Evolving paystub and tax form solution fuels expansion with Symmetry.

Headquartered outside the United States but serving every state in the U.S., this privately backed startup was launched in 2016 to provide paystub support to very small businesses — companies with fewer than 10 employees, most of whom are hourly, non-desk workers.

The Challenge

As the company was evolving and expanding its offering, it became clear to leadership and their team of developers that they needed a partner to support their mission of helping very small businesses safely, securely, and accurately manage complete payroll processing in any state in the U.S. They knew that like any fully featured payroll software system, theirs had to be able to handle all payroll tax calculations and necessary tax withholding forms.

Equally important, the embedded payroll product they would choose also had to be very easy for its customers to use. That’s because the target audience primarily consists of what a product owner for the paystub generation solution called “prosumers.”

“They act more as consumers when it comes to purchasing software and services,” he said. “They just want to save time, and especially not spend money needlessly on administrative expenses. And they can’t afford or don’t need a full-time HR person.”

More specifically, the target audience comprises owners and managers of small businesses who wear a lot of hats. They’re in industries such as trucking, home cleaning and janitorial services, home nursing, and home health care.

“We’re talking about people who found themselves as business owners because they’re very good at what they do, and their businesses grew, and they now were handling jobs that they weren’t skilled at or comfortable doing,” said the product owner for the software company.

For payroll and other administrative jobs, the buyers have tried pen and paper solutions, manual options, and cloud-based spreadsheets, and found that all of those methods were too time-consuming and too likely to lead to data entry errors and compliance risks.

The paystub generation company — evolving to also offer payroll tax calculations and tax withholding forms — was at a crossroads.

The Search

At its inception, the company had developed a payroll tax calculations engine. However, its leadership soon realized that the U.S. system of tax jurisdictions and regulations was much more complicated than they had anticipated. They also ran up against two harsh realities:

• The U.S. taxation system is a confusing maze and complex web of taxing jurisdictions, rules, and compliance regulations.
• Tax rates and rules in the U.S. seem to be continuously changing, often with little notice, and keeping up with and implementing these changes quickly and accurately into their paystub and payroll tax withholding systems was costing them too much time and resources.

By 2019, the company decided to search for a solution to embed into their platform. They started with a payroll tax calculator on the website of Wolters Kluwer, a legacy, global provider of professional information, software solutions, and services — including payroll and tax services.

“What we saw,” the product owner said, “was that their website had the Symmetry logo on it.”

That discovery spurred the product owner and his team to look deeper into Symmetry as a potential partner.

“It had an API, and we liked that, we wanted to go in that direction, and it seemed that it would be seamless to integrate with our system,” he said.

After looking at two or three other options for a payroll tax engine and for payroll tax withholding forms, the company decided to go with Symmetry for those reasons and because of Symmetry’s expertise and total coverage of tax jurisdictions.

The Solution

That year, the platform embedded:

• The Symmetry Tax Engine (STE), a robust payroll processing and tax calculator covering federal, state, and local taxes for over 7,400 taxing jurisdictions in all 50 states, Puerto Rico, and U.S. territories.
• The Symmetry Payroll Forms (SPF) API, facilitating the onboarding of new employees by enabling accurate completion of federal, state, and local withholding forms with field- and form-level data validation.

Naturally, integrating the Symmetry products into the expanding payroll solution necessitated system changes for optimal and seamless operation. "That's why we sought a long-term commitment," remarked the product owner of the payroll solution. "We made significant adjustments to our system to accommodate it. We discussed all of this with Symmetry, and they were very accommodating, agreeing to a long-term contract and assuring us of continued partnership."

Still, the implementation took longer than expected, largely because the product owner and others assumed the API would be “easier to integrate with.”

“It took a few months, but it was worth it,” he said. “It took a lot of developer power to integrate the Symmetry Tax Engine and Payroll Forms solution. But remember, that was about four years ago, and Symmetry since then has created a lot more documentation and evolved a lot.”

“We had confidence in Symmetry when we saw who they worked with, who trusted them — ADP, Walmart — big players,” he said.

Nonetheless, the company conducted extensive testing during implementation, checking for the accuracy of calculations and to be sure all of the rates and rules were up to date.

“I compared them myself,” the product owner said. “Symmetry was right every time.”

Today, Symmetry’s tax calculation engine is the core of the platform’s payroll solution.

The Outcome

With Symmetry, the payroll solution achieved everything it desired and more:

• An API they could trust to provide accurate tax calculations consistently, for every one of its customers
• Embedded software that wouldn’t malfunction or cause downtime or disruptions in service for them or their customers
• A long-term partner with flexible contracts that they could confidently renew
• Assurance in a partner that would support its business expansion

By integrating Symmetry, the company gained additional time to enhance its offerings and ensure it could deliver precise calculations for any jurisdiction. Recently, thanks to Symmetry, the company has successfully entered new markets. Upon the release of the Canadian version of the Symmetry Tax Engine, the company promptly targeted the Canadian market and acquired new customers. The payroll solution is exploring opportunities beyond North America, stating, "If Symmetry expands there, we're likely to follow suit."

About company

The software company's paystub generator serves employers who would usually rely on a CPA to manage all of their tax reporting and compliance needs. Other customers were small-business CPAs themselves.

These companies are usually satisfied with manually processing payroll or relying on their CPA to run payroll for them and often don’t provide employees with printed paystubs. However, their employees often needed proof of pay and deductions to support
loan applications and for other financial reasons.

The employers realized they needed a way to easily and quickly provide their employees with accurate proof of their pay when they needed it. It was a great niche for the paystub generation solution to serve. Today, this 25-person startup routinely processes about 7,400 paystubs for as many as 7,000 employers.

More recently, the company has expanded its paystub generation service into Canada and very recently, it evolved to become a full-service payroll solution for very small businesses in the U.S.