out for any requirements on your end</h3>



<p>For example, some PEOs require you to have a minimum number of employees. You may also need to give them advance notice if you want to cancel their services, or risk paying a hefty fine.</p>



<h3>Make sure they’re easy to use</h3>



<p>Many PEOs run on software built in the 1980s. Since you and your employees will probably use the PEO’s software to access paystubs and tax forms, ask for a demo of the product and ensure that it’s easy for both your HR team and all other employees to use. You may also want to see whether they integrate with software you’re already <span id="the-rippling-peo">using.</span></p>



<h2>The Rippling PEO</h2>



<p>At Rippling, we make it easy for startups and small businesses to hire remotely and provide premium HR and benefits without high costs or compliance headaches.</p>



<p>We partner with leading insurance carriers to provide access to premium benefits, often at lower costs. In fact, businesses on our PEO save an average of $1,775 per employee each year, adding up to thousands of dollars in total savings on HR and benefits. And unlike other PEOs that run on systems built in the 80’s, Rippling leverages modern software to deliver all the services and support you need without any of the headaches that legacy PEO systems typically cause.&nbsp;</p>



<p>We’re also experts on the increased HR, payroll, and risk management complexities that come with hiring remote workers—like staying compliant with employer tax filings, workplace labor law ePosters, and SUTA accounts for each new state you hire in. While other PEOs often charge an extra fee and rely on sending PDFs back and forth to set up a new SUTA account, Rippling does it all automatically using our modern software.&nbsp;</p>



<p>In addition to simplifying compliance, Rippling streamlines everything from setting up new hires’ accounts and devices, to running payroll, to enrolling employees in benefits. We’ll even help you resolve any employment claims quickly and cost-effectively—though our on-staff HR experts will also advise you on best practices to avoid claims altogether.&nbsp;</p>



<p>If you’re looking for a new HR and benefits solution for your business, or if you plan to hire remote employees, learn more about the <a href="https://www.rippling.com/peo">Rippling PEO</a> or <a href="https://www.rippling.com/peo-request-demo">request a demo</a> today.</p>








<h5 class="is-style-overline">The Rippling Peo</h5>



<p class="text-28 leading-36 mb-16 w-250 ml-auto mr-auto md:ml-0 md:mr-0">See the Rippling PEO in action</p>







Professional Employer Organizations: Everything you need to know about PEOs


<h2>What is RADIUS?</h2>



<p><strong>Remote Authentication Dial-In User Service</strong> (RADIUS) is a networking protocol that provides centralized Authentication, Authorization, and Accounting (AAA or Triple A) management for users who connect and use a network service.&nbsp;</p>



<h2>Why RADIUS?</h2>



<p>You&#8217;re probably familiar with WiFi authentication protocols like WPA-Personal that require sharing a single password to access a WiFi network. These protocols are convenient for home WiFi use, but they&#8217;re dangerously insecure for accessing an office WiFi network or VPN.</p>



<p>Why? Consider these questions:</p>



<ul><li>How do you ensure the single password is not shared across insecure channels like emails / chat / common company whiteboards?</li><li>When an employee is terminated, what prevents them from keeping the shared password after they leave?</li><li>If a single employee’s password needs to be rotated, how do you do this without rotating the password for everyone in the office?</li></ul>



<p>WPA-Enterprise solves these issues by allowing different passwords for each employee.&nbsp; When an employee connects to a WiFi network using WPA-Enterprise, the WiFi router connects to a RADIUS (Remote Authentication Dial-In User Service) authentication server to validate the user’s individual credentials.&nbsp; RADIUS is a fairly old protocol built on UDP, and operates at a lower OSI level than more modern SSO standards like SAML.</p>



<p>Most companies can’t or don’t want to host their own RADIUS authentication server. Rippling hosts a cloud-based RADIUS authentication server for our customers, so that employees can then log into their WiFi with the same Rippling credentials they use for other applications.&nbsp; And when an employee is terminated in Rippling, they immediately automatically lose access to the WiFi network &#8212; along with all other sensitive accounts managed by Rippling.</p>



<p>At Rippling, we’ve built a redundant and highly available infrastructure for RADIUS that turned out to be a little different than building redundancy for traditional web applications. In this post we’ll talk about the lessons we learned building redundancy for our RADIUS authentication system.</p>



<h2>Project Goal &amp; Lessons</h2>



<p>We were supporting RADIUS for Routers and Virtual Private Networks (VPN) for the last two years and at that point of time, two dedicated Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) instances running RADIUS servers were more than enough for the ingress traffic. Since we are growing quickly, we started working on a project with two goals in mind:</p>



<ol><li>Auto scaling &#8211; RADIUS servers should be able to automatically scale during peak traffic load</li><li>Auto healing &#8211; RADIUS servers should be able to heal automatically by fixing unhealthy servers</li></ol>



<p>These are crucial for any production server and especially in our case because downtime in the RADIUS server could cause our customers to not be able to use their WiFI network.&nbsp;</p>



<p>We were able to tick both of these points and achieve high availability for our RADIUS servers. In the process of doing this, we had a lot of learnings. We would like to highlight a few.</p>





<h2>Lesson 1: In this case, it’s better to build than to buy.</h2>



<p>In the current era, no one would ever build their own AWS; everyone understands how painful on premise infra maintenance was without AWS. Similarly, we started looking for a RADIUS-as-a-service provider who could partner with us to provide high reliability with reasonable pricing. To our surprise we found challenges across all RADIUS-as-a-service providers:</p>



<ol><li>They are on prem and don’t have the same ease of scaling that cloud-native providers do.</li><li>This in turn leads to higher pricing per user for any other RADIUS service providers.</li><li>RADIUS-as-a-service providers didn’t provide the customization functionality that our customers need for more advanced authentication mechanisms.</li></ol>



<p>In general we believe the bar for choosing to build over buy should be high. In this case, since RADIUS is part of our core identity management infrastructure, we decided to build the system in-house to provide the customization, scalability, and pricing that our customers expect.</p>



<h2>Lesson 2: Containerize builds for easy development, testing and production deployment</h2>



<p>When we started adding support for RADIUS servers, we didn&#8217;t want to reinvent the wheel so we started building it on top of proven Linux libraries. This significantly accelerated our RADIUS implementation &#8211; thanks to the open source world! We initially started with Vagrant + Ubuntu for our development. Unfortunately, Ubuntu version differences between development and product created several inconsistencies during deployment.</p>



<p>So, we moved the environment from vagrant to docker containers &#8212; one DockerFile for development, testing and production.&nbsp; This completely removed the “but it works on my machine!” scenario. See <a href="https://www.rippling.com/blog/engineering/10-lessons-containerizing-our-django-backend/">our earlier post</a> for more advantages of containerizing your builds.</p>



<h2>Lesson 3: Use NLB and sidecar containers for instance health checks</h2>



<p>Load balancers play a crucial role in distributed systems. Amazon Application Load Balancers (ALB) currently support only HTTP traffic because more than 99% of the services hosted in AWS are HTTP-based. This wouldn’t work for us because RADIUS uses UDP and also we need to support IP-based load balancing as well. Network Load Balancers (NLB) serve this purpose, by providing load balancing at the Transport Layer as opposed to Application Layer that ALB uses.</p>



