Metra came to Symmetry to integrate the Symmetry Tax Engine into their current payroll system and keep compliant and accurate payroll for their large employee count.

Metra is a regional railroad that found its payroll tax future uncertain when its software provider Microsoft announced that they would be retiring the U.S. payroll feature in Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 for Finance and Operations. With some time to consider moving to a next-generation payroll solution, Metra needed a partner to accurately and efficiently pay their employees without tax updates from Microsoft. 

Metra had a highly customized tax engine due to the unique rules that they must follow as a railroad. Metra’s employees are unionized and also don’t pay social security. Instead, they pay into railroad-specific retirement funds. Additionally, Metra has employees working in different states, complicating taxation for both employees and employers. Finally, Metra found that they didn’t have as much control as they would have liked when issues arose, and trouble-shooting proved time-consuming.

The Search

After finding out that payroll tax updates were no longer going to become available from their previous provider, Metra came to Symmetry Software because the Symmetry Tax Engine (STE) was already being used in Dynamics AX 2012. Metra decided to come to Symmetry directly instead of finding another company to support the Symmetry Tax Engine in Dynamics AX 2012. Microsoft used to provide updates to the Symmetry Tax Engine throughout the year, now the updates are on Metra’s payroll experts.

The Solution

The Symmetry Tax Engine is a powerful processing tool and tax calculator. The Symmetry Tax Engine can be embedded into an existing payroll platform, or it can be used to build a new payroll platform, increasing compliance and accuracy for the users and those whose paychecks are calculated with the Symmetry Tax Engine.

The team at Metra came to Symmetry Software with specific goals in mind and from the Symmetry engineering and client experience teams learned the steps it would take to quickly and seamlessly integrate the Symmetry Tax Engine into their current Finance and Operations software in order to keep compliant and accurate payroll for their employee count. Metra received detailed assistance from the teams at Symmetry on how to implement the Symmetry Tax Engine, which included a custom 20-page document specifically outlining Metra’s unique needs and a step-by-step analysis of what they needed in order to successfully integrate the Symmetry Tax Engine into their existing application.

The Result

In addition to the excellent support, the Symmetry Tax Engine also checked a number of Metra’s other criteria for a new tax provider. The Symmetry Tax Engine handled railroad retirement taxes and payments in addition to the complicated union payroll requirements that Metra had.

Previously, their software provider only released tax updates twice a year–at the beginning of the year and again in June–leaving gaps in compliance for taxing jurisdictions that changed their rates or introduced new taxes during other seasons. Now, Metra has found that they are more up-to-date with tax rates and changes because of Symmetry’s more frequent releases. Specifically, Metra has enjoyed access to Symmetry’s payroll tax and engineering expertise and the ease of keeping tax updates running smoother, making it more efficient to make sure everyone is getting paid according to current payroll tax legislation.

Symmetry Software and Metra have made payroll for a unique industry smoother, more efficient, and more regulatory compliant. 

About Metra

Metra has 11 railroad lines with 241 stations radiating from downtown Chicago to the six-county area of northeast Illinois. Metra is part of the community, bringing families together, driving economic growth and opportunity, and safely carrying passengers where they need to go.

About Symmetry Software

Symmetry Software is the payroll infrastructure for software & payroll platforms powering the paychecks of over 64 million workers each year. Our fully integrated suite of payroll tax APIs and software tools allows companies to solve tax compliance issues and build applications across the entirety of the payroll process.