As a service organization, “payroll is 80 percent of our budget,” said Rachel Mellby, Director of Finance at Open Door Legal, the San Francisco-based non-profit. “It always will be."

A small team of HR and Finance staff is responsible for managing a large group of employees and volunteers, and all their associated payroll and paperwork. Rachel needed a single platform that could handle payroll processing as well as benefits distribution so that she didn’t need to rely on multiple tools and vendors, which only added to the small team’s already full plates.

After implementing Rippling, Open Door Legal consolidated its payroll and benefits systems and took cumbersome manual work off its busy team’s plate. 

With Rippling, Open Door Legal drastically reduced time spent onboarding and account provisioning—all while managing multiple HR processes from a single platform. 

“Rippling really is an efficient tool that has made it easier for our HR, Admin, and Finance teams to manage the backend while supporting our staff as we grow,” Rachel said.

When Rachel got a “scary notice about a tax filing from the IRS,” she submitted a ticket to Rippling’s support team to ask how to handle it. “The support team is very, very responsive,” she says. “That's probably one of the biggest drivers that's satisfied us compared to [other platforms].”

It’s unfortunately true that many platforms reserve their white glove service only for high-paying customers. “I very much feel like the support being offered for our size and scale is significantly better,” said Rachel.

At the same time, Rachel is comfortable doing a lot of troubleshooting herself, so she’s grateful for Rippling’s comprehensive, user-friendly Help Center. “There's a lot we've been able to figure out on our own before even submitting a ticket, which I appreciate.”

Ultimately, Rachel and her team were able to invest all the time and money they saved from managing multiple payroll and benefits systems into growing their organisation strategically. They can now focus their efforts on hiring more staff to provide the legal services they exist to offer.

“We’re the only legal aid [essential business] that kept our physical doors open during the pandemic,” says Rachel. “We were able to keep hiring and growing, so that vulnerable San Franciscans can continue to get the help they need.”

Rippling really is an efficient tool that has made it easier for our HR, Admin, and Finance teams to manage the backend while supporting our staff as we grow.

Rachel Melby

Director of Finance at Open Door Legal

• Time saved: Open Door Legal cut both onboarding and account provisioning times by 50%
• Costs saved: Open Door Legal consolidated benefits and payroll systems and successfully kept overhead costs low