<p>Because we required UDP support, it was obvious that we should choose NLB rather than ALB. There was, however, a weird limitation with health checks in NLB: it would server traffic in UDP protocol and health checks needed to happen on TCP.&nbsp; As a result, we had no choice but to end up with 2 processes in the container:&nbsp;</p>



<ol><li>Main traffic &#8211; a RADIUS server process running in network port 1812 and using UDP&nbsp;</li><li>Health check &#8211; a Python TCP health check wrapper running in network port 1814 using TCP</li></ol>



<p>Now another interesting problem appeared. NLB allows us to do health checks on static fixed ports or traffic ports with ECS auto scaling and load balancer integration. Autoscaling spins up multiple containers in a machine and attaches a load balancer using a dynamic traffic port. But the health check port cannot be dynamic, restricting us to use only one container per EC2 instance.</p>



<p>We had three options to proceed further:</p>



<h3>Option 1</h3>



<ul><li>Use a static host port for both UDP traffic and TCP health checks, but with limited scalability of 1 task per instance.</li></ul>



<p>This would lead to underutilization of the instance, so we discarded this option. Majority of our services use HTTP interface and radius server is only UDP service with a maximum of 6 containers, since the EC2 machines are shared across the services having 1 task per instance would work but we were looking for a more scalable approach to support us in future.</p>



<h3>Option 2</h3>



<ul><li>Run a separate daemon service on the same cluster instances which would serve health check requests.&nbsp;</li><li>Both custom and other service containers can be placed on the same hosts so that at least health checks are in sync.&nbsp;</li></ul>



<p>We did not love this option because the daemon service checked health status for the instances, not the <a href="https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AmazonECS/latest/developerguide/task-placement-constraints.html">containers</a>. So if there were no RADIUS container in an instance, then a health check daemon running on it wouldn’t make sense. Having more granular health checks at a container level was a better choice rather than instance level.</p>



<h3>Option 3</h3>



<ul><li>Use a sidecar container approach along with AWS VPC networking mode where we get a unique IP per container. So each machine will have multiple containers with different internal IPs.</li><li>The number of tasks per machine is now limited by the number of ENI’s (<a href="https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AmazonECS/latest/developerguide/container-instance-eni.html">Elastic network interfaces</a>) the machine can support. It is further improved using Elastic Network trunking.&nbsp;</li><li>Because the IP is specific to the task, we can have static port mapping as well as multiple tasks per machine.</li><li>Have a single ECS task with 2 containers listening on different protocols and ports to help manage traffic on UDP and health check on TCP separately<ul><li>Radius server container exposed on port 1812/UDP&nbsp;</li><li>Health check container using python exposed on&nbsp; Port 1814/TCP for health checks only</li></ul></li><li><a href="https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/containers/aws-fargate-now-supports-udp-load-balancing-with-network-load-balancer/">UDP load balancing with Network Load Balancer</a></li></ul>



<p>The sidecar approach worked well and is a commonly embraced <a href="https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/containers/aws-fargate-now-supports-udp-load-balancing-with-network-load-balancer/">pattern</a> when there are two different processes defined for the main app and health check separately.&nbsp;</p>



<p>This helps us check if the instance is up, but doesn’t provide a guarantee that the RADIUS requests are being processed properly. So this alone doesn’t provide confidence when we do auto recovery and auto scaling.</p>



<h2>Lesson 4: Use a custom health check endpoint to verify the full RADIUS stack is functioning</h2>



<p>There are several ways to implement health checks for a given server.&nbsp;</p>



<p>At a minimum, we should detect that the instance is up and the server process is running. Better, we could validate that other systems can communicate with the endpoint and return valid content.</p>



<p>Better, though, is to ensure that the server can communicate with all of the underlying downstream systems and provide the correct ACCEPT code for a valid user in the system.</p>



<p>In order to solve this problem, we wrote a thin python wrapper which opens up a TCP port to the outside NLB health check and does a RADIUS end-to-end test on UDP with several retries. ECS waits for 10 seconds for a successful health check response and that is ample time to do a consistent health check within python with upto 6 retries. Also we set the logic in ECS to drain the container if three consecutive health checks fail to avoid any intermittent issue. Frequency of health check for ECS container was set to 30 seconds.</p>



<p>Here is an example of the python TCP wrapper:</p>





<h2>Lesson 5: Always keep the application servers stateless</h2>



<p>In order to scale the servers, we had to make sure the RADIUS servers were stateless and didn’t store any data in rest. (Other RADIUS-as-a-service products do store state.) All the user level authentication data is passed through a secure encrypted tunnel to RADIUS and the data is held only in transit for the duration required. This made our containers very thin, stateless, dataless This, in turn, increased the security and made it easy to replicate the containers during peak load.</p>



<h2>Lesson 6: Use Elastic IPs in addition to A records</h2>



<p>High end routers like Cisco Meraki and Ubiquiti UniFi support domain names, so you can configure them to connect to “radius1.rippling.com” and they’ll do a DNSlookup and connect to the right servers. But there are many lower end routers which don&#8217;t support domain names and need to be configured to connect to a specific IP address. Always prefer and reserve elastic IPs which don’t change over restarts or re-provisioning because these values are configured in routers and are painful for customers to change.</p>



<h2>Lesson 7: Provide secondary domains for higher availability</h2>



<p>We implemented Auto recovery and Auto scaling in ECS. This mitigates the occurrence of downtime without any human intervention.&nbsp;</p>



<p>As Murphy’s law states <em>“If something can go wrong, it will.”&nbsp;</em></p>



<p><em>What if one instance goes down?&nbsp;</em></p>



<p>Auto recovery should spawn a new container and kill the unhealthy one.</p>



<p><em>What if the NLB or all the instances under an NLB goes down simultaneously? (very rare)</em></p>



<p>We added two different Network Load Balancers (NLB) to increase the availability even further.&nbsp;</p>



<p>If the Routers and VPN systems support a secondary RADIUS server and are configured, then it should seamlessly fallback from radius1.rippling.com to radius2.rippling.com resulting in zero downtime.</p>



<h2>To conclude</h2>



<p>We migrated all of our existing customers to this new RADIUS infrastructure and have seen excellent uptime since then.&nbsp; We also have better visibility through proper health checks and have greater confidence that the system will scale even as usage grows exponentially.&nbsp;</p>



<p>If you’re interested in working on problems like this and building infrastructure to modernize traditionally painful HR and business processes, check out <a href="https://www.rippling.com/careers/">our jobs page</a>!&nbsp; We’re hiring for engineering and infrastructure roles in our San Francisco and Bangalore offices.&nbsp;</p>




7 Lessons from building our RADIUS server in the cloud

How we pulled off an in-house rebrand in four months


<p>A lot has changed since we announced Rippling for Accountants back in late 2018. We’re now partnering with hundreds of CPA firms and have built out a team of Rippling advisors dedicated to making our <a href="https://www.rippling.com/accountants" target="_blank" aria-label="undefined (opens in a new tab)" rel="noreferrer noopener">accountant partners</a> successful.</p>



<p>But our vision has remained the same: dramatically increase the value of the strategic services you offer clients, by eliminating your administrative busy work.</p>



<p>Which is why, today, we want to announce exciting updates to our product to meet the growing needs of our partners, including:</p>



