The platform
One system for everything you run
Payroll, time, benefits, retirement, workers’ comp, hiring, leave compliance, client billing and client service share one set of data, so nothing is keyed twice and every module checks the work as it’s entered.
All 50 states, calculated to the cent, on a tax engine we own.
Stratum’s payroll and tax engine is built in-house, with no third-party payroll core to license or wait on. It handles multi-state workers, local taxes and the overtime rules that trip up generic systems.
- Federal, state and local withholding across all 50 states and D.C.
- Multi-state workers, reciprocity agreements and local taxes for 1,025 jurisdictions, including NYC, Ohio and Pennsylvania’s cities
- Garnishments, ACH payment files, and a general-ledger file for each payroll that imports into QuickBooks Online, Xero and most ledgers
- Each employee’s pay compared with their own history before the run can be approved
What it catches
Pay that jumps sharply from an employee’s history, missed California meal-break premiums, and overtime rates that leave out a bonus.
From the clock-in to the paycheck, with the overtime rules applied.
Employees clock in on their phone or at a shared tablet, managers publish schedules and approve timesheets, and approved hours go to payroll without being typed again. Daily overtime is worked out under each state’s own rules.
- Clock-in from the mobile app or a shared kiosk tablet, with an optional geofence for each worksite
- Schedules on the phone, with shift swaps, drops and open-shift pickups
- Daily overtime where the law requires it, including California, Alaska, Nevada and Colorado
- Approved timesheets handed to payroll, so hours aren’t keyed twice
What it catches
A late schedule change under a fair workweek law such as New York City’s, Chicago’s or Philadelphia’s, priced for predictability pay and sent to payroll.
Expenses reimbursed through payroll, and kept out of taxable wages.
Employees submit expenses from their phone, a reviewer approves them against your policy, and the reimbursement is paid with payroll as a non-taxable line. Earned wage access and pay cards are administered in the same place: Stratum works out what an employee has earned and keeps the consents, while the money itself is paid from your own bank or by the card issuer you choose.
- A photo of the receipt fills in the date, merchant and total for the employee to check
- Mileage at the IRS rate in force on the day of travel, and accountable-plan rules for receipts and deadlines
- Nobody reviews their own expense report
- State rules for earned wage access and pay cards applied, with each employee’s written pay card consent kept on record
What it catches
A reimbursement that would have been taxed as wages because its pay code was switched off, stopped before it’s paid.
Enrollment to COBRA, without middleware.
An employee’s election drives the payroll deduction and the carrier enrollment file directly, so nobody re-keys it. COBRA deadlines are calculated from the qualifying event, and notices are generated from the Department of Labor model.
- Open enrollment and qualifying life events
- EDI 834 enrollment files straight to your carriers, once your carrier connections are set up
- COBRA election notices and deadline tracking
- Carrier invoices reconciled against active elections
What it catches
Elections submitted outside an enrollment window, and carrier bills for people who aren’t enrolled.
Deferrals, loans and plan testing, in step with every payroll.
Employees set their own 401(k), Roth or SIMPLE IRA contribution, and a change applies on the next payroll. Loans and hardship withdrawals go to the plan’s approver first. A contribution file for your recordkeeper is produced with each payroll, and census and loan files when you need them; the recordkeeper exchange is built and hasn’t yet run against a live recordkeeper.
- Single-employer, multiple-employer and pooled plans
- Loan limits and hardship reasons checked against the regulations before approval
- Deposit deadlines set by plan size, and forfeitures tracked with how the plan may use them
- Nondiscrimination testing, covering ADP, ACP, coverage, annual limits and top-heavy status, on the contributions payroll recorded
What it catches
A catch-up contribution that must be Roth because of what the employee earned last year, worked out in payroll.
Workers’ comp, wired straight into payroll.
Premium is calculated from actual wages on every payroll, rated in each work state under the policy in force, so the annual audit has far less to surprise anyone with.
- Class codes by employee and work state, rated from the rate table you load
- Experience-mod tracking and year-to-date premium by client
- Injury reports and claims tracked through closure, with OSHA logs built from them
- Audit-prep worksheets with the payroll detail a carrier auditor asks for
What it catches
Premium already billed for pay periods after a backdated termination, opened as a case for correction.
From offer letter to final paycheck.
Guided checklists take each new hire and each new client through every required step, and take departures through separation with the right notices for the state.
- I-9 with optional AI document reading, and E-Verify cases submitted once your company’s own E-Verify enrollment is connected
- State-specific separation notices for the 28 states that require one, and final pay prepared from live data
- Rehires matched to their earlier employment records
- Import tools for ADP, Paychex, Paylocity, Gusto, isolved, Workday, Rippling, QuickBooks and BambooHR
From the job posting to the annual review.
