For employers

Run your own payroll. Keep your own data.

The platform PEOs license to run payroll for hundreds of companies, deployed for one: yours. You file under your own EIN, hold your own carrier and workers’ comp relationships, and keep every employee record inside infrastructure you own.

Request a demoSee pricing

$6 per employee a month, or $9 with Stratum operating it. No platform fee.

Built for one business

Bringing payroll in-house shouldn’t mean building it in-house

Most companies that leave a PEO or a payroll service end up stitching together a payroll tool, a benefits portal, a workers’ comp spreadsheet and a compliance calendar. Stratum is the whole thing, deployed for one employer.

Payroll and tax under your own EIN

Your 941 and 940 are built as your own standalone returns, not folded into a PEO’s aggregate filing with a Schedule R attached. Federal, state and local withholding across all 50 states and D.C., including multi-state workers and reciprocity agreements.

Nobody in the middle

There is no PEO, bureau or co-employment arrangement between you and your payroll, and nothing to unwind later. You stay your own employer of record, with your own benefit plans, your own workers’ comp policy and your own experience mod.

One deployment, one company

Your employees’ Social Security numbers, pay history and benefit elections live in a database you own, on infrastructure you chose, rather than in a vendor’s platform alongside thousands of other employers.

What you run

Everything an in-house payroll and HR team needs

  • Payroll across all 50 states and D.C., with local income and occupational taxes for 826 jurisdictions
  • Standalone 941 and 940 returns under your own EIN, plus W-2s and ACA forms
  • Benefit plans your own HR admin creates, with enrollment, qualifying life events and payroll deductions wired to each other
  • Your workers’ comp policy, rated from your own class codes and rate table, with premium calculated from actual wages every payroll
  • Onboarding with I-9 and E-Verify, and offboarding with final pay and the right separation notice for the state
  • Leave plans tested against your states’ minimums the moment you save them
  • Injury reports and claims tracked through closure, with OSHA logs built from them
  • A report builder over your payroll, HR and benefits data, without writing queries

Employee self-service

What your employees see

  • Pay stubs, W-2s and withholding changes, on the web and a mobile app
  • Time-off requests and balances, with manager approval
  • Open enrollment and life events from their own phone
  • An optional AI assistant that answers from your policies and asks before it acts

Your brand

Your name, logo and colors replace ours everywhere your employees look, generated documents like pay stubs included. It’s done during implementation for your deployment, so people see their employer, not a payroll vendor.

Next to a payroll company

What’s actually included, line by line

A closer look at what you get from a traditional payroll service or PEO, next to what one Stratum deployment covers for a single employer. Two of these rows go the other way, and they are in the table too.