<ul><li>Robust, customizable job codes&nbsp;</li><li>The industry’s best API integrations with general ledger (GL) systems (QBO, Xero, Sage Intacct, and Netsuite)</li><li>Fully customizable reporting</li><li>Real-time payroll run comparison that makes it simple to spot errors and discrepancies</li><li>Our accountant partner directory, which allows you to grow your business by showcasing your firm and services to our entire customer base</li></ul>





<h2>See where employees’ time is going — and what it’s costing you</h2>



<p>Rippling now supports robust, customizable job codes to <a href="https://www.rippling.com/recipes/time-and-attendance-report-template" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">track hours</a> and labor costs across job functions, departments, locations, projects, and any other use case that you can think of. It also allows you to change employees’ pay rates as they move from client to client, location to location, and so on.</p>





<p>In addition, our new built-in Time &amp; Job Cost report allows you to instantly group and view your company’s payroll data by job code, so you can view your labor costs by client, project, and so on.</p>



<p>For example: you can see how much it costs to build Product A vs Product B by tracking engineer time and salary by project. Or gauge the profitability of a specific store by tracking employee hours and costs by location.</p>



<p>Rates and hours worked will sync automatically to payroll with our integrations with time and attendance apps like Deputy and TSheets, and taxes (even multi-state) are calculated too. No need to reconcile hours with spreadsheets or keep track of CSVs any longer.</p>



<h2>Seamlessly (and accurately) integrate with your general ledger</h2>



<p>Many vendors claim to have “integrations” with your general ledger. But usually what that means is they’ve built a CSV template that allows you to export data from payroll and import it into your GL. Handy, but still prone to the same mistakes that plague manual work.</p>



<p>With Rippling, our API integrations with NetSuite, Sage Intacct, Quickbooks Online, and Xero automatically sync payroll data and post it into the right journal entry. You only have to set it up once and then you won’t have to think about these entries at all anymore.</p>



<p>With that power comes great responsibility, so we’ve designed our integrations to give you complete control. You choose exactly which field (department, location, class code, etc.) in Rippling should map to a specific journal (or sub-journal) entry in your GL. We’ve even allowed you to create exceptions, so for example you could have all department costs map to OpEx, except for Customer Support, which maps to COGS.</p>





<h2>Build any report you can imagine</h2>





<p>You’re not just stuck with canned, pre-built reports. With Rippling, we know your clients have <a href="https://www.rippling.com/recipes/payroll-report-template" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">unique financial needs when it comes to reporting</a>, so we’ve made it possible to build beautiful custom reports as easily as it is to build a pivot table in Excel.</p>



<p>You’ll still be able to generate all the standard reports you need, from payroll journals and cash requirements to PTO and more. Or create custom reports and graphs using any employee attribute in Rippling. Since we’re the single source of truth for employee data, you can easily bring in valuable HR, BenAdmin, and custom dimensions (like job codes) without having to log into another system.</p>



<p>Once you&#8217;ve filtered, aggregated, and created the perfect visualization for your report, you can easily share it with (and restrict access to) your client&#8217;s leadership team. Or simply save the report and review it as part of your monthly check-in process with each client.</p>



<h2>Proactively surface discrepancies so you know what changed in every payrun and why</h2>





<p>Transparency is a huge problem for payroll vendors. Legacy providers leave it up to you to reconcile hours and manually update changes to deductions, 401k contributions, etc. When errors happen, your team is left to find the proverbial needle in the haystack. Modern providers lean on automation and integrations to help reduce the manual work and reduce errors, but every accountant knows the devil is in the details. Even automated systems make mistakes.</p>



<p>There hasn’t been a quick and easy way to spot payroll changes or discrepancies until now. With our payroll comparison, for each pay cycle we’ll automatically highlight differences from the prior pay run so you can quickly investigate any issues and audit changes.</p>



<p>For example, if someone’s taxes changed because they hit their FICA or FUTA maximum, the system should highlight the discrepancy and explain what happened. Another example: sales commissions. You can quickly see how commissions have changed per person from paycheck to paycheck.</p>



<p>Your team and clients will rest easier knowing Rippling will surface these changes, as you begin running payroll each cycle.</p>



<h2>Grow your business by listing your firm in our Accountant partner directory</h2>





<p>We’re making it easier for our 3,500+ customers to discover accounting and bookkeeping services that meet their needs by launching our new partner directory.</p>



<p>By creating and customizing your listing, you’ll be able to specify the types of clients you serve (including by company size and industry), services offered, and accounting software you support.</p>



<p>Our customers will then be able to filter and find exactly what they need, and reach out to you directly in our product to help you find new clients and grow your business.</p>



<h2>Our Accounting Partner Program</h2>



<p>Our product aside, we’re also committed to supporting our partners with the resources they need to support their clients as strategic advisors. As part of our partner program, your firm will receive:</p>



<ul><li>Up to 35% off Rippling for your clients</li><li>Free HR &amp; Payroll for your firm (up to 25 employees)</li><li>A dedicated Partner Success manager</li><li>White glove migrations to make switching your book easy</li><li>One login to manage all of your clients</li><li>Partner enablement materials</li></ul>



<h2>Meet the Team</h2>



<p>All of our partners are assigned dedicated Rippling Advisors with relevant industry experience working with Accountants.</p>





<h3>Joel Lacayo</h3>



<p>Joel Lacayo has spent his career working with entrepreneurs as they move through growth milestones. In previous roles, Joel supported Xero’s National Accounting Partner’s growth as they scaled. Currently he co-founded Contabi Alliance, an international community of Latino Accounting business leaders built on tech + collaboration and an active member of the Accounting Salon, a group of cloud accounting leaders committed to innovation within the industry + generosity of spirit. Joel loves playing all sports, time with his wife and 2 boys, and leveraging social capital with like minded people. Joel is excited to serve as an internal advocate for every Accounting professional while supporting their continued growth.</p>





<h3>Martina Chavez</h3>



<p>Martina Chavez has spent the last 10 years of her career working in tech, specifically the SaaS industry, with a focus on partner management and development. Prior to Rippling, Martina managed accounting technology partners at Avalara. In addition to working with accounting partners, Martina owns a small Bay Area yoga studio, and has an intimate understanding of the importance of technology for running a business of any size. Martina loves working with accountants and bookkeepers to help them streamline their own processes so that they can better support their clients as they grow.</p>





<h3>John Gallo</h3>



<p>John Gallo is an ardent rugby player, golfer, and outdoorsman. He joined Rippling after reading the company’s Series A Investor Memo and finding an alignment in values. Prior to joining the Accountant Channel, John worked at Guideline 401(k), and served his business community as a financial advisor. He looks forward to helping accountants broaden the scope of their advisory services through Rippling.</p>





<h3><strong>Terry Chow</strong></h3>



<p>Terry Chow was born and raised in San Francisco, CA. He has spent the last 5 years working in SaaS tech and the payroll industry. Prior to Rippling, Terry was previously managing top producing accountant partners while scaling a Partner Care team from 1-10 members in two years. Terry has a passion for working with others. He has a strong skill set in client relationship management. At Rippling, Terry is focused on each accountant partner&#8217;s success. During his free time, he likes to travel, hike, and try new restaurants. Terry loves sports and is a big 49ers and Warriors fan. Go Dubs!</p>