Open a requisition, publish it to your own careers page, and let candidates book their interviews. The signed offer letter starts onboarding, and the same employee record carries goals, reviews, training and pay planning from then on.
- Job requisitions with approval, a public careers page and interviews candidates book themselves
- Offer letters signed electronically, leading straight into onboarding
- Goals, review cycles and peer feedback, with training courses and quizzes
- Compensation cycles with budgets and manager worksheets
What it catches
A pay rate outside the band for the job, warned about or held for approval, as you choose.
Leave plans checked against state law before anyone is affected.
Every client leave plan is tested against state minimums when it’s saved, so a misconfiguration is caught at setup, not in an audit. FMLA, paid family, parental and military leave go to a review queue, because the system knows what it can decide and what a person must.
- Accrual, carryover, payout and eligibility rules validated against state minimums
- California’s unlimited-PTO pitfall detected automatically
- Employee requests and balances, with manager approval
- EEO-1, WARN Act, state new-hire report files, ACA forms and W-2s
One app for pay, time, benefits and paperwork, in English or Spanish.
Employees read their pay stubs, clock in, ask for time off, enroll in benefits, sign documents and submit expenses from the mobile app or the web portal. Each person chooses their own language, and it carries across the app, the portal and the emails they receive.
- Pay stubs on the phone, with W-2s and withholding changes in the web portal
- Benefits enrollment, time-off requests and documents to sign, from the mobile app
- Push notifications when something needs the employee’s attention
- Employee screens in Spanish as well as English, chosen by each person for themselves
What it catches
A new employee screen with English text a Spanish reader would see, caught by an automated check in the product’s test suite.
Client invoices built from the payroll and the contract.
Each client is invoiced under its own contract: a percent-of-payroll or bundled fee is invoiced as each payroll completes, and a per-employee fee each month. Receivables, collections and your own books sit in the same system, with each invoice and payment posted to the ledger.
- Per-employee, percent-of-payroll and bundled fees, with tiers and minimums, set in each client’s contract
- Receivables aging, overdue reminders and credit holds
- A general ledger with each payroll’s journal posted automatically, and bank reconciliation
- Clients read their invoices and statements, and dispute a charge, in their own portal
What it catches
A completed payroll with no invoice, or one invoiced twice.
Client service and sales in the same system as the payroll.
Client cases, deadlines and the sales pipeline are part of the platform, not a separate product. A won deal becomes a client setup without retyping the census.
- Cases across HR, benefits, payroll and compliance, with deadline tracking and escalation
- Duplicate cases detected and merged
- Sales pipeline with census-based quoting
- Inbound calls to your own Twilio number logged to the case record
What it catches
Cases that miss their deadline, flagged every hour and escalated under your own rules.
Your data, in the shape you need it.
A report builder covers payroll, HR, benefits and service data, with scheduled delivery and client self-service access to their own reports.
- Custom reports and dashboards without writing queries
- Sensitive personal data kept out of exports by default
- Scheduled delivery to the right people
- Clients see their own data, and only their own
What it catches
Scheduled reports going to someone whose access was removed after the schedule was set.
AI that does the busywork, and asks before it acts.
AI is part of the core platform, not a marketplace add-on, and it is optional: it stays off until you add a key for an AI model provider. Employees get answers about pay, time off and benefits from your own policies, and any action the assistant takes needs their confirmation first.
- Employee assistant in the web portal
- Case triage and drafted replies for your service team
- I-9 documents read and checked for you, with a switch to keep I-9 images off the AI and enter them by hand
- Connect your own AI tools to your data with read-only, revocable access
What it catches
Any action the assistant proposes, held until the employee confirms it.
Your environment, open to your own security review.
Stratum runs on your infrastructure, so your security team can review the system itself rather than a vendor’s attestation. Client data goes only to the outside services you connect: your bank, benefit carriers, tax-filing provider, E-Verify, and mail, email and text-message services. AI features are optional; once you turn them on, the text or document each one works on, including an I-9 document image, is sent to the AI model provider you set up. Stratum itself receives nothing by default. A once-a-day license check-in (an anonymous install fingerprint, the number of companies set up and the license status, never client or employee data) is sent only if your agreement names an address for it. Error reports reach Stratum only if you turn them on, with emails, Social Security numbers and account numbers stripped out first.
- Each client’s data separated at the database level
- Sensitive personal data encrypted at rest
- Multi-factor sign-in required for every staff account, and single sign-on for your clients’ users
- Changes recorded in an audit log that can’t be edited or deleted
What it catches
Queries that skip a client boundary, which return nothing rather than another client’s data.