A feature-by-feature comparison of a traditional payroll company and a Stratum deployment run by a single employer.
FeatureA traditional payroll companyStratum, deployed for you
Payroll and tax
Payroll processing
Included. Included
Included. All 50 states and D.C., hourly and salaried
Payroll tax filing
Varies or costs extra. Included — but a PEO files your wages inside its own aggregate return
Included. Standalone 941 and 940 under your own EIN
Local income and occupational taxes
Varies or costs extra. Coverage varies, and extra jurisdictions are often billable
Included. 826 jurisdictions built in, at no change in price
Multi-state workers and reciprocity
Varies or costs extra. Usually included, sometimes per-state fees
Included. Included, and the price is the same for one state or twenty
W-2s, 1099s and ACA forms
Varies or costs extra. W-2s included; ACA reporting usually an add-on
Included. W-2s and ACA forms included
Direct deposit
Included. The vendor debits your account and moves the money
Included. The ACH file is built in your environment and sent to your bank on your own credentials — your team releases it
The rest of the stack
Employee portal and mobile app
Included. Included
Included. Included — pay stubs, W-2s, withholding, time off, enrollment
Time and attendance
Varies or costs extra. Usually a paid add-on
Included. Included
Benefits administration
Varies or costs extra. An add-on, or the PEO’s own plans rather than yours
Included. Included — your own plans, with enrollment, life events and deductions wired to each other
Workers’ compensation
Varies or costs extra. A referral, or folded into a PEO’s master policy and experience mod
Included. Your own policy, rated from your class codes, with premium calculated from actual wages every payroll
Onboarding, I-9 and E-Verify
Varies or costs extra. Commonly an add-on module
Included. Included, with offboarding, final pay and the right separation notice per state
Leave and PTO compliance
Varies or costs extra. Accrual tracking; state leave minimums are usually your problem
Included. Plans tested against your states’ minimums the moment you save them
Injury claims and OSHA logs
Not included. Rarely part of a payroll platform
Included. Claims tracked through closure, with OSHA logs built from them
Reporting
Varies or costs extra. Canned reports; anything custom is often billable
Included. A report builder over payroll, HR and benefits data, without writing queries
COBRA administration
Varies or costs extra. Commonly a paid add-on, or referred out to a third-party administrator
Included. Included — statutory deadline math, DOL model election notices, premium billing and collection, non-payment termination and every state’s mini-COBRA rule. Notices mail themselves once you connect a print-and-mail provider
How it’s priced
Pricing shape
Varies or costs extra. A per-employee fee plus a base platform fee, with modules priced on top
Included. $6 per employee a month, no platform fee, every module included
Implementation
Included. Standard onboarding, then you are live
Included. Your own payroll run in parallel against your current provider before you switch, then a 90-day break-fix warranty
Whose brand employees see
Not included. The vendor’s
Included. Yours — name, logo and colors, generated pay stubs included
Who holds what
Where your payroll data lives
Not included. The vendor’s platform, alongside thousands of other employers
Included. A database you own, on infrastructure you chose
Leaving
Varies or costs extra. You export what the vendor exports, on its schedule
Included. The deployment and the data are already yours, and there is no co-employment to unwind
SOC 2 report
Included. Usually published
Stays with you. Not yet. Run it yourself and it falls inside your own controls; your auditors get a control matrix and a system description
Who runs the servers
Included. The vendor — nothing for you to operate
Stays with you. You do, on your cloud or hardware, applying our releases within 14 days — or Stratum operates it in your account for $9
IncludedVaries or costs extraNot includedStays with you

The left column describes the common shape of a hosted payroll service or PEO rather than any one vendor, because packaging and pricing differ at every one of them — check your own contract and invoice against it. The right column is what a Stratum deployment covers for a single employer at the published price; the rows marked Stays with you are obligations and work that taking the operator out of the middle moves onto your team, and they are set out in full under your responsibilities below. Pricing detail is on the pricing page.

Data sovereignty

Your workforce data never leaves your infrastructure

For a single employer this is the whole point. Payroll data is the most sensitive data most companies hold, and running the platform yourself means it stays inside your own perimeter, under your own controls, open to review by your own security team.

Your infrastructure, your database

Stratum is licensed and deployed into your own servers or cloud account. There is no copy of your database on our side, and no standing access to it.

The jurisdiction you choose

Because the deployment is yours, so is its location. Payroll and employee records stay in the region or country your own policy requires, not wherever a vendor happens to run.

Data leaves only where you send it

Your bank, your benefit carriers, your tax-filing provider, E-Verify, and your mail, email and text services. Each one is a connection you set up, and AI features stay off until you add your own provider key.

Nothing has to phone home

Your license is a signed token your install verifies by itself, with no call to us. Payroll keeps running whether or not Stratum is reachable, which is a different kind of continuity than an escrow clause.

What Stratum receives, stated plainly: nothing, unless you choose otherwise. 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 us only if you turn them on, with emails, Social Security numbers and account numbers stripped out first.

The full platform underneath

Payroll, benefits, workers’ comp and compliance in one system

The same modules an operator licenses to serve a whole book of clients, scoped to your single company. Nothing here is a separate product or a paid add-on — one per-employee price covers all of it.

Two things read differently without an operator in the middle. COBRA notices are mailed automatically when you configure a mail provider, and the obligation stays yours as the employer. And the service desk and sales pipeline are left out here: they are built for a company serving a book of clients, not for one running its own payroll.