<h5 class="is-style-overline mb-24 mt-48">Posted By</h5>







<p class="text-22 leading-22"><strong>Joel Lacayo</strong></p>



<p class="opacity-70">Lead Channel Account Executive, Rippling</p>



<p class="opacity-70 is-style-p2">As Lead Channel Account Executive, Joel is focused on building out our Accountant Partner Program from the ground up. He brings years of experience working with firms of all sizes within the Accounting Industry to implement efficient operational processes.</p>






Announcing five new time-saving tools for accountants

A Better Framework for Computed Fields


<p class="md:mb-88 mb-88">Rippling is still a young company, but we’re serious about security. We’re pleased to announce that we’re now SOC 2 Type II certified, widely considered the gold standard of a company’s ability to handle and secure confidential data. Rippling achieved SOC 2 Type I compliance in 2018.</p>



<h2>What’s SOC 2?</h2>



<p>SOC 2 is a set of security standards created by the American Institute of Certified Public Accounts (AICPA) specifically for tech companies with online systems that store confidential information. SOC 2 requires that companies establish and follow strict information security policies and procedures. Like a financial audit, a SOC 2 assessment is performed by an independent auditor who produces a detailed final report.</p>



<h2>What hoops did you have to jump through?</h2>



<p>The rigorous process to receive SOC 2 Type II certification takes many months because it evaluates a company’s data controls over an extended period of time. It’s a deep dive not only into your technology, but into your people, policy, and processes. For each of the security criteria Rippling was evaluated against over the course of the audit, no exceptions in the controls were noted.</p>



<p>As a platform that centralizes sensitive employee information, we wanted to give our customers peace of mind that we follow the most stringent data safeguards.</p>





<p>After all, Rippling is an always-up-to-date source of truth for all your employee data, and many of the internal controls SOC 2 requires involve HR and IT. So we used this opportunity to be the guinea pig and test how useful Rippling actually is for this use case.</p>



<h2>How Rippling simplifies SOC 2 compliance&nbsp;</h2>



<p>We were thrilled to find that Rippling takes a lot of the pain out of the SOC 2 process by automating data collection and policy compliance in many instances. Having a unified employee system of record made it much easier to demonstrate compliance with security controls.</p>



<p>For example, companies may want to show that when an employee is terminated, all of <a href="https://www.rippling.com/recipes/when-employee-terminated-send-webhook" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">their access to company systems is also terminated immediately</a>. This is an important security safeguard, yet one study found <a aria-label="undefined (opens in a new tab)" rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://link.axios.com/click/20326533.82960/aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuYXhpb3MuY29tL3doeS1wcHAtaXMtY29taW5nLXVwLXNob3J0LWVkYjczNzZmLWIzNDktNDVhYy1iZmQxLTdmM2Q0NmU3NDVhZC5odG1sP3V0bV9zb3VyY2U9bmV3c2xldHRlciZ1dG1fbWVkaXVtPWVtYWlsJnV0bV9jYW1wYWlnbj1uZXdzbGV0dGVyX2F4aW9zcHJvcmF0YSZzdHJlYW09dG9w/5daa894ef73043178f378ed0B9e159682" target="_blank">89%</a> of former employees retain access to at least one of their former employer’s systems after they leave.</p>



<p>Fortunately, Rippling not only tracks dates of employment as well as what tools workers had access to &#8211; it automatically disables employee access to all software when they’re terminated and allows admins to remotely wipe their laptops. Our Custom Reports tool makes it easy to document that this protocol was followed in just a few clicks.</p>





<p>Onboarding, offboarding, app provisioning, and <a href="https://www.rippling.com/hardware" target="_blank" aria-label="undefined (opens in a new tab)" rel="noreferrer noopener">employee device management</a>, inventory, and configuration are all processes that can be automated through Rippling to ensure compliance with SOC 2 standards. Our product provides real-time information on the hardware and software used by your workforce, as well as visibility into any threats detected by our endpoint security partner.</p>





<p>In short, we used Rippling both to enforce SOC 2 standards internally and to provide evidence of our compliance to auditors.</p>



<h2>Here are some of the ways we used Rippling during SOC 2:</h2>



<h3>HR<strong>&nbsp;</strong></h3>



<ul><li>Automated employee account creation and deletion in our onboarding and offboarding procedures</li><li>Automated background checks as part of the hiring flow</li><li>Automated evidence collection for new hire population, terminated employee population, account creation/deletion dates, and more</li></ul>



<h3>Security and provisioning</h3>



<ul><li>Enforced a strong password policy and 2FA settings within Rippling</li><li>Used Rippling SSO/SAML to securely access all critical third-party applications and infrastructure</li></ul>



<h3>Hardware</h3>



<ul><li>Provided an up-to-date inventory of all employee laptops, including information on hardware, OS, antivirus software, and status of security patches</li></ul>



<p>The SOC 2 process was a great learning experience for us. Now that we know what our product can do, we’re eager to support customers going through their own security certification audits.</p>





<p>Imagine simply clicking “SOC 2 configuration” in the product and we’d automatically enforce all the relevant security standards for your employees — and instantly generate pre-baked SOC 2 reports so the evidence is at your fingertips. That’s the vision we’re working towards.</p>



<p>To receive Rippling’s SOC 2 Type II Compliance report, please contact support@rippling.com.</p>



<h2 class="has-text-color">SOC 2 Step-by-step</h2>





<h5 class="is-style-overline mb-24 mt-48">Posted By</h5>







<p class="text-22 leading-22"><strong>Alberto Martinez</strong></p>



<p class="opacity-70">Lead Security Engineer, Rippling</p>



<p class="opacity-70 is-style-p2">As Head of Information Security, Alberto applies his broad experience to guide Rippling’s information security program across the company with a focus on the privacy, confidentiality, and availability of all Rippling clients’ information.</p>






Rippling achieves “gold standard” SOC 2 type II security certification


<p>When we started Rippling four years ago, we had our servers in production provisioned with Chef cookbooks. It was simple. It worked.&nbsp; As we grew, however, that simple model no longer served all of our needs. High availability deployment, library changes and monitoring required more effort and coordination to achieve.&nbsp;</p>



<p>Containers, of course, are the solution to this challenge. We recently migrated our infrastructure over to that model. We learned some good lessons along the way that we’d like to share.</p>



<h4>A little history</h4>



<p>Before diving into the details, let me give you an overview of our stack.</p>



<p>Our backend is a python-based HTTP API written using the Django framework. It uses&nbsp; MongoDB as a data store. Our backend exposes ~8000 API endpoints and processes on average 32M requests per day. We have a home-grown framework for running background jobs. We use uWSGI + nginx as an app and web servers. Before our migration, we were using AWS OpsWorks to deploy our services.</p>



<p>We started this journey by creating a Dockerfile and getting it running in local. To fast track, we mimicked the setup of tools and configuration in Chef cookbooks (e.g. uWSGI + nginx, nginx config, OS version, packages).</p>



<p>We decided to use AWS ECS to run our containers because it was simpler and the team had prior experience with that. We built the ECS stack and&nbsp; started with 5% of traffic being routed to the new stack. We completed this migration in a phased manner. This is how our new stack looks at a high level:</p>





<h3>Lessons learned</h3>



<h4>Lesson 1: Run uWSGI&nbsp; and nginx together in containers</h4>



<p>The official Docker documentation recommends running one process per container. Our initial plan was to run a uWSGI process in the container in HTTP mode and directly receive traffic from AWS ALB. However, it turned out to be unstable and occasionally it threw 502 errors. When uWSGI processes restarted the requests sent by AWS ALB started returning 502 errors. We discovered that this behaviour was observed by others as well (<a href="https://medium.com/@gabriel.m.troy/aws-alb-docker-uwsgi-502-bad-gateway-16d0a36f6240">ref</a>). So we started running uWSGI and nginx inside the container with nginx in the foreground.&nbsp;</p>



<h4>Lesson 2: Avoid spawning empty shells by enabling the need-app option in uWSGI</h4>



<p>uWSGI is a great app server for python applications but the default config misses important things. One is the need-app option.&nbsp; This option prevents uWSGI from starting if it is unable to load the application. Without this option enabled, uWSGI will ignore errors (syntax, import errors, memory issues) thrown at startup and will start an empty shell that will return 500 for all requests.&nbsp;&nbsp;</p>



<h4>Lesson 3: Ensure graceful nginx shutdown</h4>



<p>When ECS stops a container, the equivalent of <em>docker stop </em>command is issued to the container. (If you are curious, you can look at the aws-ecs-agent <a href="https://github.com/aws/amazon-ecs-agent/blob/953af906b5de51f25d4f366bcfb238ae277a7133/agent/vendor/github.com/docker/docker/client/container_stop.go#L18">code</a>.) It sends a stop signal which is SIGTERM by default. If it does not stop, then ECS issues SIGKILL to forcefully kill the container.&nbsp;</p>



<p>Our containers run nginx as the foreground process. When nginx receives SIGTERM, it executes a “fast shutdown” &#8211; any open connections of in-flight requests are immediately closed. This leads to ALB responding to those requests with 502 status.&nbsp;</p>



<p>The recommended way is to do graceful shutdown &#8211; it completes processing the in-flight requests before shutting down. Nginx expects a SIGQUIT signal for it to execute graceful shutdown. To override the stop signal to SIGQUIT, we have &nbsp; added `STOPSIGNAL SIGQUIT` in the Dockerfile.&nbsp;</p>



<h4>Lesson 4: Use AWS secrets manager for versioned config</h4>



<p>To inject environment variables into ECS tasks, we could use a parameter store, secrets manager, or directly set the variables in the task definition.&nbsp;</p>



<ul><li>When directly specified in the task definition, the secrets get duplicated across multiple task definitions. That’s bad practice and also a security risk.&nbsp;</li><li>ECS supports specifying the parameter store values with <a href="https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AmazonECS/latest/developerguide/specifying-sensitive-data-parameters.html">valueFrom</a> attributes inside the task definition environment. However, there is no versioning support. This can lead to inconsistency during scaling actions or reverts. For example, during scale out the new tasks will refer to the current value of the parameter instead of the value during which the task definition was created.&nbsp;</li><li>Moving to AWS secrets manager with versioned secrets specified in the task definition solved this problem. The secrets live only in the secrets manager and are injected by ECS when a container starts.</li></ul>



<h4>Lesson 5: Queue deploy time tasks during container bootup</h4>



<p>When we release code to production, we have to run data migrations, email provider template updates, and the like with the new version of code. These tasks have to be run once just after the deployment. ECS does not have built-in support for this. We came up with two options:</p>



<ul><li>We could create a task definition to run the deployment time command. We would run that with the ECS RunTask command and then start the service. We did not go with this as we would have had to orchestrate outside the container orchestrator system. Error handling and rollback would have been harder to implement.</li><li>Instead, we queued these tasks when the container started using our background job processing framework. Our framework ensures it runs only once even if the task is queued multiple times. Also, these tasks are idempotent.&nbsp;</li></ul>



<p>There was one gotcha. We needed to ensure the tasks run only in containers that execute the updated code. Because our deployment is blue-green, there’s a brief period in which the old containers would also be running. So, we injected the git commit unix timestamp into the container and specified in the tasks the minimum value. This ensures that only new containers run the queued deploy time tasks.</p>



<h4>Lesson 6:&nbsp; Be careful with the COPY command</h4>



<p>We use a multi-stage docker build to build chocolatey in a source image and then copy the generated artifacts into our main target docker image. To copy all the necessary libraries from the source image, we did a&nbsp;</p>





<p>By default, the COPY command recursively copies, retaining all the original files in the target image and copying all additional files from the source image. For conflicting filenames, however, the source overwrites the target.&nbsp;</p>



<p>As an example, a system shared library libxxx.so.6 was symlinked to different versions of the library in the source and target image. This caused an unexpected upgrade of the library causing a runtime failure of the application. Explicitly copying only the necessary system libraries avoided these side effects. We replaced the above command with:</p>







<h4>Lesson 7: Use a container level health check for background jobs</h4>



<p>When we deploy new code to the API containers,&nbsp; the ALB does an HTTP health check to decide when a container is able to receive traffic. Only after the new container is healthy and stable does it stop the old container.&nbsp;</p>



<p>We did not have a similar setup for background runners. Once, we had bad code deployed to background job runners causing them to crash shortly after they started. ECS considered the new containers to have started successfully so it stopped the old containers. This caused an infinite cycle of tasks starting and stopping.&nbsp;&nbsp;</p>



<p>To solve this problem, we used ECS <a href="https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AWSCloudFormation/latest/UserGuide/aws-properties-ecs-taskdefinition-healthcheck.html">container level health checks</a>&nbsp; to ensure the container can connect to the queue and can pop jobs to process. When the container starts, it connects to the queue and if it is successful, it creates a file. The healthcheck just <em>stats</em> the file.</p>



<h4>Lesson 8: Make the container say the code version</h4>



<p>When developers deploy they immediately want to know two things: 1) was it successful and 2) is the app running my version of the code. So when a container is built, it is injected with the git commit sha. Here is the build command:&nbsp;</p>





<p>We show this value in the footer of our admin site so that developers always know where things stand. </p>





<h4>Lesson 9: Ensure mandatory build-args are set during the build</h4>



<p>In the previous example of passing the git commit hash as a build time argument, an issue occurred when the build args were missed while building the docker image.&nbsp;</p>







<p>By default, the Docker build command does not enforce that all build arguments are passed. In the above example, even if GIT_HASH is not set, the build process will complete successfully. When it was deployed to production, the application crashed due to the missing environment variable.&nbsp;</p>



<p>As a solution, we always test if the build arg is set during the build time, so that the docker build command will fail when not passed.</p>





<h4>Lesson 10: Distribute traffic by queue size instead of round-robin</h4>





<p>The default load balancing algorithm of AWS target group is round-robin. This sounds sane as long as the requests have uniform processing time. That’s not always true. When we have few requests that are slower than others, the round-robin algorithm will continue to assign requests to containers that are still processing slow requests, thus overloading them. This can lead to 502 errors from the container.&nbsp; We have switched to the option “Least outstanding requests” algorithm, that uses requests pending from containers as a metric to distribute the traffic. In the above diagram, the least outstanding requests would ensure the new request (R5) goes to the container that’s free i.e. Container 3.&nbsp;</p>