Payroll & tax

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, including Pennsylvania locals, NYC and Ohio
  • 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.

Watch the payroll tour
Benefits & COBRA

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.

Watch the benefits tour
Workers’ compensation

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

Retroactive payroll changes that alter a client’s exposure, flagged for review.

Onboarding & offboarding

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, Gusto, Workday, Rippling, QuickBooks and BambooHR

What it catches

I-9 reverification coming due, scheduled before an employee’s work authorization expires.

Watch the onboarding tour
Leave & compliance

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

What it catches

Sick-leave plans below a state’s minimum, flagged when the plan is saved.

Watch the time-off tour
AI assistance

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 on the web and the mobile app
  • 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.

Reporting

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.

Security

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 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. It is on by default and can be switched off in your configuration. 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 privileged staff, and single sign-on
  • Every change to data recorded in a permanent audit log

What it catches

Queries that skip a client boundary, which return nothing rather than another client’s data.

Connects to the systems you already run

Connectors for the HR, hiring, time, chat and accounting tools below, single sign-on with your identity provider, and import tools for seven common payroll and HR systems, so switching doesn’t mean starting from a blank slate. New hires arrive from your hiring system as they happen; time, BambooHR and QuickBooks syncs run when you choose. Because Stratum runs in your environment, it can also be integrated with your own internal systems.

Greenhouse
Lever
Deputy
Clockify
Slack
Microsoft Teams
QuickBooks Online
BambooHR

How it works

From first look to live, without betting your payroll on it

You see your own payroll run on Stratum, to the cent, alongside your current provider, before you commit to anything.

  1. 01

    See it configured for your business

    A live environment set up for your business and your size. The product, not slides, and every early conversation is with the founder.

    Or start with a short tour
    • A walkthrough built around how you pay people today
    • Your own states, pay schedules, benefit plans and workers’ comp classes
    • Pricing, implementation and founding-partner terms, in the same conversation
  2. 02

    Pilot in parallel, on your own payroll

    Run Stratum alongside your current provider on real payrolls. Nothing changes for your employees until you decide to switch, and nothing is billed during the pilot.

    • Every tax on every paycheck compared with your current provider, to the cent
    • You keep the comparison report, whatever you decide
    • The subscription starts only when you choose to make Stratum your platform
  3. 03

    Implement with the people who built it

    Implementation is a one-time $1,000: you and your IT person set up with our guide, and we help check your imported history and review your parallel payroll.

    • Data migration, with import tools for ADP, Paychex, Gusto, Workday, Rippling, QuickBooks and BambooHR
    • Mid-year switches with year-to-date history carried forward
    • Configuration to your workflows, and your own name, logo and colors everywhere employees look
    • Your states checked against our local-tax coverage before the subscription starts
  4. 04

    Go live with a warranty behind you

    Break-fixes are covered for 90 days from go-live sign-off. After that, customization and enhancements are billed by the hour, on your schedule.

    • Federal and state tax table and compliance updates stay included in the subscription
    • Customization and support at $225 an hour after the warranty
    • A published per-employee price with no platform fee, and no charge for modules you already have
  5. 05

    Run it your way

    Either way, Stratum runs on infrastructure you own and holds only your data.

    Compare the two options on pricing
    • Self-operated: your team runs it on your own servers or cloud account and applies our releases, for the license price
    • Stratum-operated: it runs in your own cloud account and we apply tax, security and version updates, for the license plus an operations fee
    • Your own security team can review the system itself, not a vendor’s attestation

Your responsibilities

What running it yourself actually means

Taking the operator out of the middle moves real work onto your team. Here is the part of it we would rather you hear from us now than discover in month three.

COBRA stays your obligation

Qualifying events are recorded and the notice clock is tracked, so the deadline stays visible. Notices are mailed automatically when you configure a print-and-mail provider; without one they are prepared and queued for you to mail. The obligation stays with you as the employer.

Your bank relationship is yours

Stratum builds the ACH file in your environment and sends it to your bank with your own credentials, under your own agreement. Your team approves and releases every file, and Stratum never holds those credentials or moves your money.