<h4>To conclude</h4>



<p>It’s been a few months since we containerized and we are happy with the results. Our deployments are highly available and smoother. Our developers can make changes to system libraries faster. They can replicate bugs in their machines reliably. The infra team has better abstractions to work with. It made it easier to launch new services and scale them. Our next step is decoupling the modules and moving to microservices architecture. More on that in a future post!</p>




10 Lessons: Containerizing our Django Backend


<p>Welcome to the Rippling engineering blog! We are looking forward to bringing you stories about some of the technical challenges that we have tackled so far and some of those that are yet to come.</p>



<p>Before jumping into those things I want to set some context, tell you a bit about why I joined the company and tell you why I believe that we have a decade’s worth of interesting problems to solve.</p>



<h3>HR software? Really?</h3>



<p>When someone first proposed that I speak with the team at Rippling my first reaction was something like “HR software? Thanks, but no.” My assumption was that this was yet another in a long line of vital, but technically uninteresting, business software products.</p>



<p>But, people I trusted had great things to say about Parker and Prasanna, Rippling’s co-founders, and Matt MacInnis, our COO, so I put on my skeptic’s hat and went to meet them.</p>



<p>I’m glad I did. <a href="https://www.rippling.com/blog/company-news/rippling-series-a-pitch-deck-and-memo/">The story</a> they wove for me revealed a rich tapestry that quickly convinced me that Rippling wasn’t just another HR company. Rather, it was about fundamental change in the way people think about and use the business software that serves as the central nervous system of companies small and large. It was a vision driven by an entrepreneurial, engineering-first culture. And embedded in the core strategy of the company were compelling technology challenges that could keep me engaged for a decade.</p>



<p>That, I thought, was something worth spending time on.</p>



<h3>The problem</h3>



<p>Today, employee data is fragmented across many systems: HR systems, payroll systems, identity systems, device management systems, benefits systems, time tracking systems, a host of other products around the ecosystem, and so on. Those systems were not designed to work together, so they don’t. The most basic task of keeping employee data in sync across those systems requires extensive integration, error-prone manual copying of data, and lots of time from human beings who could be doing more valuable things.</p>



<p>Furthermore, fundamental concepts, such as permissioning and approval chains to name only two, often do not exist in these systems. To the extent that they do exist, they require implementation in each system; those implementations, of course, are not natively compatible with one another. Companies sometimes get around these kinds of challenges by having yet more systems that attempt to consolidate the roles and rights of each employee. But then that data, too, is incomplete. Administrators of these systems have to spend their limited time and attention worrying about those problems instead of focusing on their core business and their employees.</p>



<p>Even in the best case, companies that handle these challenges still have to wrestle with a fragmented and poor user experience. This is true from the moment an employee signs their offer letter and tries to go through a protracted, manual onboarding process, to the many changes as the employee grows at the company, all the way through to the <a href="https://www.rippling.com/recipes/when-employee-terminated-send-webhook" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">end of their employment</a> where companies have manual procedures to ensure that those employees no longer have access to sensitive systems.</p>



<p>As a result, prior to my time at Rippling, no one had ever told me that they love their payroll system. Or their core IT products. Or their benefits administration platform. At best, people tolerate them.</p>



<h3>Our fundamental thesis</h3>



<p>We assert that the answer to these problems is to create a single system of record for all employee data; that is, all data used across every department in each company. That single system of record sits underneath a technology platform that provides core technical and business primitives. Those core technologies are then used consistently and reliably across first-party implementations of the core systems that businesses need to function: HR, payroll, benefits administration, identity management, device management, and others.</p>



<p>This approach not only eliminates the need to replicate and integrate data across a set of heterogeneous systems but also eliminates the voluminous busy work of keeping those systems in sync. No longer do professionals in HR and IT have to spend tedious hours ensuring that their data stays consistent and correct in multiple systems. No longer does one person need to wait hours or days for another person to get data for them just because they don’t have direct, permission-controlled access. Instead they can spend time on the higher value functions of enriching the employee experience and solving the hard problems that actually help their business.</p>



<p>Furthermore, a set of products built on top of a common data store and a common technology platform also provides a common user experience. No longer do employees and administrators need to learn the idiosyncratic behaviors of multiple systems. Once they understand how one part of the suite works, they can understand all of it.</p>



<p>In addition, the standardization on a single data model and common API means that an ecosystem of third-party vendors is growing up around the platform. Our customers can now much more quickly and cheaply integrate a panoply of services with the core employee record. This is good for vendors too because they can write once to our API and provide a simple, consistent experience for their customers.</p>



<h3>So, what does this mean for Rippling’s engineering team?</h3>



<p>First, it means that <strong>we’re executing a playbook that runs counter to the conventional wisdom of how to start and scale a company</strong>. Instead of tackling a single, narrow product problem we are engaged in multiple initiatives. We are:</p>



<ol><li><em>Building a broad set of first-party products</em> such as payroll, benefits administration, identity management, device management, and many others&nbsp;</li><li><em>Growing a developer community and the API to support them</em> so they can offer products that can be easily integrated with the Rippling platform</li><li>&#8230; more that I can’t yet talk about here (but keep an eye out for future posts).</li></ol>



<p>Second, <strong>we are building a foundational technology platform</strong> that enables us to leverage the core employee record and a common set of capabilities such as reporting and permissioning across our entire suite of products.</p>



<p>We have built each of our core systems from scratch, and will continue to do so for future products. As a result, each one can seamlessly integrate not only with the core system of record, but can also natively make use of those core capabilities. A single adjustment to permissions, for example, can automatically cascade across the entire product portfolio. No human, and no integration, required. This is fundamentally different from how business software works today.</p>



<p>Third, <strong>we are building for scale</strong>. We support customers ranging in size from sole proprietorships through thousands of employees. These small and medium-sized businesses employ over 100 million people in the United States alone. Multiply that for the rest of the world. We aspire to become the <em>de facto</em> global solution. We are designing and building for that future now.</p>



<h3>Culture</h3>



<p>Clearly, our strategy requires us to go broad quickly. But we’re not a huge company; we’re a startup. The <em>only</em> way we can execute on so many things at once is to enable a set of small, talented, and highly autonomous teams with the freedom to do what is necessary to compete against public incumbents who are worth billions or tens of billions of dollars.</p>



<p>In a word, we are <strong>entrepreneurial</strong>.</p>



<p>And we will continue to operate in that way as we scale.</p>



<p>Our strategy also obligates us to build high-quality products that our customers love. We can’t become the <em>de facto</em> standard without building something that administrators are happy to tell their friends at other companies about. To achieve that, our engineering team is tightly integrated with our design and product teams and we’re building the infrastructure required to create products of the quality that we can all be proud of.</p>



<h3>What’s next for this blog?</h3>



<p>In the coming weeks and months you can expect to see posts on our infrastructure, performance scaling, security features, and more. We’re looking forward to sharing what we’re doing with you.</p>



<p>We’ve got a lot to do. If any of this sounds interesting to you we would love to hear from you. Check out <a href="https://www.rippling.com/careers/">our careers</a> or reach out to us any time at careers@rippling.com.</p>



<p>On behalf of the Rippling engineering team,</p>



<p>Jeremy</p>








<p class="text-22 leading-22"><strong>Jeremy Henrickson</strong></p>



<p class="opacity-70">VP Product and Engineering, Rippling</p>



<p class="opacity-70 is-style-p2">Previously as Chief Product Officer at Coinbase, he oversaw 5x growth of the product and engineering organization and transformed a scrappy startup into a global cryptocurrency platform with millions of users. He began his career at Apple in the 1990s and holds a BS and MS in Computer Science from Stanford. Jeremy enjoys playing board games and piano with his kids.</p>







Meet Rippling Engineering


<p>Even people who love their jobs have to do some work that nobody likes doing. Parker Conrad built Rippling to abolish the latter—”irreducible crap work,” he calls it.&nbsp;</p>



<p>Parker spoke to Scott Orn on the Kruze Consulting podcast about how the automation within Rippling takes care of the administrative work no HR department should be doing. He also discusses how Rippling’s platform uses data gleaned from that work to create a complete, actionable portrait of employees.&nbsp;&nbsp;</p>



<p><a href="https://kruzeconsulting.com/founders_and_friends/podcast/parker-conrad-on-ripplings-all-in-one-payroll-benefits-and-on-boarding-system-and-how-employee-data-becomes-an-asset-for-organizations/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Listen to the episode</a> &gt;&nbsp;</p>



<h2>The highlights</h2>



<ul><li>Businesses are secretly dependent on the understanding of who their employees are and what they do for the company. As a result, there’s a massive amount of administrative work within a business, “irreducible crap work” according to Parker, “that nobody really likes doing.” </li><li>Most companies think that employee data should just be used in the HR department or HR systems. That’s a misunderstanding of employee relationships to business systems.</li><li>Rippling was built from the beginning as a compound startup, one that gave companies the power to use employee data to their advantage in every aspect of their business. </li><li>Much of Rippling’s spending is focused on R&amp;D, more so than most SaaS companies—about half of Rippling’s employees are engineers. </li><li>One of Rippling’s core goals is to integrate with and extend the functionality of all the products businesses already own.</li></ul>







<h5 class="is-style-overline">See Rippling</h5>



<p class="text-28 leading-36 mb-16 w-250 ml-auto mr-auto md:ml-0 md:mr-0">See Rippling in action</p>








Abolish your "irreducible crap work": Parker Conrad on the Kruze Consulting podcast


<p>When we raised our Series A funding last year, we didn’t use a traditional pitch deck. Instead, we created an <a href="https://www.rippling.com/blog/company-news/rippling-series-a-pitch-deck-and-memo/">investor memo</a>, which laid out our pitch &#8212; and long-term vision for Rippling &#8212; in prose.</p>



<p>This time around for our <a href="https://www.rippling.com/blog/company-news/rippling-series-b-funding/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" aria-label="undefined (opens in a new tab)">Series B</a>, we weren&#8217;t expecting to raise money and we had to put together materials on a shorter timeline. So we reused the memo for background (investors were already familiar with it) &#8212; and repurposed a board deck for a robust look at our current performance and trajectory.</p>





<p>The deck we’re sharing above includes a Rippling overview section we had discussed with investors previously, as well as a SaaS metrics update. We’re sharing our deck as a template so other entrepreneurs can see exactly what information we presented, slide by slide, and customize it for their own business.</p>



<p>Separately, we provided prospective investors with a product demo, a deeper dive on sales and marketing efficiency metrics, an anonymized file of customer transaction data so they could perform their own analysis, and our summary financials, which are not included.&nbsp;&nbsp;</p>



<p>Whether you’re updating your board or pitching VC’s, choosing the best metrics to track and share is essential. The best metrics are the ones that reflect how you measure your own progress internally. Vanity metrics don’t do anyone any good.&nbsp;</p>



<p>One non-standard metric we created and use at Rippling is the sales team’s month zero cash-on-cash payback. It’s a useful measure of a sales team’s cash efficiency &#8212; we describe it in detail in the deck so you can plug in your own numbers.&nbsp;</p>



<p>There are many paths to building a successful company &#8212; raising venture capital is just one of them. If it’s the one you’ve chosen, we hope you’ll find this helpful.</p>



<p><em>Adil Syed is the CFO of Rippling.</em></p>



<p>&nbsp;</p>




Pitching VC's? Here's the deck we used to raise $145M


<p>Prasanna and I started Rippling four years ago because we felt we’d discovered a secret hidden in plain sight. We’d both previously led startups that drowned in back office busywork, and we believed the source of nearly all of it was the need to manually update employee information in dozens of different business systems every time someone joins a company, gets a raise, or needs access to a new app.&nbsp;</p>



<p>That’s why we set out to build the <a href="https://www.rippling.com/platform" target="_blank" aria-label="undefined (opens in a new tab)" rel="noreferrer noopener">world’s first system-of-record for employee data</a>. We wanted to create a way for businesses to easily manage their employees’ payroll, benefits, devices, cloud apps, and more—all in one system.</p>



<p>The idea struck a chord. In the two years since Rippling came out of stealth mode, we’ve grown to 250 employees, attracted thousands of customers, and become the highest-rated all-in-one HR and IT software out there.</p>





<p>Today, we’re excited to announce a new milestone. Rippling has raised $145 million in Series B funding led by Founders Fund. Participants in the round included Greenoaks Capital, Coatue Management, and Bedrock Capital, as well as existing investors including Kleiner Perkins, Initialized Capital, and Y Combinator</p>



<p>We know there’s never been a more difficult time to run a business. Overnight, companies have had to adapt to a fully-remote world. How do you send a fully-configured laptop to a new employee 100 miles away? How do you easily create, share, and sign all their HR paperwork? How do you set up their access to all the apps and tools they need, from GitHub and Zoom to Slack groups and Gmail lists?&nbsp;</p>



<p>It’s an unprecedented problem that Rippling is uniquely capable of solving, and one of the reasons why we’ve experienced significant growth over the past several months.<br><br></p>





<p><br>As I’ve said before, fundraising is a gratifying signal that we’re on the right path — but it’s a means to an end, not an end itself. So I want to thank all of our customers for trusting us with their business and giving us the feedback we need to constantly improve. Thank you to Founders Fund and our other investors for believing in our vision. And thank you to the whole Rippling team for working so hard to turn that audacious vision into a reality.&nbsp;</p>



<p>Parker Conrad<br>Co-Founder &amp; CEO</p>




Rippling Announces $145M in Series B Funding


<p>Ready or not, here it comes. This Wednesday, July 1, California will start enforcing its <a href="https://www.rippling.com/blog/privacy/california-consumer-privacy-act-2020/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">landmark privacy law</a> &#8212; and businesses face costly penalties and lawsuits if they&#8217;re not ready. The California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) took effect January 1 but businesses had a six-month grace period to get their data handling practices up to code.</p>



<p>Unfortunately, those new requirements have been easy to overlook in the midst of a pandemic and ongoing quarantine measures. California&#8217;s Attorney General has pledged to start enforcement this week regardless.</p>



<p>While the government is expected to focus its fire power on tech giants, companies of all sizes are still vulnerable to lawsuits and penalties. In fact, small and medium-sized businesses have borne the brunt of complying with CCPA. And our <a href="https://www.rippling.com/blog/privacy/ccpa-survey/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">research</a> indicates many employers have yet to comply with a CCPA requirement to send their California workers a privacy notice.</p>



<p>Until recently, U.S. companies had virtually no restrictions on what they do with employee data. Now they must inform California workers what data they&#8217;re collecting and why &#8212; and can be sued if that information is part of a data breach.</p>







<h5 class="is-style-overline mb-24 mt-48">Posted By</h5>







<p class="text-22 leading-22"><strong>Vanessa Wu</strong></p>



<p class="opacity-70">General Counsel and Corporate Security, Rippling</p>



<p class="opacity-70 is-style-p2">Vanessa Wu currently serves as the General Counsel and Corporate Secretary of Rippling, the first employee data system of record across all of a company&#8217;s HR and IT systems. In this role, she oversees all legal and compliance issues.</p>






CCPA enforcement starts July 1. Are your employee notices in order?