Carrier files reach connected carriers

EDI 834 enrollment files go to the carriers Stratum has connectors for. For a carrier outside that set you would send enrollments through that carrier’s own process, as you likely do today.

Releases, if you run it yourself

Self-operated means applying our security and tax releases within 14 days of publication, which is what keeps tax accuracy and the warranty intact. If you would rather not, Stratum can operate it inside your own cloud account.

No SOC 2 report yet

When you run Stratum yourself it falls inside your own controls, and we give your auditors a control matrix and a system description of what the software enforces, such as two-person release of payment files and a ledger that cannot be edited.

Proof

How we prove it

The claims on this page are backed by a standing test program, documented in our quality and reliability brief, available on request.

Tested to the cent

Every state’s withholding is pinned by exact-value tests against published tables. A tax update that changes a result can’t ship unnoticed.

Checked against real wage data

The tax engine’s coverage has been checked against hundreds of thousands of public wage records from employers across every state.

Client separation, tested continuously

Automated tests confirm that one client can never see another client’s data.

Recovery rehearsed

A full restore from backup is rehearsed against a populated database, with a measured recovery time.

The best proof is your own payroll

Run Stratum alongside your current provider and compare every tax on every paycheck to the cent. You keep the comparison report either way.

Ask about a parallel run

Common questions

Do we need a PEO or a payroll company to use this?+
No. One deployment serves exactly one company: yours. You stay your own employer of record, file under your own EIN, and hold your own carrier and workers’ comp relationships. This is the same platform PEOs license, deployed for a single business instead of a book of clients.
Who files our payroll taxes?+
You do, under your own EIN. Stratum builds your 941 and 940 as standalone returns and files them through the tax-filing provider you connect, rather than rolling them into someone else’s aggregate return. The standalone filing path refuses to run against a co-employment tenant, so there is no way to end up filed under the wrong EIN.
Who moves the money?+
You do. Stratum generates the ACH file inside your environment and sends it to your bank with your own credentials, under your existing ACH agreement, and your team approves and releases every file. If your current provider moves the money for you today, you will need your own bank or payments-platform agreement first, and we help you plan that.
What happens with COBRA?+
Qualifying events, notice deadlines and elections are tracked for you, and the notices are mailed automatically when you configure a print-and-mail provider. Without one, each notice is prepared and queued, and you mail it yourself. COBRA stays your obligation as the employer.
Can we still offer benefits?+
Yes. Your own HR admin creates your plans directly, and enrollment, qualifying life events and payroll deductions are wired together from there. Enrollment files go to the carriers Stratum connects to; for a carrier outside that set you would use that carrier’s own process.
How big does a business need to be for this to make sense?+
Big enough that running payroll yourself is already the plan: multiple states, a mix of hourly and salaried people, real benefits and a workers’ comp policy. Below that, a hosted payroll service is usually the better answer, and we will tell you so rather than sell you a deployment you don’t need.
Can Stratum run it for us?+
Yes, by arrangement. Stratum-operated means the platform runs in your own cloud account and we apply tax, security and version updates through access you grant, log and can revoke. The data stays in your account either way. Because that makes us a processor of your employees’ payroll data, a data-processing agreement is signed before an operated deployment starts.
What does it cost?+
$6 per employee a month if you run it yourself, or $9 if we operate it in your cloud account. There is no platform fee on top and every module is included, with a 25-employee minimum and a lower rate above 250. See the full price list.
Does the price go up when we hire?+
You license seats for your headcount, so yes — growing costs more, the same way it does on any payroll platform. What you avoid is the platform fee most of them charge on top, and the per-head rate is about half. Your headcount is what we agree up front and review at renewal; your deployment never reports employee counts back to us.
Is it available today?+
We’re onboarding founding partners now. The deployment is installed with you during implementation rather than downloaded from a signup page, and every early implementation is led by the people who built the platform.

See it running as your payroll

We’ll configure a demo around your states, your pay schedules and your benefit plans, then run your own payroll through it in parallel before anything changes.

Request a demoWatch a short tour