<p class="has-medium-font-size">Our moms will be so proud! <em>Forbes</em> and <em>Fast Company</em> both featured <a href="https://www.rippling.com/" target="_blank" aria-label="undefined (opens in a new tab)" rel="noreferrer noopener">Rippling</a> in their lists of future unicorns.</p>



<p>It was an exciting day at Rippling when <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/amyfeldman/2020/05/28/next-billion-dollar-startups-2020/#44437d373f9f"><em>Forbes</em></a> named us as one of 25 fastest-growing startups most likely to reach $1 billion valuation. Rippling CEO Parker Conrad was also profiled in a feature-length <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/amyfeldman/2020/05/28/the-comeback-of-a-fallen-tech-unicorn-ceo/#73c7e35c100a">story</a> by reporter Amy Feldman for the magazine&#8217;s sixth annual Next Billion-Dollar Startups issue.</p>







<p>To decide which companies would make the cut, TrueBridge Capital Partners asked 300 venture capital firms to nominate those they thought were most likely to become unicorns, while&nbsp;<em>Forbes&nbsp;</em>analyzed finances for roughly 140 startups and interviewed founders. &#8220;This list represents the 25&#8230;we think have the best shot of reaching the billion-dollar mark.&#8221;</p>



<p>Rippling was also honored to make CB Insights and <em>Fast Company</em>&#8216;s list of <a href="https://www.cbinsights.com/research/report/future-unicorn-startups-billion-dollar-companies/?utm_campaign=marketing_future-unicorns_2020-06&amp;utm_content=131399776&amp;utm_medium=social&amp;utm_source=twitter&amp;hss_channel=tw-110171914" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">50 Future Unicorns</a> alongside startups like Cameo, Gong and Ironclad.</p>





<p>They pick winners using an algorithm that combines a company’s financial health, the amount of traction it has, and the strength of its market. CB Insights notes that the same method was used for recent lists in which 52% and 34% of their picks went on to become unicorns.</p>



<p>We&#8217;re immensely grateful to the customers, investors and partners who contributed to these stories and made our success possible.</p>




Rippling Featured in Forbes Next Billion-Dollar Startups List


<p>If you ask benefits brokers their least favorite part of their job, you’ll usually hear two things: getting custom quotes for each of their groups, and dealing with all of the employer-level paperwork they have to file with insurance carriers.</p>



<p>These task aren’t just an annoyance — they’re a business problem. For years brokers have faced stiff competition from digital brokerages like Gusto that have less overhead because they automate these processes. Meanwhile, brokers are left doing time-consuming paperwork that cuts into their margins, especially for small-group insurance.</p>



<p>While there are a few software solutions that let brokers offer some of the digital convenience customers now expect, none of them offer the end-to-end automation for submitting carrier paperwork that digital brokers provide their clients. Until now.</p>





<p>Rippling now allows brokers to instantly quote and compare small-group health insurance plans in-product with all the rates and SBCs built in. And in an industry first, we’re also providing brokers with a ready-to-send zip file of group-level applications and documentation required by carriers, so brokers can manage new group applications online from start to finish.</p>



<p>Why it matters: brokers can now compete in the small group market while keeping their operational costs low — so they can spend less time on paperwork and more time advising their clients.</p>



<h2>Quoting</h2>



<p>Quoting and comparing health insurance plans is a fundamental service brokers provide for their clients. But most still rely on a tedious and outdated process that requires them to submit the details about each group to different carriers in order to collect custom quotes their clients can then compare and choose from.</p>



<p>Brokers can now use Rippling to instantly create custom medical plan quotes for their groups and compare plans. We do the heavy lifting on the back end so brokers can quote and present rates on the fly, so it’s easier and faster for clients to pick the right plan.</p>







<h2>Automated End-to-End Carrier Enrollment</h2>



<p>Like other platforms, Rippling already handles employee-level forms when brokers set up groups for the first time or help them switch carriers. But Rippling is the first to provide brokers with a ready-to-send zip file of group-level applications and documentation required by carriers, including:</p>



<ul><li>Filled-out employer applications</li><li>Payroll information (QWTR uploaded or from Rippling payroll, payroll journal from Rippling payroll, discrepancy letter, W-4s)</li><li>Quoted rates for selected plan</li><li>Census of <a href="https://www.rippling.com/recipes/insurance-enrollment-report-template" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">employee enrollments</a> (full and changes)</li><li>Filled-out employee enrollment forms</li><li>Void check for first-time payment and ACH form</li></ul>



<p>What does that mean for brokers? They can finally manage new group applications online from start to finish.</p>





<p>Unlike other providers, <a aria-label="undefined (opens in a new tab)" rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://www.rippling.com/brokers" target="_blank">Rippling supports brokers</a> with all transactions: new hires, terminations, <a href="https://www.rippling.com/recipes/qle-enrollment-notification" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">qualifying life events (QLEs)</a>, and demographic changes. We also support all major medical and ancillary carriers for EDI, and most large regional carriers.</p>



<p>Rippling is providing automated enrollment with any carrier for ALL broker partners for free. End-to-end carrier enrollment is launching first in California for plans effective August 1 — we’ll soon expand to other states.</p>



<h2>Boost your bottom line</h2>



<p>Rippling, which was recently named by Forbes as a “<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/amyfeldman/2020/05/28/the-comeback-of-a-fallen-tech-unicorn-ceo/" target="_blank" aria-label="undefined (opens in a new tab)" rel="noreferrer noopener">Next Billion-Dollar Startup,</a>” is investing in products that help brokers compete because our success is tied to yours. We believe in creating a level playing field with technology so you can get out of the back office and focus on being a true advisor and partner to your clients.</p>





<h5 class="is-style-overline mb-24 mt-48">Posted By</h5>







<p class="text-22 leading-22"><strong>Matt Donaldson</strong></p>



<p class="opacity-70">Head of Channel Sales, Rippling</p>



<p class="opacity-70 is-style-p2">Matt Donaldson leads all partner programs at the company. He works with partners companies like accountants, insurance brokers, IT consultants, and more to bring the first Employee Management Platform that spans HR &amp; IT to companies around the country.</p>






Platform

Features

HR Overview

Solutions

IT Overview

IT Products

App Shop

Categories

Featured Integrations

Testimonials

Industries

Resources

Featured Blog Post

More Posts

How brokers use Rippling to make even the smallest clients profitable

Your tax season game plan: Updates and upcoming changes for 2022

The incentive every accountant needs to know about: the R&D Tax Credit

Announcing five new time-saving tools for accountants

Bye, busy work! Automating carrier fulfillment & quoting for brokers